Dyson Ruth: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6562. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): It hasincreasingly become an habit in this Parliament to conclude on a Thursday afternoon with bills that we all agree on. I think it is a nice way for us to leave Parliament but I look forward even more to next Tuesday afternoon when we will be debating perhaps more contentious subjects.I am really pleased to be supporting this bill. It has been a long time in coming but I am very pleased that the select committee that dealt with it the Government Administration Committee which is the committee I have the privilege of chairing was able to do so in a pretty efficient manner. Not only are we reporting it back in good time but we are also recommending that the implementation date be moved forward by a month.Before I get on to the specifics of the bill I would like to just refer to why we changed the provisions in the passport legislation originally so that we would move from 10-year passports to 5-year passports. I guess it is particularly appropriate given that it is 14 years ago this week that New Zealand watched in horror as the planes crashed horrifically into the World Trade Center the Pentagon and other places. Tomorrow or the next day is the 14-year anniversary of those events. The world was pretty shaken up by those events. I remember people walking around this building just unable to believe that what we were seeing on television was actually happening in a part of the world that many of us had visited—I had been in the World Trade Center on a number of occasions. I think the whole world was shocked by those events with the exception of a very small number of people who through their own fanatical beliefs supported the sort of action that killed so many innocent people.So as a result of those attacks and I guess increased awareness of terrorist threats New Zealand like many other countries decided to increase its security profile and as a result of that we moved from 10-year provisions in our passports to 5 years so that they would expire in half the time that they had previously. When this bill came to the committee—in fact I will go back a further step. When a petition was presented to our select committee calling for this measure to be taken one of the first questions our committee asked our advisers was “We moved to 5-year passports because of the increased security risk. Would we be diminishing the security of New Zealanders”—the people coming into New Zealand or leaving on New Zealand passports—“and increasing the threat if we changed to a 10-year passport?”. Of course because that was the primary driver for changing it from 10 years to 5 years we wanted to make sure that we were not recommending something that would increase our security risk. As the select committee we were given very confident assurances that that was no longer the case and that changes in technology changes in the exchange of information etc. now mean that we could confidently move from 5 years back to 10 years on the understanding that we were not increasing the security risk. Of course that was one of the major things that we wanted to tick off.Can I acknowledge Kyle Lockwood of flag fame who actually was the person who instigated the petition to the committee in the first place. He came along to the committee and made a robust presentation. Our committee recommended that the Government considered this favourably. The Minister responsible the Hon Peter Dunne took that recommendation and translated it into the legislation that we now see coming back from the select committee with again I think all parties in this Parliament supporting it which is a very good thing.The select committee made just one change as I alluded to in my opening comments and that was to recommend that instead of starting it in I think December or January—I cannot remember the original date but we are recommending that this come into force in November.Tragically it was not in time for the member for Invercargill Sarah Dowie to have her passport renewed for 10 years! I just want to extend my sympathy and support to the member who in the House during an earlier part of the debate said that one of the worst things that could happen to a person was to have to renew a passport after 5 years rather than after 10 years. She has had a pretty good life is all I can say if that is the worst thing that could happen to her. So we were not in time. The member had to renew her passport and unfortunately in 5 years’ time she is going to have to go through that trauma yet again because her passport will expire. But I hope that if she is in the House for the next 5 years she will be exposed to a little more robustness and may understand that that is not the worst thing that can happen in her life.The reason that we wanted to bring this forward as early as possible was so that more New Zealanders could have the convenience of renewing their passports prior to the summer travel when a lot of people move out of New Zealand over the summer holidays. They would be able to renew their passports for a 10-year period. So I hope that our committee has made life a little more convenient for people but I still do not share the member for Invercargill’s view that it is the worst thing that you can have happen.The other point that we considered a lot as a select committee—and I just want to alert members of the House to this consideration because I am sure a lot of them have heard this concern as well—is that there was some early speculation when we were debating this at the select committee that the fees for the passport would double. So if we went from 5 years to 10 years the fees would you know match the increase in size. The Minister made a very prompt response that he would not be looking at that very favourably and the officials gave the members of the select committee very confident assurances that passport issuing would be on a cost recovery basis—full stop. There would not be an opportunity for additional revenue gathering as we move from 5 to 10 years; they will just be doing simple cost recovery.The select committee have included that in its report to the House and we will be keeping an eye on that because we do not want people to have to pay a huge amount more. There will be a little additional cost because some of the infrastructure costs remain the same and obviously if people renew their passports only after 10 years rather than 5 years there will be fewer renewals and therefore a lower level of income. But it is not significant.Can I just refer in passing to the Hon Peter Dunne’s Supplementary Order Paper 115. He has tabled it everyone has seen it and I know we should not be referring to the detail of it until the Committee stage but I just want to say that I am really sorry that we missed putting “2”after the word “Schedule” in the bill as reported back. We will be supporting that typo correction when it comes to the Committee stage.As my colleague Poto Williams did earlier I want to acknowledge the hard work that both the Hon Phil Goff and the Hon Trevor Mallard have done in ensuring that this matter was raised at an appropriate time. When we knew that the security risk that had driven the change from 10 years to 5 years had now been eliminated by other factors the Hon Phil Goff and the Hon Trevor Mallard both took this up within Labour and then more publicly and they actually drove the petition that Kyle Lockwood brought to our select committee. So I want to acknowledge both of them.I also want to acknowledge what was a very conscientious presentation from the officials to the select committee. These officials were probably the same group of people or were in the same part of the Department of Internal Affairs that gave the original advice to Ministers to move from 10 years to 5 years. So I said to them “Right what’s changed other than the view of the Minister?” and they were very competent in—not justifying; I do not mean that in a derogatory way—explaining very well all the factors that could lead us to confidently proceed with this legislation. It is something that we took seriously because no committee would want to recommend to the House that any New Zealander holding a passport and travelling around the world was at an increased risk as a result of legislation we passed or that our country was exposed to an increased risk as a result of this change. I also want to say that the Clerk’s Office and the members of the committee have all worked really diligently on this bill.I think it is a good bill. As I said right at the beginning it is nice to finish on a Thursday with a bill that we all agree on. I look forward to it being passed and implemented in time for New Zealanders who need to renew their passports to be able to do so for a longer period of time.