I would agree to that. Only anecdotal, but back in 2002 four of us travelled to NZ from the UK for a meeting. At the airport one of us (no not me) mentioned he had noticed his passport had only 3 months until it expired. Interestingly Air NZ let him board with no issues. Well we emailed our contact in NZ and they managed to get us a letter ready for us to print when we transited through Bangkok to confirm the visit was only for 2 weeks etc. He was stopped by immigration in NZ upon arrival and took over an hour to get through. This was back in the days of paper tickets and his ticket was stamped that it could not be amended without referral to Immigration NZ. I wonder what they would do now.