New 10-year passport could double in price

Significant numbers of New Zealanders use their passports to travel and they should be encouraged to do so.

The Government’s newly announced 10-year passports could end up doubling in price unless millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money is spent to keep the cost down.

Cabinet papers obtained by Radio NZ reveal the Government will need to front up with an extra $200 million, or double the cost of the passport to $400, from 2021.

The papers also show that the Treasury was against setting the new passport fee at $180 because it wouldn’t cover the cost of producing them.

The Treasury’s comments included in the Department of Internal Affairs papers said that ‘‘ministers are being asked to take a decision that is neither financially sustainable nor transparent’’, Radio NZ reported.

Ministers had agreed on a fee of $225 for the 10-year passport but that changed when Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne met with Associate Minister Steven Joyce in April.

Instead the $180 fee was set, supported by a capital injection of $20 million to cover the costs through to July 2018, Radio NZ reported.

Dunne was in favour of subsidising passports in order to keep them affordable as a ‘‘public good’’.

‘‘If we’d gone to a higher price we could have been asking people to pay $100 more and I think for families in particular that would have been an unaffordable cost when you think about the number of passports involved,’’ he said.

If the cost of the passport was too high it would put people off getting one and Dunne said that was ‘‘just wrong’’.

‘‘Well, it’s something that we are very keen for New Zealanders to have and to enjoy. Significant numbers of New Zealanders use their passports to travel and so they should be encouraged to do so.

‘‘My view, very strongly, was that if we were going to retain the cost recovery principle in full we would make that cost prohibitive for a number of people,’’ Dunne said. He thought the Cabinet had reached a ‘‘fair and balanced’’ decision.

Dunne said passport technology could have changed by 2021. It was too early too speculate what might happen at that point.

He would report back to Cabinet this year about how the passport cost structure was working and any implications of it.

Dunne said the travel tax that arriving and departing passengers would pay from January 1 was not part of the decision around passport costs.