Rurawhe Adrian: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRurawhe Adrian: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6839. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees with extending the validity of passports from 5 years to 10 years. We did in the Government Administration Committee receive some contributions and submissions that asked that the extension be extended by a further 9 months and that was because some countries that New Zealanders visit obviously have a minimum amount of time that they expect to be on the passports. I think most countries have 6 months. To get the full benefit of a 10-year passport people have asked for that. I commend the Minister of Internal Affairs for bringing the bill to the House. The 5-year period for passports has been very unpopular and extending it to 10 years is most popular. Extending it before Christmas to 10 years is even more popular. I think it is important to acknowledge that.But it is not just about the extension of passports; there are other measures within this bill that has been brought to the House. It increases the validity period of refugee travel documents from 2 years to 5 years to bring it into line with the qualification period for refugees to be granted citizenship. So the bill amends that. There are a number of other things within the bill as well. I would describe this bill overall as being about bringing the Passports Act 1992 into the 21st century.I want to touch on the electronic recording of information on the passports database. This is a really important thing to bring us into the 21st century and to align us with other countries. It allows both the Department of Internal Affairs and passport control to be more effective in executing what is already in place. To cancel a passport the department has to make all the necessary efforts to advise the passport holder or the travel document holder that their document has been cancelled but flagging it on the passport database system means that if the department is not able to contact that particular person it will still be flagged. That is an important thing if someone is avoiding being contacted.This bill also removes a number of outdated sections within the Act. They were up to date in 1992 but today they are out of date and no longer applicable. Those sections are now being removed under this bill.I want to speak a little bit about the fees—particularly the forecast for the fees from 2021. We have clauses in the bill that make the setting of the fees—and I am speaking to section 40 “Regulations” replaced by clause 34. Section 40 specifies that fees can be set by Order in Council. The original expectation the original decision by Cabinet was that the fee would be set at $225. I do not know—I might have got that wrong. It was suggested that $225 be the fee and then Cabinet I understand has approved that the fee be set at $180. The current fee for a 5-year passport is $135 and the actual cost of processing the passport application is $404 so it does not take a great mathematician to work out that this is not going to be sustainable without future Governments making the decision that the applications for passports are such an important thing for New Zealanders.I mentioned in my second reading speech that this was something we would need to look forward to for New Zealanders Kiwis who apply for passports that are not only for travel. I talked about passports being used for identification. More and more people and organisations or Government agencies do ask their clients for identification. You cannot get a better ID than a passport I would suggest—in particular a New Zealand passport. If the forecasts are correct then when we get to 2021 there will be a need for a huge injection of funds into the future processing of passports. There are a number of other improvements that this bill also carries out.As I said in terms of the electronic flagging these systems are acknowledged within the bill so that these processes that we have in the 21st century are able to be processed effectively. Particularly not only for those who have their passports or travel documents cancelled or suspended there is a higher ability to track all of those by doing this electronically. That is all I have to say on this part. Thank you.