John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Secker. It is good to see you sitting there, Patrick. The Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 proposes to streamline access to government services and combat fraud by issuing all Australians with a new access card. However, Australians have always been wary of any card that contains a cardholder’s name, date of birth, signature, unique identification number, gender, residential address, Medicare number, concession status, details of children and other dependents, allergies and emergency contact numbers. A card with this unprecedented amount of detail is only one step removed from a national ID card which any government could use to monitor its citizens even more. Many Australians are justifiably concerned that this bill is really a euphemism for a national ID card.

In his second reading speech, the minister alluded to the access card’s dominant purpose as being a reduction in welfare fraud. The minister is quite right to suggest that ‘Australian taxpayers have a right to expect that their money is spent in a way that ensures that only those individuals who are entitled to benefits receive them.’ However, I do not share the minister’s arrogant attitude to those who have shown genuine concern at the scope of such a card. Given the scale of the project and the amount of information the government will be collecting, the response is naturally one of concern and hesitation.

I do not share the minister’s view that those expressing a concern about the scope of this card are scaremongers, nor do I share the minister’s view that members on this side are ‘friends of fraud’, as he outrageously suggested in his second reading speech, simply because we are relaying the concerns of our constituents to this parliament. Perhaps the minister could repeat those claims to the numerous constituents in my electorate of Lowe who have raised their concerns about this card directly with me. One of those constituents, Miss Evelyn Smith, sums up the mood well when she says, ‘It will contain much information which will become available to many establishments and persons who have the equipment and means to decipher it.’ Indeed, as Miss Smith also mentions, ‘It may be considered that the use of this card will be limited but I can foresee reasons where it will be more widely needed.’

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