"First they ignore you,
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win."
-Gandhi
However another battle is yet to begin.
Over the coming days and weeks you will be hearing from officials more words like "costs of passports will increase substantially if we introduce 10-year passports" and so on.
All this is of course scaremongering from officials desperate to cling on to their tens of millions of year-on-year surpluses collected from hard working New Zealanders, moreover, at the last tally-up the passports memorandum account had a surplus of over $20 million, so with all that surplus money sloshing around the DIAs coffers why should passport costs increase substantially anyway?
Surely less passports, less staff, less overheads, coupled with a massive $20 million surplus should result in less cost for passports?
There's less human interaction too, the DIA admitted at a select committee hearing that 60% of passport applications are automatically issued by computer, that's why they are so keen to get us all applying online.
Let's say officials did win, and passport costs did increase a bit, remember to divide the cost by 10 years, Australian passports cost more than NZ passports, but divided by 10 years the yearly cost is less than that of our own 5 year passports, not to mention the savings gained by our expatriates who will not transferring visas from one passport to another as frequently, or the stress caused by those turning up at the airport and suddenly realising that they can't travel because their passport was issued a short 4.5 years ago.
We've done a lot of hard work to get to this point, but now is the hour for us to really get our point across, from Lyttleton to London, from Hong Kong to Honiara, where ever you are located, we strongly urge you to write and email Hon Peter Dunne, Minister of Internal Affairs, and tell him that you want your 10-year passports back!
Please share this item, and together we will bring back our 10-year passports!
Kyle Lockwood
Spokesman
nzten.com
Peter Dunne's contacts
Hon Peter Dunne
Parliament Office
Private Bag 18888
Parliament Buildings
Wellington 6160
NEW ZEALAND
Email link
http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/mpp/mps/current/50MP12811/dunne-peter
https://facebook.com/hon.peter.dunne
https://twitter.com/PeterDunneMP