Auckland's mayor is keen for the government to pitch in for a campaign encouraging out-of-towners to holiday in the super city - despite it being home to our biggest Covid-19 cluster and most of the country's isolation and quarantine hotels.
Phil Goff says while not everyone will agree he believes the decision to hold Auckland at level 2.5 is the right one and yoyoing in and out of alert levels would do even more harm to business.
But the streets of the super are still not back to their bustling normal, with a lot of workers apparently choosing to keep working from home.
Lisa Owen asked the mayor what he can do to encourage them back, to help support the CBD's economy.
"We have had a higher level of lockdown over the last two and a half weeks, and we still have some restrictions that aren't faced by the rest of the country. So through New Zealand Tourism, it would be great to have support to promote - you know a lot of Aucklanders are going down to Queenstown, we'd like to see people from around the country also come up to Auckland," Goff said.
"Now that's pretty hard under level 3 in fact it's impossible, and it's still pretty hard under level, 2.5, so there are other things the government could do in that sphere that would help some of the industries that have been hardest hit – retail, accommodation, hospitality. Those are the areas that have suffered most particularly because we've had a higher level of lockdown.
"They've got a campaign now for the people that would normally be spending $7-9 billion a year on overseas travel, getting those people to spend within New Zealand is great. We think it's good that the Aucklanders are able to go down and support places like Rotorua and Queenstown, equally we think it'd be good if other parts of the country would come up in support Auckland which has about 29 percent of the total number of workers in the tourist industry in our city. That's often overlooked, we're not Rotorua, we're not Queenstown, but we did have a big reliance on the tourist industry.
"So working with ATEED, with New Zealand Tourism, to get that sort of promotion and marketing, I think is a way in which we can help those businesses as well," he said.
"I'm confident that if we do it right … then we will get back to a position where we eliminate the [Covid-19] community transmission, and then we can get back to the sort of recovery that we're actually enjoying last time I'm under level 1.
"I've seen the graphs and I've seen the figures, and we were picking up quite markedly in terms of the business activity right around the city and the Heart of the City will tell you this in Auckland, that when we've got back to level 1 things were coming back quite rapidly, and the best way to get them back, of course, is to kill the disease, to eliminate the transmission in the community. And that's the way we can best help our own businesses."
Goff said under level 2.5 rules, restrictions on group sport at public fields, will stay in place, and he said the vast majority of people are obeying the rules.
"I can go down to Mission Bay and I can say, 'those people aren't in the same bubble and that they're not two metres apart'. You can find people that aren't observing it in the way that we want them to observe it, but for the vast majority of Aucklanders I'm going to give a big call out - as I've gone around the city I've seen people really working hard at making sure that they observe those restrictions. And I've got to say I never imagined that I would see the number of people that I'm seeing around Auckland wearing a mask when out in public that I'm seeing now."
"So here's a big call out to the vast majority of people who are playing their role, and the second call is to those people that aren't. Please, just remember this isn't just about you. It's about if you became a transmitter of the virus. What does that mean if you're a young person in particular, for your parents, your grandparents?
"We've all got a role to play. Let's play it, let's eliminate the virus from community transmission, and then we can get back to what all of us want."
