New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday provided the kind of framework airlines want to see Australia adopt, outlining a “traffic light” guide for when it her country would pause or suspend quarantine-free travel with Australia in response to COVID-19 outbreaks.

Mr Abrams said Australia should decide now what pre- and post-flight testing and eventually what kind of vaccinations will be required for international travel, and that the government should adopt the International Air Transport Assocciation’s digital “vaccine passport”.

On Tuesday Singapore’s government said that from May 1 immigration official would accept the use of the IATA Travel Pass app for travellers to verify they had returned a negative COVID-19 test result in the 72 hours before their departure.

Ms Ardern flagged in a press conference on Tuesday that Australia opening quarantine-free travel with Singapore would trigger New Zealand to reassess the health risks of the new trans-Tasman bubble.

“If we have concerns that it opens up a risk, we’ll express that to Australia, and we may make changes based on it,” Ms Ardern said.

IATA, a body which represents 290 airlines around the world accounting for 82 per cent of global air traffic, welcomed the Australia-New Zealand bubble as “a step in the right direction”.

“We are keen to engage and work with the Australian government in identifying risk-based measures that can form the basis for the government to feel comfortable in the gradual reopening of borders, relaxation of capacity caps and move away from quarantine to a vaccination/testing based entry regime,” IATA spokesman Albert Tjoeng said.

“This will help airlines plan and prepare for the opening of Australia’s international borders.”

Singapore was set to open a travel bubble with Hong Kong in late November but that was torpedoed at the last minute by an outbreak in the Chinese territory and has not been re-established.