McKelvie Ian: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcKelvie Ian: Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading[Sitting date: 18 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4581. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): This week was a little unusual for me. I have had the pleasure of sitting on the Government Administration Committee and now I have got the privilege of speaking on a bill that is going to the Government Administration Committee.Jami-Lee Ross: Moving up in the world.IAN McKELVIE: I must be as the whip says moving up in the world. I have been promoted.But anyway during the Budget debate on the border processing arrivals and departures levy we learnt how many people were coming and going from New Zealand now—some 5.2 million per year—and of those about 2.5 million are New Zealanders so clearly those 2.5 million need to have a New Zealand passport. It shows the very high demand for New Zealand passports. In fact we know that 77 percent of all New Zealanders have a New Zealand passport.Interestingly passports are not always used for travel. Most electorate MPs will know that through their electorate offices they will get a lot of people coming in complaining about the fact that they have got to find some form of ID. If they do not have a driver’s licence or indeed a firearms licence or something like that then a passport is often the only form of ID they can effectively use. There are people who do have a passport but never use it for travel so passports are a broader thing than just being used for travel.Just to go into the background of this bill the terrorism acts of 2001 in my view were a good reason for the Government of the day to change—Iain Lees-Galloway: Tell us about sheep passports.IAN McKELVIE: Well we have clearly had a lot of discussion on sheep passports this week. It proved my point actually—Iain Lees-Galloway: Oh God—ha ha!IAN McKELVIE: Well you are clearly on my side on that. Mr Assistant Speaker I have been distracted.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am having trouble with the relevance of it.IAN McKELVIE: But the reason we reduced the terms of those passports was of course for security reasons around identity security and around the ability to track changes in behaviour of people from time to time and new technology has now given the Government the opportunity and the confidence I guess to extend the period of passport eligibility to 10 years which as the previous speakers have noted will make a difference to the cost of a passport and will certainly make a difference to the amount of hassle one has in getting a passport. In fact like one of the previous speakers I have had to get three passports in the last 5 years because I inadvertently dumped one of my passports as it came in the post from the Passports Office—so the online passport system was not exactly clever.But surprising as it may seem I think this is a Government that cares listens to New Zealanders and reacts appropriately. Although we may feel that Governments are slow to react I think we also need to realise that Governments are creating legislation and law for the long term. I think it is pretty essential that something as important as a passport gives us the opportunity to be sure that we are on very solid ground before we change the law around passports and find ways of issuing them.As many people have said it is a privilege to hold a passport for a start and this new legislation will make it easier for the authorities to remove a passport. They will not have to have it in hand. It is done merely by the click of a button on a computer or a phone. It will be easier to get a passport. It will be easier to take a passport away. I think the whole process will be improved by the introduction of the Passports Amendment Bill (No 2). That is my short contribution to this bill and I wish it all the best as it goes into the select committee process.