(a) must be sufficiently serious (the seriousness threshold) and there must be a similar or comparable offence in New Zealand (dual criminality); or
(b) the offence must be listed as an extradition offence in a treaty.
6.2Our draft Bill maintains these basic requirements but seeks to express them more clearly. We also propose one significant departure from the current Extradition Act 1999 and that relates to the seriousness threshold (as indicated by the maximum penalty), which we consider should be raised to two years for all countries except Australia.
6.3In this chapter, we explain the policy behind the “extradition offence” test in the new Bill and outline how we envisage this test will work in practice.