Eugene Bingham: Red card for pesky forms

Surely there's a better way to collect all this information. Photo / Greg Bowker

Enough of pointless questions and bad handwriting, cries Eugene Bingham.

You know you're getting old and suffering First World problems when you read the editorial in Travel and punch the air with joy to see the campaign against departure cards has begun.

You know you're a geek when you remember that last year you asked the Government through the Privacy Act what the hell they do with all those cards.

Yes, last week's editorial struck a nerve, admittedly an old, exposed, raw one. You see, I'm one of those people who harrumphs while filling out departure cards (and the arrival cards, for that matter).

Surely, I've frequently thought, there's a better way to collect all this information? And what do they need it for anyway? So last year I tried to find out by asking Customs what it has been doing with the labour of my efforts all these years.

(Oh, and, who came up with the reported estimate that it takes one minute to fill out the form? Does that include all the time it takes to find a pen, then to dig around for your passport number, which you inevitably can't remember, not to mention your flight number, or is that just me? Am I dragging out the national average?)

Customs told me the information is used to administer "Customs, Immigration, Biosecurity, Border Security, Health, Wildlife, Police, Fine Enforcement, Justice, Benefits, Social Services, Electoral, Inland Revenue and Currency Laws". Presumably the capital letters were to emphasise that these things are all really important. And they are - I get it. I want bad guys caught at the border too.

But are the cards really the best way?

Passenger arrival and departure information is shared by Customs with other agencies for data-matching (to see if I owe fines, for example). But please don't tell me all it takes to evade detection is to fill in the form incorrectly. Any incriminating information must come from my passport when it's scanned by the friendly Customs officer, surely.

Customs told me it kept hold of my name, passport number, citizenship, age, gender, date of travel and flight number, as well as a photo, for 90 days. Again, none of that information needs to come from a piece of card with my bad handwriting scrawled on it.

And then what?

"Once processed, the Arrival Cards and Departure Cards from each flight are tallied, bagged by flight and then sent to Statistics New Zealand where they are scanned and processed," Customs told me.

Again, I'm all for the tourism industry finding out stuff that makes it better, more focused, informed, etc. But, seriously: is the best source a by-then scanned document with bad handwriting?

The cards are sent to Immigration New Zealand, which keeps hold of them for eight months and then destroys them. Oh.

I wondered if any of those agencies which administer those capital-lettered laws had at least looked at the information I'd volunteered. The police?

Not once in all the times I've travelled. Customs? Nope. Immigration?

"We do not have a record of any agency or individual requesting information from your arrival and departure cards," it told me.

I can see an argument for the arrival card that requires me to make a legal declaration I'm not smuggling fruit or other contraband the Border Patrol TV show crews would be dying for to spice up their day. But the departure cards? Hmmm.

All power to Air New Zealand and its plans to come up with a better system. Anything to salve the First World problems of grumpy old geeks who travel.

• Eugene Bingham, a former Herald reporter, is now a producer with the TV3 programme 3D Investigates. And a geek.