National's Internal Affairs spokesperson says a failure to fulfil passport applications is putting Kiwis holidays at risk of disruptions.

But the Department of Internal Affairs says it's doing everything it can to make sure Kiwis get their passports as quickly and safely as possible.

'School's out for the winter holidays, but 40,000 New Zealanders are still waiting for passports to be processed with no clear indication when they will be received,” says National's Todd Muller.

'This is causing major anxiety for many Kiwis hoping to visit family and friends overseas for the first time in years.”

The Bay of Plenty MP says one in five applicants have had to make urgent passport applications because of fears they won't receive it in time, while others have been entirely unable due to difficulties applying online or contacting passport offices.

'Kiwis are now contacting National MPs and asking for support because the Department of Internal Affairs and Labour have been so unresponsive.”

National's Internal Affair's spokeperson and Bay of Plenty MP Todd Muller.

DIA services and access general manager Julia Wootton says the department is hard at work getting passports out the door.”

Wootton says some of the measures DIA has taken to deal with increased demand and longer processing times include; working extended hours in the evening and on Saturdays; bringing in extra staff from across the Department; and recruiting and training more than 100 full and part-time staff, which will be joined by a further 100 additional staff coming on board in the next few weeks.

'Our efforts are paying off. We are now able to process more applications than we receive on any given day, so we expect wait times to reduce in coming weeks.

'This is quite the achievement when you consider that demand for passports increased 400 per cent between January and June this year.”

Last week, DIA issued 12466 passports, which is around 28 per cent more than was issued six weeks earlier.

Wootton says it was also 5.5 per cent more passports than the 11,816 applications they received.

'We expect this margin to grow as recently trained staff grow faster with experience and newly recruited staff come on board.

'We have also managed to reduce the queue for email enquiries by 71 per cent since June 13 and to significantly reduce waiting times in our call centre.”

Wootton says one thing the department has notices is changes in travel patterns.

She says people are delaying booking until closer to the date of travel due to uncertainties about Covid rules at their destination.

This is one factor contributing to the higher demand on the department's urgent services.

Ordinarily, urgent applications made up around seven per cent of total demand, but almost one in four passports issued last week (23 per cent) were issued through the urgent service.

'We don't advise people to apply for urgent passports unless they need to travel in a hurry. It costs more and, in most cases, it won't be necessary.

'If you do need to travel urgently, you can apply for the urgent passport service online.

'Our best advice to customers is to allow six weeks for passport application processing when planning their travel.

'We also encourage people to apply online on the passports.govt.nz website, as this is quicker and easier for most people.

'As with any public facing agency, we upgrade our systems to ensure they are secure and fit for purpose.

'Any planned outages for these purposes are well flagged to customers on our website, and occur during hours of very low demand (usually overnight).”

DIA's advice to people wanting to renew or apply for their first their passport

• Check your passport as soon as you are thinking of travel and allow six weeks for processing.
• Apply online on the passports.govt.nz website. Both adult and child applicants, including for first time passports, can be done online and this is quicker to process for most people.
• Use the online photo checker to check your photo meets passport standard. We have advice here: How to take a passport photo | New Zealand Passports
• Let your identity referee know to expect a call from us – if they don't answer, it will take us longer to process.
• We are experiencing heavy volumes of calls and emails, so if you have any questions please start by checking the passports.govt.nz website.
• If after visiting our website you still need to contact us, please be patient and keep trying.