Back when cassettes, glo-mesh and casual racism were rife in Australia, something groundbreaking happened at one of Bob Hawke’s riveting tax summits.
No, not this.
The Labor government of the time pitched the concept of a national identification system: one ID card for all Australians, with all of their information stored and cared for by one government department.
The Australian Card would help to track welfare fraud, tax avoidance and other such offences from state-to-state. It seemed like a great idea on the surface, but (from a government perspective), it would also mean that a few fuddy-duddies in our intrinsic state governments were no longer required to stamp files.
From a Joe Citizen point of view, it could also mean terrible things for individual privacy.
Even as far back as 1986, the primary concern from the public has been that the government doesn’t take individual privacy seriously. To try and abate these fears, the government founded our first Data Protection Agency. It worked. Kinda.
Neal Blewett (the Health Minister at the time) noted that the public, and civil liberties groups, “…displayed a high level of scepticism that any existing commonwealth agency could provide similar levels of protection of personal data.”
However, that’s all changed, and we totally trust our government now.
At least, that’s what Digital Minister Michael Keenan believes, as he has just flagged a multi-billion dollar plan to give every Australian a single digital identity by 2025.
The digital ID – which we will all immediately start referring to as MULTIPASS, obviously – would essentially mean doing away with various licenses and cards (ie: Medicare, driver’s licenses, fishing licenses), and give each Australian a single digital profile that stores the required information.
Personally, I feel completely safe giving the government all of my information. I mean… it’s not like the ATO recently lost a petabyte of data, right? I mean, nobody gave away a filing cabinet with a stack of highly confidential files, right?
Oh… oh dear.
Of course, people were a lot more afraid of technology in the 80s than we are now. So, maybe the 80s objectors were just big scaredy cats who didn’t understand computers and such?
Sadly not.
A lack of trust in our government’s ability to protect our privacy was central to a second knockback for a national ID card, back in 2007.
As the Australian Privacy Foundation’s Anna Johnson explained at the time:
“[I]t’s not the technology that’s the problem […] our concern is so far that this government has shown very little inclination to develop things in a privacy-protected manner.”
So, if the general consensus is that the Australian Government simply can’t be trusted with our data, can we just…. not give it to them?
Sure! I mean, as long as you’ve never held down a paying job, paid your taxes, gotten your driver’s license, or, you know, been born, then the government won’t have any data on you at all.
Currently, The Australian Tax Office holds the most significant amount of personal data in the country. So, between my paycheques and my tax files, they already know all there is to know about me.
Of course, everyone has secrets, and it’s natural to want to keep those secrets away from the knuckleheads in power.
Even if they can put away a VB with style.
However, as someone who recently bought an unregistered vehicle from South Australia and registered it in New South Wales, I’m happy to give up one more civil liberty, if it means that I never have to spend seven hours talking to government officials ever again.
If the national ID comes along, I’ll sign up. Though I doubt the government will get their act together in time for me to try it out at some funky club.
However, I remain hopeful that they might be able to sort it all out in time for me to get my pension card… in 2044.
They’ll get there. Eventually.