Finance Minister Simon Birmingham says Qantas CEO Alan Joyce’s hope intentional travel could resume by October is “possible” but will depend on the success of the vaccine rollout.
“It’s possible and I would share those hopes, but there are many uncertainties between now and October,” he told Sky News.
“Obviously we need the vaccine rollout to go well.
“Within that we need to see how the evidence plays out around the world about the emergence of other strains and variants of COVID-19 and the vaccine’s resistance to those and the protections that it gives to individual people.
“I think it is indeed something that we can hope may be possible, but we can’t necessarily put a likelihood or a probability to it just at present".
Mr Birmingham said Qantas has shown “incredible resilience” through the pandemic and the government is looking at targeted support for different sectors after JobKeeper ends in March.
