Clendon David: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7304. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I am pleased to take a brief call just to reiterate the Green Party’s support for this bill. As we all know New Zealanders tend to be great travellers. We are descended—be they Māori or European—from people who made some of the longest voyages ever in human history and I think that that gene that tendency has somehow stayed with us. We do like to see the world and this change to the passport regulations will make a small contribution to making that more affordable and more convenient.Having said that as the Green Party spokesperson on tourism and a great advocate for the domestic tourism industry it would be remiss of me not to remind people of the importance of not leaving home until you have seen the country. Perhaps as a resident of the Bay of Islands I am more motivated than others to stay home as I have less need to escape than those who are less fortunate and live in other parts of the country. But certainly we are travellers and this bill is a useful step towards facilitating that.The key change in the bill of course is to extend the term of a passport from 5 years to 10 years for a person over the age of 16. Younger people will still need to renew their passports every 5 years which is appropriate given the rapid changes in appearance and so on of people of that age. The point has been made that the 5-year passport was in fact only a 4½ year passport given that many countries require at least a 6-month buffer before they will issue a visa to enter that country which is not unreasonable but cost $140-odd every 5 years or 4½ years assuming you are a New Zealander living in New Zealand. But for example if you are a person who lives in the UK and you needed to quickly renew your passport the cost actually got quite serious. Many hundreds of dollars could be involved in a straightforward renewal if somebody was under some time pressure to visit a relative or whatever it might be so it is appropriate that we should extend that time out.I am reliably informed by my colleague Mojo Mathers who sits on the Government Administration Committee that this change was in large part motivated or triggered by a petition from one Kyle Lockwood and 15000 New Zealanders who saw fit to sign that petition to call for a change to what they saw as an unreasonably short and indeed an unfair requirement to renew a passport every 5 years—so good on them. By all accounts the background for the petition was well researched it was evidence-based and the Government Administration Committee responded appropriately and did make a very good decision to bring this bill to the House for the support that it be passed.We were significantly out of step with a 5-year term. Some of our major partners in terms of tourism—Australia the US the UK and indeed China—have 10-year terms on their passports. New Zealand is one of a number of countries on the international intergovernmental group that looks at developing best practice for passports. Again we are on that group alongside Australia Canada the UK and the US and of that best-practice group we are again the only country that persisted with a 5-year passport. It made us something of an outlier and certainly it would be very difficult to sustain an argument that a 5-year term would in fact be best practice in this modern age given the changes in technology and the availability of quick withdrawals.One would hope that amongst the changes that are being made as a response to this bill would be the assurance that the rather unfortunate situation that emerged not very long ago when a gentleman went on a South American holiday who ought not have been able to do that—one hopes that some of those loopholes will be plugged in terms of ensuring that Government departments talk to each other a little more before passports are issued. I do believe those changes are in train and I hope they proceed promptly. So with those few words I will simply reiterate that the Greens do support this bill. We look forward to it being swiftly implemented. Thank you.