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I've just had a business opportunity pop up and need to travel from Auckland to Sydney urgently the day after next. The thing is my New Zealand passport which would normally let me straight in has expired so I need to fall back to my UK passport, however travelling as a UK citizen requires an eVisitor visa. I went to the Australian immigration office in Auckland today and was told to apply online and that I would most likely be granted this very quickly, if not immediately. 6 hours have passed however and I still haven't even received a confirmation email. I'm starting to get a little nervous.

My question is can I enter Australia for the day using my UK passport for entry and my expired New Zealand passport (or my birth certificate) as proof of residency? I'm still a New Zealand citizen and therefore I assume entitled a SCV. If I present proof of my citizenship at customs will they just check my eligibility and let me through?

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  • I would suggest that if the application is processed in Australia and not UK, they might not process it in the middle of the night.
    – Vince
    Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 8:22
  • Sorry I should have mentioned I am currently in New Zealand at the moment and have applied for it from here. I'll be travelling Auckland > Sydney.
    – James Westwood
    Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 8:41
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    If you are in New Zealand I would suggest it will be faster to get your New Zealand passport renewed than to get an eVisitor visa.
    – DJClayworth
    Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 13:05

1 Answer 1

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If you're in New Zealand you should probably use the Urgent Passport Renewal service, which will let you receive the passport within 24 hours.

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  • Thanks, yes this is definitely the safest option. I'm still interested if you could theoretically pass through customs with the expired NZ passport and valid UK passport(or any other country's for that matter), but I'm going to mark this as accepted as it probably the best advice for someone in the same situation.
    – James Westwood
    Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 22:04
  • Also as an aside my eVisitor was approved about 8 hours later. After submitting your application you are supposed to receive a confirmation email with a Transaction Reference Number (TRN). I never got either of these, just a email once the visa had been successfully processed. I checked my spam folder and nothing was in there, so apparently these never went out, leaving me in the dark as to whether my submission was even under way.
    – James Westwood
    Commented Apr 9, 2013 at 22:11

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