My wife and I lived overseas for 20 years while I worked for the United Nations.
During that time, we always made sure we came home to New Zealand at Christmas time, to reconnect with family and make sure our children kept in touch with their cousins and their culture. Being able to travel and maintain connections with family and relatives abroad is hugely important to New Zealanders, including the Indian community.
It relies on us having passports and being able to travel freely: one of our most basic rights as citizens.
So it came as a surprise when the Prime Minister recently announced he had cancelled New Zealanders' passports because they might travel to fight in Syria.
Only the most serious threat should result in the revocation of a passport. So how serious was the threat? We don't know.
Nor do we know who gave the advice to revoke the passports, who made the final decision, and what checks are in place to ensure that an injustice has not been committed.
Mr Key simply said, "We don't think [traveling to Syria] is a sensible step for them to take."
That's a very low bar on which to cancel a person's passport.
I've visited and worked in several places that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs might caution as not sensible.
I would hate to think my passport might be cancelled in the future because the PM on the advice of some bureaucrat deemed it to be not 'sensible', and I'm sure there are a lot of Kiwis who would feel the same.
Mr Key says those who travel to Syria may return "radicalised" and could be a threat to New Zealand.
We do need to take threats to New Zealand seriously. And it's good sense to monitor those who are known to have fought in places like Syria and have returned to New Zealand.
But as one Syrian-born Kiwi said recently, what radicalises people is injustice, people being denied their rights - perhaps like taking away a person's passport without sufficient reason.
As Labour's Foreign Affairs spokesman, I would say a higher standard of honesty and transparency is required in this situation.
If the Prime Minister is going to revoke passports to keep citizens from leaving New Zealand, he needs to explain the reasons, and how his decisions were reached.