Williams Poto: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4575. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a call on the Passports Amendment Bill (No 2). Over the last couple of days and again later in the House today I have been and will be speaking a bit about passports and about the quality of citizenship. Passports are as my colleague Mr Rurawhe says a taonga. They are important to us and they do differentiate us from other people around the world. They are well sought after by those unscrupulous people who would take our passports off us because having a New Zealand passport allows us to travel to many countries of the world where other passports may not take those passport-holders. We do support this bill going to the select committee and there are a few components of this bill that I am hopeful the select committee will spend some time reviewing and refining and coming back to us with some answers for.The most significant part of this bill is the validity period—moving that from 5 years to 10 years. As my colleague has already said that really has come about by public pressure—New Zealanders not really enjoying the shortened 5-year period of their passports. We are great travellers being right down here at the end of the world. We do a lot of travelling and the renewal period is quite prescriptive being at 5 years.The issue around the cost is interesting. The Minister of Internal Affairs has made various statements in the public arena about the cost being set at $180 and this reflecting really the cost savings over the period of time of moving out the validity period from 5 to 10 years. That is a very interesting point and I do want to just pick up on something that I read a statement from the Minister that came out in the Taranaki Daily News a couple of days ago which shows that Cabinet papers reveal that the Government will need to front an extra $200 million to double the validity period to actually cover the costs of the passport. The actual cost of the passport sits at around $400. I think this is really interesting because Treasury did say to the Department of Internal Affairs that it did not want this decision made based on financial reasons. But Mr Dunne is in favour of subsidising the passport in order to keep it affordable as a public good. Although I understand that the ability to have a passport and to travel is an important right for a New Zealander it does seem like an issue that should be discussed at the select committee because it does seem at odds with Treasury recommendations.Also a very good point was made that the child’s passport stays at 5 years because yes it is true that children’s appearances do change and a period of 10 years would not be appropriate for them. But the 10-year validity period throws into the mix another issue and that is around the issue of technology and how quickly technology does move. In terms of our passport with its chip we were one of the first countries to move to the passport with a chip which makes it easier to move through borders as the process is much quicker but it also does beg a question about technology. Ten years is a long time in the technological world the modern age. It is a long time and technology will change quickly over that time. The ability to potentially counterfeit passports or to find ways to replicate chips in passports in that 10 years is a distinct possibility.One of the concerns I have that I hope the select committee will pick up on is that there will not be the need to see the physical passport in order to cancel it. You can do so electronically on the database. I am concerned for a couple of reasons. What concerns me is that mistakes do happen and it would seem like a useful checking process to have the physical passport in front of you before you actually cancelled that passport. We know from other discussions in this House that databases including the databases of the Government are not always entirely secure and it is a possibility that databases can be hacked or manipulated and people may have their passports cancelled when that is not actually required. That also brings into question the ability for Kiwis to return home should their passports be invalidated incorrectly. This bill also provides for the extraterritorial application of the offence of false application which I thought was an interesting phrase. What that means is that when you apply to an overseas New Zealand passport office if your application is falsely made it is now an offence for that application to be made at an overseas passport office.I have referred to the cost of the 10-year passports but I found it really interesting that one of the concerns is around the issue of identity documents. When it comes to foreign nationals who do not have appropriate identity documents we are looking to reduce the length of validity of identity documents that an overseas national without appropriate identity documents can have down to a period of 1 year. This is an issue that has come up in my electorate a couple of times in the last couple of years. There have been people from Somalia who have identity documents that are not considered valid in a number of jurisdictions and they are finding it very difficult to have any ability to travel—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I apologise for the member’s colleague—it is very disorderly Mr Lees-Galloway.POTO WILLIAMS: Thank you. Just to reiterate I was talking about the identity documents for certain groups of people. We are moving in this bill to reduce the period of time for which we will provide identity documents for people who find it difficult to have their own national identity documents recognised by New Zealand. I was referring to Somali people. I know there is some issue with them being able to obtain appropriate documents through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.I also just want to pick up on a point that the previous speaker spoke to—that 70 percent of the interactions with the Government are to go online. Although on the face of it that sounds like a very useful process it does also flag the fact that there are barriers for those people who do not have access to online facilities. What mechanisms are to be in place for people who cannot use computers do not have access to computers may not be able to afford the internet or cannot access free internet because of remote locations? It does call into question why we would have such a high reliance on our interactions being online. There is also again the issue of security around online interactions and the ability to hack into and manipulate those systems. So just in conclusion I say that I look forward to the work the select committee will do on this issue and I hope that it will be able to address some of the concerns I have raised. Thank you.