Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

What an extraordinary speech from the member for Moncrieff. On the one hand, he says that he supports the legislation we are currently debating and, then, as he is summing up his remarks, he says that this card ‘can be and will be forged’. In another extraordinary statement, given that the whole purpose of this card is for it to be used to deal with the identification of people so they can get access to Medicare and social security payments, he goes on to say that it ‘in no way ... provides any verification as to identity’. Out of his own mouth he says that it can and will be forged. That is extraordinary criticism from the member for Moncrieff who, I understand, also said in the lead-up to this debate that this card is a Trojan Horse for a national identity card. The legislation has not changed since he made those remarks and, as he walks out of the chamber, it just demonstrates that his arm has been so extraordinarily twisted up his back that it hurt so much he had to come in here and say he supported the legislation, even though, in his own remarks, he has damned the legislation by saying that this card can and will be forged. That is out of the mouth of the Liberal member for Moncrieff. That sums up one of the major criticisms we have on this side of the House—that is, the very practical realities facing this legislation.

We know what the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 is supposed to be doing. It is supposed to be a new way of delivering $100 billion in health and social security payments, and we know that those payments touch the lives of almost every single Australian. Our social security system is there to help millions of Australians—families raising children, the aged, the unemployed and those who cannot work—and to help those who are looking for work get back into employment. Our health system has been built on the back of Medicare, designed and supported right from the beginning by Labor—in contrast, I must say, to the chequered support it has received from those opposite, but that is a debate for another day. Medicare has right at its heart a very simple Australian concept, one that we are so proud of on the Labor side: that if you get sick you will be able to see a doctor. But, if this legislation goes through, you will need this new access card to see a doctor—and most of us at some time in our lives will need to do that. This proposed new access card will become a requirement—and the member for Moncrieff understands this—for all Australians wanting to use these services. By 2010 a person will need an access card to obtain any Commonwealth benefit—that is, Medicare, pharmaceutical benefits that are subsidised through the PBS, and social security and veterans’ entitlements, and the list goes on. We on this side of the House support the use of smartcard technology in service delivery; we know it can be helpful. We also support the goal of improved service delivery for both social security and Medicare. We want to get rid of fraud because, most of all, we want to make sure that social security support and Medicare go to those who need it.

But we do not support this proposal, because it is full of holes and full of problems. Once again, it was best summed up by the Liberal member for Moncrieff, who said that it can and will be forged. We on this side of the House support a social security system that reflects our vision for our nation: the concepts of egalitarianism, community and compassion. All of these we want to see at the heart of our national consciousness. Unfortunately, under this government, these concepts have been diminished in favour of individualism, competition and a distrust of institutions.

The concept underlying this bill that we are debating tonight is that our social security system should be strengthened by ensuring access for those who need it most—a concept that, at its heart, is supported by this side of the parliament. Of course we want to get rid of fraud and abuse so that government help goes to those who need it most. But, unfortunately, the way that the government has gone about it in this legislation will not in fact achieve this end. As I said, reducing welfare fraud is a good thing. People should not make unjustified claims. But spending more than $1 billion to issue cards to all those who access social security and health services is going to be a very expensive and complex way to reduce fraud. You might say that it is worth it, but the question is: will it actually work? We know the member for Moncrieff does not think it will work. He has made that clear tonight. He does not think it will work because people are going to be able to fraudulently reproduce these cards.

The second thing is: do we know anything about the nature of social security fraud? We do know that people claiming welfare benefits on false identities are only a small proportion of those getting wrong payments. For years we have had Auditor-General’s reports showing that Centrelink itself makes administrative mistakes. We know that the card that we are debating tonight is not going to fix the administrative mistakes made by Centrelink. This is the most important point on the issue of fraud: this card will not stop people claiming in their own names for payments they are not entitled to. That is what we suspect is the prime source of fraud in the social security system, although we cannot get the data. We suspect that is where the fraud is taking place. We would like to see that fraud reduced as much as possible, but this card will not do it because these are people who are claiming wrongfully in their own names. They will be able to use this card to do so.

The minister, in his second reading speech, was at pains to suggest that this is no more than an upgraded Medicare card to try to put to rest the concerns in the Australian community. Obviously, he has not put to bed the concerns of the member for Moncrieff. There are a number of other government backbenchers who also have made some pretty extraordinary criticisms of this legislation. They say—and the member for Moncrieff made it clear—that the government is introducing an identity card by another name. Again, in an attempt to stress that the government is not introducing an identity card, the minister went through in great detail the measures the government is introducing and the legislative statements it is making to try to get around the reality. I have to say that it does seem like a case of the minister protesting too much.

The minister’s argument, at its core, is that with an identity card you could not conduct your normal affairs without having to produce your card; whereas, he claims, this access card is nothing of the sort. Life will carry on as normal without the card, it is claimed, if an individual so choses. But normal life actually does include going to the doctor, claiming family payments and, if you are an elderly person, claiming the aged pension. Graham Greenleaf, Co-director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of New South Wales, makes the point that the access card is:

... effectively compulsory and near-universal for adults, in exactly the same way as was the Australia Card. It is not as a rational and practical matter possible to do without a Medicare Card in Australia in 2006 ...

So if it is not rational and not practical to do without a Medicare card then the new access card will become a requirement for virtually all Australians—certainly all Australians who want to see a doctor. It will be a national card for all Australians to access near-universal services.

The reach of the card is set to expand before it even begins. This is another matter that members opposite should contemplate. The Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs has already floated the idea of the new access card being used to swipe children in and out of childcare services. Indeed the new childcare management system currently being developed by the government and due for implementation next year will require all parents to sign their children in and out of their childcare services, and that information must be transmitted automatically, electronically, to Canberra. It is no big leap of logic to see how the government could say, ‘We might as well use the access card system to gather this information. Parents could just swipe in and out with that.’ It is very possible that the government could require the parents of the almost 600,000 children in formal care who receive the childcare benefit each year to use an access card every day. So much for it not being a normal part of life for those parents. If they do not use it, they will not get any government support for their children’s care.

We have significant concerns also about the privacy of the personal information being stored on the card, as have many Australians. We know that the cardholder’s name is going to be on it, as are a digital signature, a new identifying number, a photograph containing biometric data, the expiry date and other information. All of that will be on the face of the card. Other information will be contained on a chip in the card, some in a ‘public’ area of the chip, which can be viewed by a simple card reader, and some in a PIN-protected apparently ‘private’ area. All the information on the surface and chip of the card will be held in a new government database called the access card register. Officers at Centrelink, Medicare and other Australian government agencies will be able to access the register.

The scope of the information on the card register database has given rise to concerns amongst many in the community about unauthorised access. I certainly share those concerns. Commonwealth officers are there to serve the public and we all know that in the main they do an outstanding job, yet always where there is a human element it is inevitable that privacy breaches will occur even inadvertently. We know this because breaches have occurred in the past. There are also examples of identity theft and unauthorised accessing of databases by public servants. They include reports in August 2006 that 600 privacy breaches had occurred within Centrelink where staff accessed customer records without proper cause or authorisation. Most concerning, a report by the Child Support Agency found that 405 privacy breaches occurred in the previous nine months. In at least two of these cases, mothers and their children had to be physically relocated at taxpayers’ expense because the Child Support Agency’s release of information had put them at risk.

Another key concern has been the use of biometric data in the photograph on the public face of the card—remember: the member for Moncrieff said that this could be forged. This biometric data is included to enable your image to be compared with other photographs and video footage very easily, therefore making surveillance easy. It is expected that police—both state and federal—will have access to the register, which will contain for the first time photographs of almost the entire adult Australian population. Currently there is no requirement for police to get a court order in order to access this database. These and many other concerns about the information to be stored and the security of the storage have been well voiced by many in the community on both sides of politics, and I urge the government to listen to these concerns and take them seriously.

The underpinning network of social security benefits, payments, pensions and entitlements will remain a feature of the Australian community. It must; it is a fundamental aspect of a compassionate society. But compassion is not an end in itself; it is part of the overall approach of the welfare system that is about enabling participation in our community. The welfare system should be encouraging active participation in the economy and in society. It should be actively seeking to provide people with assistance to overcome barriers before they slip through the cracks—in other words, on this side of the parliament we want a welfare system that responds to the needs of our modern community and does more than provide a safety net to catch people when they fall. Our welfare system should lift people out of poverty by giving them the capacity to fully participate in society.

Unfortunately, poverty and disadvantage still remain deeply embedded in many Australian communities. Life is not a bed of roses for many Australian families, despite the economic boom. Just today we saw new research by Professor Tony Vinson for Jesuit Social Services entitled Dropping off the edge: the distribution of disadvantage in Australia, showing that:

Extreme social disadvantage in Australia is real and it’s measurable. It’s endemic to a small number of locations in this country, and it can be fixed ...

Professor Vinson has found that just 1.7 per cent of postcodes around Australia account for more than seven times their share of the factors that cause intergenerational poverty. This poverty has been entrenched for years. The more reports we hear of families struggling, unfortunately the less the government seems to care. It seems to be the case that this Prime Minister has stopped listening.

Even with 15 years of economic growth, children in places like West Heidelberg in my own electorate, Kempsey in New South Wales and Hervey Bay in Queensland still miss out on basic education, health care and the other important underpinnings of life. A child missing out in a wealthy country like Australia in this day and age is nothing short of heartbreaking. This comes on top of a report from ACOSS from the community sector, also released today, which shows that 1.5 million Australians sought help from welfare agencies last year—that is up four per cent on 2005.

One of the big messages of today’s reports is that we need to get in early to give children a good start to life. These are the critical messages coming from the people doing research into struggling families who are suffering from intergenerational poverty. They are not out there saying, ‘Spend a billion dollars on a new ID card’; they are calling in fact for the recognition of the particularly strong link between intergenerational poverty and low educational attainment. That is what they want to see from this government; that is what is needed to turn this dreadful poverty around.

Labor understands this link, and with our $450 million a year plan to give every four-year-old access to 15 hours of early learning a week we intend to do something practical to help. Labor is about addressing the causes of intergenerational poverty rather than what this government is doing, which is the introduction of a billion dollar-plus access card. When it comes to addressing the very deep and ingrained causes of intergenerational poverty in this country, you would have to say this government has got its priorities wrong.

I support the second reading amendment moved by the member for Sydney and stress the problems we see with the access card proposal in its current form, particularly the inadequate safeguards to protect the accuracy and privacy of information on the card and in the register, and that the government continues to keep secret key information on the true costs of implementing the card. Labor wants to see our social security and health systems protected from fraud and abuse so that they can continue to provide future generations of Australians the support they need. (Time expired)

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