The country’s finance minister Simon Birmingham warned that Australia’s borders would not be “flung open at the start of next year with great ease”.
Birmingham added that there were “uncertainties” around both the speed of the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out and the vaccines’ effectiveness on new variants of the virus, during an interview with The Australian.
Australia had previously hoped to reopen its borders to international visitors in October 2021.
Other Australian ministers have suggested that its borders will be initially reopened through bilateral “bubbles” with regional destinations such as Singapore, Japan and Vietnam.
