Today the Minister of Internal Affairs announced that New Zealand passport validity will be increased from 5 years to a maximum of 5 years and 9 months.
"Any increase to passport validity is of course welcomed, However an addition of a minuscule nine months is outrageous, and falls far short of the 10 year validity enjoyed by most OECD nations, including Australia, the USA and the UK. Canada recently upgraded from 5 to 10 year passports" said Kyle Lockwood, spokesman for nzten.com, a group advocating for the reinstatement of 10-year passports.
"We have asked the Minister of Internal Affairs many times to open up passport validity to public consultation, as Canada did, but like his predecessors he had no courage or interest to do so. We suspect it has something to do with the $27 Million surplus the passports office has embarrassingly collected since the introduction of 5-year passports in 2005. Passports by law must not be issued at a profit"
nzten.com will continue to fight for the reinstatement of 10 year NZ passports "Labour's Foreign Affairs Spokesman Phil Goff wants to see 10-year passports reinstated, polls show National are loosing popularity, and Mr Tremain could quite possibly be out of a job at the next election" concluded Lockwood.
ENDS
nzten.com Tuesday 27 August 2013.