National's COVID-19 response spokesperson Gerry Brownlee wants New Zealand's border open with the Pacific Islands by early next year but admits his party can't make "a commitment or promise" to it.
The party revealed the second part of its border security plan on Tuesday, saying it would allow New Zealand to "safely reconnect to the world and grow our economy".
As part of the policy, National is promising to establish safe conditions for skilled and essential workers to re-enter the country.
National would also implement a booking system for managed isolation facilities to manage more arrivals into New Zealand safely.
Appearing on Magic Talk's Road to the Election to discuss the policy, Brownlee was asked when National expected people to be travelling again.
"These things are not things where you can just click your fingers and say, 'this is what's happening, this is it'," he told host Mitch McCann on Sunday.
"We believe that we should be able to be open to the Pacific in the early part of next year - we can't see why that would be too much of a problem given many of those countries are COVID-free.
"That's not a commitment or a promise or otherwise - it is a commitment to make it a priority if we can and that's about as far as you can get with this thing - it's too uncertain.
"You can't give a date because you can't give a date for a vaccine either. I think the world's going to have to learn to live with this thing a long time before there's actually a vaccine."
It is still unknown how COVID-19 got back into New Zealand after 100 days of no community transmission, but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has admitted that it must have come through the border somehow. Brownlee said, "every outbreak we've had so far has come across the border".
"We're not comparing a perfect system with something that could be even more perfect."
The Ministry of Health reported two new cases of COVID-19 in New Zealand on Sunday but both are in managed isolation facilities.
It comes after New Zealand moved to COVID-19 alert level 1 on Monday night, except Auckland which remains at alert level 2.
New Zealand now has 59 active cases of COVID-19 - 32 of which are imported infections and 27 in the community. There's one person in the hospital with COVID-19 - on a ward at Middlemore.
