"The Netherlands is the second country, in less than a year, to upgrade from 5-year to 10-year passports for adults, after Canada upgraded in July last year" said Kyle Lockwood, spokesman for nzten.com a group advocating for the reinstatement of 10-year passports for New Zealanders.
"Peter Dunne, minister of Internal Affairs stated on national television a few weeks ago that OECD countries such as Britain and the US 'would love to move from 10-year to 5-year passports' however we have found that the opposite is true, and in fact more and more OECD nations are ditching 5-year passports in favour of 10-year ones" said Kyle Lockwood.
"What the department does not mention is that a passport is merely a key, or a facilitator / enabler, the comparison of biometric features is performed outside the passport chip, by electronic border control systems, most passport data is stored in a highly secure cloud shared by ICAO nations, this cloud data can be updated without a passport swiftly to detect fraudsters. Biometric passport technology combined with ICAOs secure cloud electronic border control systems, means that there is no need to issue passport booklets every 5 years".
"To hoodwink the public further, Internal Affairs still maintain on their website that 77% of world nations issue 5-year passports to adults, which is nothing short of a blatant lie, our research has found that nearly 50% of nations issue passports that are valid for 10 years" concluded Lockwood.
The Petition of Kyle Lockwood is still before the Government Administration Select Committee and their decision on NZ passport validity is expected in a few weeks.
You can read the official 10-year passport announcement on the Netherlands Embassy in Wellington, New Zealand website here.