Dear Department of Internal Affairs,

On the citizenship application form there's a question that asks has the applicant ever been involved in making or using Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Weapons (question 29 on the adult form). I would like to make the following requests under the Official Information Act:

1. When was the CBRN question added to the application form?
2. What's the reasoning for adding this question? If there are any document/briefing/notes about adding this question, please provide it.
2.1 If there are any review done since about whether this question is effective in achieving its aim, please provide it.
3. What is the policy of granting citizenship to people who have been involved with CBRN weapons?
3.1. Does it matter if the applicant were acting for a government when they made or used those weapons?
3.2. Does it matter if they were acting for a friendly or unfriendly government?
4. For each of the past 10 years, please tell me the number of people, and their existing citizenship, who answered "yes" to the CBRN question and were:
4.1. granted citizenship?
4.2. denied citizenship?
5. Same as question 4 but for the war crime/crime against humanity question (question 30).
6. Same as question 4 but for the terrorism question (question 28).

I am a NZ citizen eligible to make OIA requests, and I prefer to receive a reply by email. If there are difficulties in providing some of these information please let me know and I can modify my questions as necessary .

Yours faithfully,
Felix Lee

Dear Louise Walton,

Thank you for your reply.

I was helping my friend with citizenship (they have nothing to do with CBRN by the way) and I came across this question. It was kind of an unusual question, so I looked at the citizenship application forms for some other English speaking countries, and none of them have this question. It piqued my interest further.

I had all sorts of questions like: does this mean that someone who used to work for a defense contractor in the US can't be a NZ citizen? Or is it only targeting potential terrorists? Does this have something to do with NZ's nuclear free status? So I decided to find out.

I may do a blog post if there's anything interesting but otherwise it'll just be for personal knowledge.

Thank you for your help with this.

Yours sincerely,

Felix Lee