Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I emphasise that the KPMG report—I sigh because this has been going on for a while and it is becoming a little predictable, but we are moving on—was part of the advice the government received together with departmental advice and a range of sources of advice in relation to the decision to move forward. Given the level of expenditure involved, I thought it appropriate to release the basic information out of the business case from KPMG, as you correctly identified. There was information there that is sensitive to the tender process. It is a very significant IT tender process, and I do not think we should be giving any of the tenderers a free kick.

In relation to the privacy impact assessment, as I have said, the advice received from Clayton Utz and others was essentially made redundant because the nature of the project changed according to the decision of cabinet. For example, there was a robust public debate about an ID card, and cabinet rejected the proposal for a national ID card. As the Prime Minister said in the press conference the day after ANZAC Day, when we announced the proposal to proceed with the card, we took the view that Australia does not want or need a national identity card. This a very different proposition from a national ID card. Anyone who is familiar with national ID cards around the world would accept that.

There was a range of different sources of information—including, I might add, the Privacy Commissioner, who obviously has far more experience and was well across the brief. She helped us to address some of the privacy issues. I might say that the end product, the access card, will have less information in the chip than sits in your wallet today. It will not have as much on it as a drivers licence. Let me give you a real example. My New South Wales drivers licence—which the local Video Ezy store has a photocopy of—has on the face of it a photo, a name, an address and a date of birth and it has my signature. This card, on the face of it, will have only your photo and your name. It might have your signature on the back of it. In the chip, the only mandatory fields will essentially be your name, your address, your date of birth and pensioner concession and so on. It might have a signature as well. Those fields are readily available for the government now, obviously—

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