Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight having just seen the budget papers. The fact is that, despite the campaigns by many people and parties, and even occasional recommendations from Senate committees, a paltry $6.5 million over four years has been allocated to the Privacy Commissioner. But in the same budget papers I see that more than $1.1 billion has been allocated over the next four years for what is undoubtedly going to be the biggest, most expensive and greatest intrusion into the privacy rights of Australians in our history.

The budget papers that were released tonight allow for the introduction of a so-called access card. Whether you call it a smartcard or anything else that ministers and others would like to refer to it as, it is actually a de facto national identity card. Tonight, in black and white, you can read a little bit about it in the budget papers. It will have a photo ID; a microchip; a number; and possibly, voluntarily, personal and sensitive health information; it will list information about your dependants and your family. It is the single biggest intrusion into our privacy that I can recall. It is worse than the proposed Australia card and it should be defeated in much the same way in which that proposal was rejected by the Australian people and, indeed, parliament and politicians.

Madam Acting Deputy President, in question time today you would have heard me quiz the Minister representing the Minister for Human Services about this issue—in particular about the lack of privacy safeguards and the lack of a so-called external advisory body, or at least the uncertainty among the government as to whether or not we will be getting some kind of independent expert or external assessment of the privacy implications of this particular access card or so-called smartcard. Today in question time I raised the issue of the resignation of the head of the government’s task force that looked into this issue, Mr James Kelaher. We have heard various reported reasons for his resignation, including issues associated with privacy and funding, and departmental organisation, administration and control. But tonight, in black and white, it is there for all to see. By 2008-10 we will have national ID cards. I hope that many Australians will oppose this process.

The Prime Minister two weeks ago stated that the government had decided not to proceed with a compulsory national identity card and that, instead, the government were proceeding with what they call the access card for health and welfare services. While it is theoretically not compulsory for all Australians, it will be necessary for any Australian wanting to apply for government welfare or health services. The Prime Minister also stated:

... it will not be possible to access many services which are normally accessed by people unless one is in possession of the card.

Currently, according to the Minister for Human Services, Mr Joe Hockey, there are 11.5 million Medicare cards in circulation. This does not take into account the many families who are on the one card. Some estimates put the number of people who would need a smartcard at around 17 million, so we are getting pretty close to the entire population. How dare people say that this is not a national identity card! That would be more than three-quarters of our population.

When the government states that the card will not be compulsory but, rather, people will have a choice, it means that people have a choice of either having a card and thus accessing services or getting no access at all. It is giving people the choice of the lesser of two evils. Choosing a card does mean—and we have heard no arguments to the contrary so far—that they will risk having their personal, health and most sensitive information compromised. It is an appalling plan.

The government is selling this as a health and welfare access card. However, all discussions preceding the announcement of such a card have been in relation to security. I know that the government has stopped doing this now. It is not talking about it in terms of preventing terrorism. It has changed now to a health and welfare focus despite the earlier rhetoric. It is pretty hard not to remain sceptical about the government’s intentions and, indeed, wait for the inevitable function creep.

The Prime Minister declared that the introduction of the health and welfare access card is not a Trojan horse for a compulsory national identity card. As I have mentioned, for a person to have Medicare access it will be compulsory for them to have a smartcard. This card will have their photo, name, address and birth date—in fact, all of the information that you would assume to be the basis of someone’s identity in our society.

The Prime Minister’s claim on the face of it seems to be made in good faith, yet in reality this card is setting the foundations for a national system where the identities of a vast majority of Australians will be stored on these so-called health and welfare cards. What alarms me and many other people greatly are the recent claims—I think it was in the last week—that this information will be accessible by intelligence and police agencies. They will have access to the information gathered for the purposes of intelligence gathering or police information. That is another aspect of the so-called function creep.

I note that the Prime Minister said yesterday, ‘I have been impressed since the announcement was made by the large number of people, particularly in the younger section of the community, who say, “Thank heavens we are going to have something that reduces the enormous number of cards that we have to carry in order to interact with government agencies.”’ So it is about young people—that is it! They want a card, apparently. I must admit that I find this comment surprising. If it can be backed up then I am willing to hear it. I am not sure what information it is based on. It could be based on the KPMG report—the very report we are not going to see. I am sorry; the government is going to release it, but we do not know when exactly and it will be in an edited format. Maybe it is in that. Maybe we have done a poll of young people and they have said: ‘Hey, cool—a health and welfare access card! I’d like to see that.’ But we do not know where this information has come from.

It is even stranger and more surprising to hear the Prime Minister saying this because I went back and found a comment from the Prime Minister I think two weeks ago at the joint press conference to which I referred earlier. He said:

I would imagine a lot of, well a number of younger people who feel immortal and permanently healthy and so forth will not think any of this is necessary.

Which is it? Is youth voting for the card or is youth saying, ‘No, we don’t want the card’? Even so, is this really the basis on which the government and the Prime Minister are implementing and introducing a national identity card—or should I say a health and welfare access card? It just reeks of policy on the run.

The government has claimed that this card will save the government up to $3 billion over three years, yet the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry—amongst many other groups, I might add—has claimed that the cost of the implementation of the card could be as much as $15 billion. We have not yet been able to see what the official report conducted by KPMG actually reveals. I asked this in question time and the taking note debate today: when is the government going to release that report and in what form? A censored or edited version of that report is not good enough. This is the single biggest privacy intrusion into the lives of Australians. It is a de facto national identity card. We deserve to see the detail, not just because of the privacy, security, social, health and welfare implications but also because of the money. The economic implications are huge.

The introduction of this so-called smartcard has seen the government say one thing and then, on the other hand, do another thing. The initial consideration of the card began with the Attorney-General declaring that the government was not considering a smartcard, only to be contradicted days later by the Prime Minister. According to reports, Mr Kelaher, the recently resigned head of the task force, has stated that the government has had discussions and made agreements with ministers, departments, agencies and stakeholders and that it would have an external advisory board. Yet in the last couple of days we have heard the opposite. In today’s Financial Review we have quotes from the Minister for Human Services saying that they do not know if they are going to proceed down this path.

Madam Acting Deputy President, as you have probably gathered, I feel so strongly about this issue, this particular budget allocation and the lack of detail that I will be talking with colleagues in this place over the next couple of days. We should have an inquiry into this. I think this is one of the biggest issues, and not only in terms of financial and economic dealings. It is a huge privacy issue for this nation. I hope that colleagues on all sides of the chamber will consider an inquiry into this. (Time expired)