New Zealand

New Zealand's visa waiver is narrower than the phrase suggests, and the regulation that creates it says so in its own words. Regulation 18(1) of the Immigration (Visa, Entry Permission, and Related Matters) Regulations 2010 waives the requirement to hold a visa permitting travel to New Zealand for the people described in Schedule 2; regulation 18(2) then says that to enter and stay, such a person must on arrival still apply for a visa and for entry permission. These are two separate decisions. The Immigration Act 2009 puts the first in the officer's discretion - section 45(1) reads 'No person is entitled to a visa as of right' - and keeps the second separate: section 46(1) says the granting of a visa does not of itself entitle the holder to be granted entry permission, and the instructions add that the grant of entry permission has no effect unless the person also holds a visa. Schedule 2 Part 1 sets out who the waiver covers and on what terms: Australian citizens and holders of a current Australian permanent residence or resident return visa, with no limit of length or purpose; British citizens and British passport holders with the right to reside permanently in the United Kingdom, for a temporary visa current for no more than six months; residents of Hong Kong, Macau and permanent residents of Taiwan on their own passports for no more than three months; and the citizens of 56 named countries and territories, also for no more than three months. Every one of those except the Australians carries the same two conditions: the visa sought must be a temporary one of the stated length, and 'the purpose of the visit does not include medical consultation or treatment'. Since 3 November 2025 two further items reach people who hold no qualifying passport at all - Pacific and Chinese passport holders travelling from Australia on one of the Australian visa subclasses tabulated in Schedule 2 Part 2. Part 4A then adds a document in front of all of it: regulation 23D makes it a condition of the waiver that the traveller hold a traveller ETA before travelling, and regulation 23E exempts only citizens of Australia, Antarctic programme travellers and visiting forces. An Australian permanent resident who is not an Australian citizen is therefore inside the waiver and outside the ETA exemption, and so needs an ETA that an Australian citizen does not. The ETA request carries the levy: regulation 26AAD imposes an international visitor conservation and tourism levy of $100 on a traveller ETA request and on a temporary entry class visa application made anywhere but at the border. What the border then grants is a matter of instructions rather than regulation. V2.5.1 caps a visitor visa at nine months and says it should allow no more than nine months in the eighteen before expiry - but a visa granted at the border to someone who did not need one to travel is capped at six months in the twelve before expiry, which is the number that applies to almost everyone arriving under the waiver.

New Zealand's only arrangement of this kind is with Australia, and the most useful thing to know about it is where it is not. The Immigration Act 2009 was read in full in the version the Parliamentary Counsel Office dates 10 July 2026 - 1,508,325 characters - and the string 'Austral' does not occur once. There is no trans-Tasman section, no schedule of partner states and no treaty given the force of law. What exists instead is three instruments stacked on each other. Item 1 of Schedule 2 Part 1 to the Immigration (Visa, Entry Permission, and Related Matters) Regulations 2010 names 'Citizens of Australia and people who hold a current permanent residence visa (including a resident return visa) issued by the Government of Australia', which puts them inside the visa waiver in regulation 18 and so removes the need to hold any visa before travelling. Section 71(1)(c) of the Act then lets a person to whom a visa waiver applies apply for a residence class visa at an immigration control area if regulations prescribe them as a class that may. Regulation 8 is that prescription: it applies to an application for a resident visa by an Australian citizen or Australian permanent resident, and says the application may be made at an immigration control area or at a port. So an Australian arriving in New Zealand is not waved through as a visitor and is not granted anything automatically - they fill in the approved form, hand it with a passport to an immigration officer or to an automated electronic system, and are granted a resident visa there and then. What that visa carries is the ordinary content of a resident visa under section 74: entry permission once granted, then indefinite stay, work and study. What it does not carry is a permanent resident visa. Those are different things in New Zealand, and the difference is travel: section 73 entitles the holder of a permanent resident visa to travel to New Zealand at any time and to be granted entry permission, while a resident visa only entitles the holder to travel in accordance with the visa's travel conditions and to apply for entry permission. The instruction that imposes those conditions, R5.66, excepts a resident visa granted at an immigration control area - which is exactly the Australian case - so the Australian's visa is a resident visa without travel conditions, and on every arrival after the first, entry permission must be granted under instruction Y3.10. Getting the permanent version is an ordinary application like anyone else's: twenty-four months holding the resident visa, a first day in New Zealand as a resident at least twenty-four months earlier, and one of five demonstrations of commitment, the plainest being 184 days in New Zealand in each of the two years. And the arrangement starts a clock running the moment it is used. Section 161 makes a residence class visa holder liable for deportation on conviction - three months' imprisonment available within two years of first holding the visa, two years' within five, five years' within ten - and section 161(5)(d) is written for this case by description: a person to whom a visa waiver applies who returns after five continuous years away first holds a residence class visa on the day they re-enter, which restarts the whole count.

Section YD 1 of the Income Tax Act 2007 holds two tests and they are not equals. Subsection (2) opens with 'Despite anything else in this section': a natural person is a New Zealand resident if they have a permanent place of abode in New Zealand, even if they also have a permanent place of abode elsewhere. No day count appears in it, nothing turns on how long the person was here, and the words 'despite anything else' mean it cannot be escaped by leaving. Subsection (3) is the familiar one: more than 183 days personally present in a 12-month period, with a part-day counting as a whole day present and not as any part of a day absent. The 183-day test also comes with its own exit, which the abode test does not: subsection (5) lets a person who is resident only under subsection (3) stop being resident by being absent for more than 325 days in a 12-month period, and subsection (6) then backdates the loss of residence to the first of those 325 days, just as subsection (4) backdates the gain to the first of the 183. A person with a permanent place of abode here has no such door. Since 1 April 2026 a third rule sits on top. Section YD 1B, inserted by the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2025-26, Compliance Simplification, and Remedial Measures) Act 2026, creates the non-resident visitor: a natural person whose visit is for 275 or fewer days, who is present for 275 or fewer days in an 18-month period covering the visit, who was neither resident nor a transitional resident immediately before, who is not working for a New Zealand resident or offering goods or services here or doing work that requires physical presence here, who is not receiving a family-scheme entitlement, who is lawfully present under the Immigration Act 2009, and who is resident or taxed on citizenship somewhere else. Section YD 1(13) then says that despite subsection (3) such a person is treated as a non-resident - so the 183-day count no longer by itself makes a visitor resident, and the ceiling is 275 days rather than 183. The separate concession for people who move here is in section HR 8: a transitional resident is treated, for foreign-sourced amounts, as if they were non-resident, and the qualification is ten continuous years of non-residence immediately before becoming resident, having never been a transitional resident before. The period runs to the last day of the 48th month after the month the non-residence period ended - a little over four years - and it can be ended early by notice to the Commissioner, or by claiming a family tax credit, which counts as that notice for both partners.

Who may use publicly funded health services in New Zealand is not in an Act and not in regulations. It is in the Health and Disability Services Eligibility Direction 2011, a direction the Minister of Health gave to every District Health Board under section 32 of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000, published in the New Zealand Gazette of 15 April 2011 at page 1221 as notice 2011-go2492. The Act it was made under has been repealed, but clause 30 of Schedule 1 to the Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) Act 2022 keeps such a direction in force until the Minister specifies an end date in the Gazette, and section 68(2) of that Act defines the people Pharmac exists to serve by reference to it. Clause B1(1) sets the test: a person is eligible if, at the time the services are received, they are in New Zealand and meet all the criteria of one or more of the twenty-six categories in Part B. Not a status held in the abstract - a status at the moment of treatment, and clause A4 says the direction has no retrospective effect, so treatment received before eligibility was acquired stays unfunded. The ordinary route is clause B3: a person who holds a residence class visa is eligible, full stop, with no waiting period and no contribution record. Then clause B3(2) does something that nothing else in New Zealand's immigration law does. It removes from that rule Australian citizens and Australian permanent residents who got their residence class visa by applying at the border under regulation 8 of the Immigration (Visa, Entry Permission, and Related Matters) Regulations 2010, and sends them to clauses B6 and B7 instead - where eligibility requires having been in New Zealand, or intending to stay, for at least two consecutive years counted from the first day of arrival. So the holder of a resident visa granted at Auckland airport under the trans-Tasman arrangement is a New Zealand resident for immigration purposes on day one and is not eligible for publicly funded health care on day one unless they can show an intention to stay two years. Everyone else holding the same class of visa is eligible immediately. Work visa holders are covered by clause B5 on a two-year test of a different kind: entitlement to work here for a period of at least two years from the first day as a work visa holder, or a shorter period that together with time already spent lawfully in New Zealand reaches two years. Reciprocal agreements fill two gaps: Australians who do not meet the two-year test get whatever the agreement under the Health Benefits (Reciprocity with Australia) Act 1999 requires, and United Kingdom nationals ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom and here temporarily get what the 1982 reciprocity Act's agreement requires. Health New Zealand warns that the whole scheme changes on 1 December 2026.

New Zealand separates working here from settling here, and the two halves are priced completely differently. The temporary half is the Accredited Employer Work Visa, which is not one application but three: an employer gets accredited, that employer gets a Job Check approved for the specific job, and only then does the worker apply. Its pay rule, in instruction WA3.15.5, is that the remuneration must be at or above the New Zealand adult minimum wage, and that an immigration officer must be satisfied the rate is not less than the market rate for that occupation - no multiple of a median wage, no published figure, a judgement the officer makes on factors the instruction lists, including what a New Zealand citizen or resident would be paid for the same job and any collective agreement for the industry. The visa that results is tightly conditioned: one occupation, one employer, one location, full time, at or above a specified remuneration level, with evidence of payment on demand, and no placement with a controlling third party unless the Job Check approved it. It runs for as long as the employment is offered up to three or five years depending on the role, and instruction WA4.11 then puts a ceiling on the whole stay - reach the end of the maximum continuous stay period and you must be outside New Zealand for twelve consecutive months before a further first AEWV can be granted. Holding a visitor or working holiday visa in the meantime does not count towards those twelve months, and time on the AEWV counts whether or not you were in the country. The residence half is the Skilled Migrant Category, which since the 2023 rebuild is not a general points race but three pathways built on a single published number: the SMC wage threshold, $35.00 an hour from 9 March 2026, with fixed multipliers of 1.1, 1.2, 1.5, 2 and 3 times it. The points-based pathway needs six points from income, qualification or New Zealand registration, or from one of those combined with skilled work experience here; the skilled work experience pathway needs three years of directly relevant experience in an ANZSCO skill level 1-3 role plus two years in New Zealand paid at 1.1 or 1.2 times the threshold; the trades and technician pathway needs a level 4 qualification, two and a half years post-qualification experience and eighteen months in New Zealand. Every pathway requires the principal applicant to be aged 55 or younger at the time the residence application is made. And the threshold that applies is not today's: it is the one in effect when the applicant began accruing the New Zealand work experience they rely on, or when they were invited to apply, or when their work visa was granted if that was within five months of starting.

New Zealand has no residence category for a person who simply has enough money coming in. The Operational Manual's Residence section divides into eight parts - Generic Residence, Business, Family Categories, Skilled Migrant Residence Instructions, After the grant of a resident visa, Residence from Work Category, Special Categories, and the closed pre-2023 Skilled Migrant instructions - and none of them is an income or means category. The business side is a closed list of its own: instruction BA2.1 names exactly five residence class business categories, Active Investor Plus, Business Investor Residence, Entrepreneur Residence, Employees of Relocating Businesses and the Global Impact permanent resident visa, each of which asks for capital put to work or a business run, not for income received. Only two instructions in the whole manual make an annual income a requirement, and both of them attach it to a large locked-up investment rather than standing on it. The Temporary Retirement Category at V3.120 asks for NZ$60,000 a year of income, and also for NZ$750,000 invested here for two years and NZ$500,000 of maintenance funds, and what it grants is a visitor visa and not residence. The Parent Retirement Category at F3.5 asks for the same NZ$60,000 a year, and also NZ$1 million invested for four years, NZ$500,000 of settlement funds, and an adult child already settled in New Zealand. An income on its own, however large and however reliably received, matches nothing. The practical consequence is that someone living on investments, royalties, a trust or a foreign salary from abroad has to enter New Zealand through the visitor rules and leave again, because the visitor instruction V2.5.1 caps a visitor visa at nine months and nine months in any eighteen, and six months in any twelve where the visa was granted at the border under a visa waiver.

New Zealand has two instructions with 'retirement' in the name and they do completely different things. The Temporary Retirement Category, instruction V3.120, sits in the visitor chapter of the Operational Manual. The principal applicant must be aged 66 or over; must nominate funds or assets worth at least NZ$750,000 and undertake to invest them in New Zealand for two years; must nominate a further NZ$500,000 of maintenance funds; must show an annual income of at least NZ$60,000; must hold acceptable travel or health insurance along with any partner included; and must not be accompanied by dependent children. What it grants is a visitor visa. Nothing in the instruction turns that into residence, and a visitor is not a residence class visa holder, which matters directly for health care: clause B3 of the Health and Disability Services Eligibility Direction 2011 covers residence class visa holders and nobody holding a visitor visa, which is why the instruction requires insurance. The Parent Retirement Category, instruction F3.5, is the one that leads to a resident visa, and it is not really a retirement route at all - it is a parent route with a price. It requires NZ$1 million nominated and invested in New Zealand for four years, NZ$500,000 of settlement funds, an annual income of at least NZ$60,000, and the family requirements at F3.20, which means an adult child already in New Zealand. The resident visa it produces carries conditions imposed under section 49(1) of the Immigration Act 2009, and instruction RV2.10 sends a Parent Retirement resident who later wants a permanent resident visa down a different route from everybody else. There is no instruction under which age or a pension on its own gets a person residence.

Section 8 of the Citizenship Act 1977 is the grant provision and it is unusually explicit about arithmetic. The Minister may authorise a grant to a person who is 16 or over, of full capacity, applies in the prescribed manner, and satisfies the Minister of six things: that they are entitled under the Immigration Act 2009 to be in New Zealand indefinitely; that they were present in New Zealand for a minimum of 1,350 days during the five years immediately preceding the application and for at least 240 days in each of those five years, those being days on which they were entitled to be here indefinitely; that they are of good character; that they have sufficient knowledge of the responsibilities and privileges attaching to New Zealand citizenship; that they have sufficient knowledge of the English language; and that they intend to go on living here or to enter Crown or equivalent service. Two things about the day count matter more than the headline. It is not five calendar years of residence - 1,350 days out of 1,826 is about 74 per cent of the period, so roughly 476 days of absence are allowed overall - but the 240-day annual floor stops those absences being taken in one block. And the days only count if the person was already entitled to be here indefinitely on each of them, so time on a work or student visa is worth nothing towards it. Section 8(3) adds a trap for investors and some family-category residents: a person is not treated as entitled to be here indefinitely if conditions were imposed under the Immigration Act on their entitlement to reside indefinitely and those conditions have not been met in full or cancelled when they apply. A resident visa with live section 49(1) conditions therefore does not start the clock. Section 8(7) allows the Minister, in exceptional circumstances particular to the applicant, to accept fewer days, subject to a hard floor of 450 days physically present in the 20 months before the application. Renouncing another citizenship is not among the six requirements; section 15 lets a New Zealand citizen renounce New Zealand citizenship, and it is available only to someone another country already recognises as its citizen. Citizenship by descent under section 7 stops after one generation: a person born abroad is a citizen by descent only if a parent was a citizen otherwise than by descent, or was a citizen by descent and the child would otherwise be stateless.

New Zealand has no ancestry route. The Residence section of the Immigration New Zealand Operational Manual divides into eight parts, and the family half of it - the F chapter - is built on living relationships rather than on descent: F2 Partnership, F3 Parent Retirement, F4 Parent, F5 Dependent Child, F6 Sibling and Adult Child, closed to new applicants since 16 May 2012, and F7 inter-country adoption. Every one of them is a route for a relative of someone already in New Zealand, and the direction of travel is downwards or sideways - a partner, a parent, a child - never upwards into a previous generation. The same closure runs through the Citizenship Act 1977. Section 7(1) makes a person born outside New Zealand a citizen by descent only if, at the time of their birth, a parent was a New Zealand citizen otherwise than by descent. A citizen by descent cannot pass citizenship to a child born abroad, and the single exception is where the child would otherwise be stateless. So a grandchild born overseas to a parent also born overseas is outside both halves: no citizenship, and no residence category that names a grandparent. The nearest thing to an ancestral route in New Zealand law is not about New Zealand ancestry at all - the Special Categories chapter holds the Samoan Quota Scheme and the Pacific Access Category, which are nationality ballots rather than descent routes, and the Pitcairn Islanders instruction at S1.1.

The Active Investor Plus visa category, instruction BN3 as effective 1 April 2025, has two tiers and they differ in what the money does rather than in who may apply. The Growth Category needs nominated funds or assets of at least NZD $5 million, transferred into acceptable Growth Category investments, held for a 36-month investment period, with a minimum of 21 days spent in New Zealand as a resident visa holder across those three years. The Balanced Category needs NZD $10 million, held for 60 months, with 105 days in New Zealand. Instruction BN10.15.1 then prices the difference between the two presence requirements explicitly: every additional NZD $1 million put into direct investments or managed funds that Invest NZ has deemed acceptable Growth Category investments reduces the presence requirement by 14 days, to a maximum reduction of 42 days, so $11 million buys 91 days, $12 million buys 77 and $13 million or more buys 63. The additional funds must be nominated before approval in principle and held for the full 60 months. What is granted is a resident visa, and it comes with conditions imposed under section 49(1) of the Immigration Act 2009 - retaining the investments, meeting the presence requirement, telling Immigration New Zealand about changes of contact details, and filing investment questionnaires at 24 and 36 months for the Growth Category. Those conditions have a consequence outside immigration law that the instructions do not mention: section 8(3) of the Citizenship Act 1977 says a person is not treated as entitled to be in New Zealand indefinitely while conditions imposed under the Immigration Act on their entitlement to reside indefinitely remain unmet or uncancelled, so the five-year citizenship clock does not run until the investment conditions are discharged. An applicant may switch between the two categories while the application is being assessed or within the first six months of approval in principle, once.

What a New Zealand bank must establish before it opens an account comes from the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009, and the Act is more specific than most. Section 14(1)(a) makes standard customer due diligence compulsory whenever a reporting entity establishes a business relationship with a new customer. Section 15 then lists the identity information that must be obtained: full name, date of birth, the person's relationship to the customer if they are not the customer, the person's address or registered office, the company identifier or registration number, and anything prescribed by rules. Section 16(1)(a) sets the verification duty, and it carries a parenthesis that does a lot of work - the reporting entity must take reasonable steps to satisfy itself that the information obtained under section 15 is correct, 'other than the information obtained under section 15(d)', which is the address. So the statute requires the bank to collect an address and does not require it to verify one. Section 16(1A) repeats the point for beneficial owners and people acting on behalf. Timing is the other half. Section 16(2) requires verification before the business relationship is established, and section 16(3) allows it to be completed afterwards only where it is essential not to interrupt normal business practice, the risks are managed by transaction limits and account monitoring, and verification is finished as soon as practicable. That is the legal basis for an account opened on arrival with limits on it. Two features of a newly arrived migrant's situation trigger the heavier regime instead. Section 22(1)(a)(ii) requires enhanced customer due diligence for a non-resident customer from a country with insufficient anti-money laundering measures, and section 22(1)(a)(i) requires it for a trust or another vehicle for holding personal assets - which catches a family trust brought from abroad. Enhanced due diligence under sections 23 and 24 adds information about the source of the funds or the wealth, and verification of it.

A student visa in New Zealand is a temporary entry class visa and leads nowhere by itself. Instruction U3.1 sets out what a programme of study longer than three months requires: an offer of a place or a confirmation of enrolment with an education provider that meets student visa requirements; tuition fees paid or an exemption; accommodation requirements met if the applicant is under 18; the purpose and conditions of any previous temporary visa fulfilled; insurance, unless the applicant is a doctoral student or holds a New Zealand scholarship administered through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade; and the generic requirements for lodging, bona fide applicant status, health and character. Funds are judged rather than counted: instruction U3.20 asks the applicant to satisfy an immigration officer that they have sufficient funds to maintain themselves throughout the stay, and names four acceptable forms of evidence - a full scholarship, a sponsorship form, a financial undertaking by a relative or friend, or funds held by or for the student. No figure appears in the instruction. Work rights are a condition on the visa rather than a separate permission, and instruction U13.1 makes the point that an offer of employment is not required before they are granted. Three prohibitions come with them, and the first is the one that surprises people: the holder may not work in self-employment. The other two are providing commercial sexual services and operating or investing in a business of prostitution. For a student at a tertiary institution or private training establishment, instruction U13.15.1 allows up to 25 hours in any given week where the programme is full-time and either runs at least two academic years, or leads to a New Zealand qualification at level 4 or higher, or is part of an approved exchange scheme, or meets one of two English-language conditions. The instruction adds that micro-credentials are not qualifications for this purpose even when they are listed on the framework. Every student visa must allow multiple journeys and must carry two dates - when the visa expires and when the permission to travel expires.

The Partnership Category treats a marriage certificate as evidence rather than as a qualification. Instruction F2.5 requires the applicant to provide sufficient evidence to satisfy an immigration officer that they have been living together for 12 months or more in a partnership that is genuine and stable with a New Zealand citizen or resident. 'Partnership' means a legal marriage, a civil union or a de facto relationship, and the three are interchangeable for this purpose - the instruction asks the same twelve months of cohabitation of a married couple as of an unmarried one. The onus is expressly on the applicant and their New Zealand partner. The instruction then lists six grounds on which an application must be declined, and the third is the twelve months: an application will be declined if the applicant and the New Zealand partner have not lived together for 12 months or more at the time the application is lodged. The fourth is bigamy in either direction - if either the applicant or the New Zealand partner is already married to or in a civil union with someone else, the application is declined even if the twelve months are met. Instruction F2.15 adds the minimum conditions for a partnership to be recognised at all: both parties aged 18 or over when the residence application is lodged, or 16 to 17 with the support of their parents or guardians and not under a dedicated partnership-based visa category; the couple must have met before the application is made; and they must not be close relatives, which the instruction defines by reference to the prohibited degrees in Schedule 2 of the Marriage Act 1955 and Schedule 2 of the Civil Union Act 2004, and their de facto equivalents. A separate instruction, F2.15.1, effective 25 September 2026, says that under dedicated partnership-based visa categories, evidence of the partnership is only recognised from the date both the applicant and the supporting partner were 18 or older.

Clause 88(1) of the Land Transport (Driver Licensing) Rule 1999 deems a person, on arrival in New Zealand, to hold a New Zealand driver licence of a class matching what they may drive under a valid and current overseas licence or an international driving permit. Two conditions attach: the overseas licence must be in English or carried with an accurate English translation, and an international driving permit must be carried with the overseas licence it is based on. How long the deeming lasts was split in two on 1 November 2024. Clause 88(3), which now applies only to classes other than Class 1, ends it when the person has remained in New Zealand for a continuous period of 12 months, or the underlying document expires or is suspended or revoked, or a disqualification order is made here or in the issuing jurisdiction, or the person obtains or renews a New Zealand licence. The new clause 88AA gives Class 1 - cars and light vehicles - 18 months instead, and treats an expired international driving permit more generously: it only ends the deeming once the permit expired more than six months previously. Both clocks run on continuous presence in New Zealand, not on calendar time, so a trip out of the country restarts the count. Converting is governed by clause 89, which requires evidence of identity, a theory test, a practical test, production of the overseas licence with a translation if it is not in English, a signed statement that the licence is not suspended or revoked and the holder is not disqualified abroad, a New Zealand medical certificate for Classes 2 to 5 or for anyone aged 75 or over, and surrender of the overseas licence where a recognition arrangement requires it. Clause 89A then removes the tests for people from listed countries. Schedule 7A, 25 countries, removes the theory test for a Class 1 or Class 6 licence. Schedule 8 Part 1, 22 countries, removes the practical test for any equivalent class after two years of holding the overseas licence; Schedule 8 Part 2 - Croatia, Hong Kong and the Republic of Korea - removes it for Class 1 or Class 6 only. Clause 90 carries any conditions across: if the overseas licence is the equivalent of a learner or restricted licence, the New Zealand licence must be issued the same way.

Household goods come in free of duty under concession reference 80 of Part II of the Tariff, approved by the Minister under section 8 of the Tariff Act 1988. Paragraph (e) covers household or other effects imported by a person who has arrived or will arrive in New Zealand and, on the date the effects are imported, holds a document authorising residence in New Zealand; who has or will have resided or been domiciled outside New Zealand for the whole of the 21-month period preceding their arrival; and who has personally owned and used the effects outside New Zealand before the date of departure for New Zealand. The whole weight falls on 'a document authorising residence', and the concession defines that phrase itself, far more widely than the words suggest: a New Zealand passport, an Australian passport, a current New Zealand residence visa or permit or returning resident's visa, a current Australian permanent residence or resident return visa, a current work visa or permit issued for a minimum of 12 months, a current work visa or permit under the Work to Residence (Skilled Migrant Category) policy or the Long Term Business Visa category, or a current visitor's visa or permit issued for a minimum of 3 years. New Zealand Customs reproduces that list on its household effects page and adds the inference the list forces but does not state: student visa holders do not qualify, though they may bring items needed for their studies. Three timing rules sit in notes under the concession. Goods arriving more than five years after the passenger need a Customs officer's consent; goods arriving more than six months before the passenger need a Customs officer's consent; and an officer may consent where the 21 months was not completed but compassionate grounds exist, which the concession defines as illness, injury or death of the person or a family member, and expressly not relationship breakdown or job loss. Motor vehicles, motorcycles, aircraft and ships are in separate paragraphs of the same concession with a harder test - one year of personal ownership and use before departure, and a written undertaking repaying the duty if the goods are sold within two years - and Customs' page states plainly that household concessions cannot be claimed for new and unused items.