Lees-Galloway Iain: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLees-Galloway Iain: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6839. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this Committee stage of the Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) for which I appreciate the intervention of the Government whip in making this an all-questions all-parts debate.Looking through the legislation the first thing that is kind of remarkable in a way and worth commenting on I think is that it has come back from the Government Administration Committee with just one change. That in itself is reasonably remarkable. It was certainly a shortened select committee process and I think that all of us in Parliament were reasonably comfortable with that. This is a change that the public was very keen to see Parliament make in a reasonably timely fashion and I understand that the committee’s deliberations on the bill were reasonably brief.So the fact that there is just one change is remarkable in and of itself but the fact that it is a change to the commencement date to bring the commencement forward—I do not know that I have seen that before actually—demonstrates the height of efficiency on the part of the Parliament. I think it is something to be applauded and I congratulate the select committee on bringing the commencement date forward. I know that there will be a lot of people—and the Minister mentioned this—who are travelling over the summer period who will appreciate the commencement date coming forward slightly.I had a quick look at some of the submissions. Since there were no changes made to the bill I was interested to see whether any of the submissions requested changes to be made to the bill. One thing that did appear to come up was around this issue where for a lot of countries when you apply for a visa or if you are entering a country your passport needs to be valid for a period of time. Often it is 6 months sometimes longer. That in effect shortens the length of the life of a passport. If you are coming towards the end of even your 10-year passport—say there are 4 months left to run on it—you effectively need to apply for a new passport to be able to travel to a number of jurisdictions because of that issue.I noticed that this came up in some of the submissions especially around the question of—if you do apply for your passport in advance of expiry your next passport will then last for 10 years from the point at which you apply for that next passport not 10 years from when your current passport expired. That again effectively shortens the life of the next passport. I wonder whether that was something that the select committee gave consideration to and if it sought advice what advice was given about obviously why that was not a desirable change to make because by my reading of it as a member who was not on the select committee that kind of change was not made at the select committee although it is a valid point.It is less important with a 10-year passport. If you are looking at it in percentage terms it is less important with a 10-year passport than it has been with a 5-year passport. A 5-year passport effectively is being reduced to a 4½-year passport. That is quite a significant reduction in the life of them. But still nevertheless it was a valid concern that I know was raised by people who submitted to the select committee and yet the bill came back with just the one amendment around the commencement date.The most important part of the bill the bit that everybody is going to focus on is the lengthening of the life of a passport from 5 years to 10 years. But it also makes a number of changes that essentially I suppose bring the legislation around passports into the 21st century into the digital age and that acknowledge that a lot of the data that is associated with passports is maintained in electronic records. The fact is that it is actually possible to cancel a passport through electronic means. You do not have to actually have your hands physically on the passport to be able to cancel it. That is simply a recognition of modern-day reality. These are functions that are available to the Department of Internal Affairs and to the Minister of Internal Affairs that are useful especially given that you may want to cancel a passport that is in the hands of someone who is overseas. I note that there are also some changes around the ability to extend powers to the overseas issuing officers in London and Sydney for instance.So overall this is a good piece of legislation that the Opposition has been happy to support. There are some question marks around the fees but ultimately we appreciate and accept the explanation that was made by the Minister around that. We appreciate that for a while there there was a suggestion that the fees would have potentially been significantly higher. The Government I think rightly saw fit to step in to ensure that we did not see—I saw numbers along the lines of $400 being charged for a passport. That would have been prohibitive to people and we do not want to see passports being something that is a luxury for people. This is not just a travel document but an important identification document that should be accessible to everybody so that was the right decision on the Government’s part to step in there and ensure that New Zealand passports would be accessible to most people.I am very happy to endorse this legislation and I encourage members to vote in favour of it—I suspect that everybody is.Part 1 agreed to.The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 115 in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to Part 2 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.Part 2 as amended agreed to.Schedule agreed to.Clause 1 agreed to.Clause 2 agreed to.Bill to be reported with amendment presently.