Mathers Mojo: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMathers Mojo: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4583. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOJO MATHERS (Green): I rise to take a call on the Passports Amendment Bill (No 2). The Green Party supports this bill and in particular we support the provision to extend the term of adult passports to 10 years. I was on the Government Administration Committee last year which considered the petition that has triggered this legislation. I just want to acknowledge the very high calibre and quality of the information that was presented in support of this petition. It was incredibly well researched and was backed up with lots of evidence about what is happening around the world to show that it is an exceptionally reasonable request to go back to a 10-year term for adult passports.The petition was presented by Kyle Lockwood and was signed by more than 15000 New Zealanders but the public discussion in the media shows that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that this was something of extreme concern to many New Zealanders—the cost the hassle and the stress involved in having to renew their passports every 5 years. In fact the 5-year term means that passports are in effect only really valid for 4½ years for a lot of travel overseas because of the requirement to have a passport that is valid for 6 months. I think it is really encouraging to see an ordinary New Zealander making such good use of the democratic process bringing a case to the select committee and being heard by the select committee so that we were compelled to make a recommendation in favour of the request. It has been absolutely fantastic to see the Government responding to that and now bringing legislation to the House to address that concern.One of the key points that were made by the petitioners in favour of the extension was the fact that most of New Zealand’s trading partners have 10-year passports—whether we are talking about Australia the US China the UK and so on. It is even more compelling because of the fact that New Zealand is on the inter-governmental group that developed this passport—this practice. Four of the five countries on that committee—that is the other four—all issue 10-year passports and they are Australia Canada the UK and the US. It was starting to look and feel like New Zealand was being overly paranoid about passport security when all of our trading partners and the people on the committee that is actually considering this passport practice have 10-year passports. Why are we a small country down here in the Pacific being so excessively paranoid about passport security? In addition the International Civil Aviation Organization has also recommended 10-year passports. So again how can we decide that 5 years is the best practice? I think it is just silly.Of course the public also moved that with the incredible strives in biometric information we can either address or mitigate a lot of the security concerns. We are never going to have 100 percent security around passports but what we can look at is what a reasonable level of security around passportsis. I feel very confident that we can address these security concerns at the select committee when the bill comes to the select committee. Thank you very much.