Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007. This bill is about the $1.2 billion introduction of the government’s proposed health and social services access card. Labor supports the use of smartcard technology in service delivery. We also support the aims of improving service delivery and reducing fraud in Medicare and social security. But we do not support this proposal. We do not support it because it is full of holes and problems. I fully support the amendment moved by the member for Sydney. I also note, as other speakers have, that Labor reserves the right to move further amendments in the Senate, particularly any amendments to come out of the Senate inquiry.

Today I want to not only focus on the general concerns I have with regard to this bill but also highlight the specific concerns I have as shadow minister for veterans’  affairs. Under this proposal, by 2010 a person will need an access card to obtain any Commonwealth benefit, including Medicare, PBS subsidised pharmaceuticals, social security and, importantly, veterans’ entitlements. The cardholder’s photograph, name and digital signature, along with a new identifying number, expiry date and other information, will appear 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 private area. All of the information on the surface and chip of the card will be held in a new massive database called the access card register. Officers at Medicare, Centrelink and other Australian government agencies will be able to access the register.

Labor has three main concerns regarding this current proposal for an access card. Firstly, we are concerned about the accuracy, security and privacy of data to be stored on the card and the database which supports it. Secondly, we are concerned about the registration process and the undue administrative burden that will be placed on people. Thirdly, we are concerned about the cost of implementing and manufacturing the card.

Labor is concerned about the security and privacy of this proposal. Under this proposal, information will be stored on the face of the card, within the chip contained in the card and on a database. The bill provides that a name, personal number, digital signature, photograph and expiry date must be displayed on the face of the card. In addition, people can choose to have their date of birth, veteran status and, if they are blind and on a disability support pension, the fact of their blindness on the face of the card. I am extremely pleased that an appropriate recognition of veteran status will be implemented on these cards. For example, gold card holders will be presented with a gold card and TPI recipients are able to also have their status reflected. This is very important to the veterans community. There had been great fears that this would not be the case. I therefore congratulate the government on at least getting this right.

However, the fact remains that there are real privacy concerns regarding the information that is to be displayed on the face of the card. The respected former ACCC chairman Professor Allan Fels was commissioned by the government to report on the privacy aspects of the card. He recommended to the government that the unique identifying number and electronic signature not be displayed on the card because they are unnecessary and pose a risk to people’s security. The government ignored this recommendation. I think that it is very unfortunate that the government failed to give this recommendation proper consideration. I know many veterans and war widows who remain concerned at the prospect of being defrauded and will now face the possibility of having an access card which they know displays information that the government has been told by an independent expert should not be required. The government should have accepted this recommendation. At the very least, it would have provided the community with greater confidence in this card.

In addition to the information which appears on the face of the card, information will also be contained in a microchip embedded in the card. The information will include data that can be read by a card reader, which can be purchased for a few dollars by anybody at an electronics store such as Dick Smith. It will also contain information that requires not just the card reader but also a personal identification number known only to the cardholder.

Many people may choose to have some health information stored on the public section of their card because in a medical emergency they may not be conscious or able to remember or state their PIN. It is likely, therefore, that medical information will be available to anyone with a simple card reader. I am not sure that the veterans community will appreciate the possibility of their medical conditions being available to strangers. Many veterans and war widows have sensitive medical issues and the last thing they need to worry about is having their privacy invaded.

Labor also has concerns regarding the information that will be stored on the central registry. The registry will contain your date of birth, citizenship or permanent residency status, sex, residential and postal address, date and status of your registration, PIN, veteran status and documents used to prove your identity. It will contain scanned copies of all original documents that have to be presented at the registration interview. This would make the registry an enormously valuable resource for criminals who hack into it or bribe public servants to get access to it. A criminal could steal a whole identity by accessing someone’s registry record. Identity theft is well known in the veterans community, where problems of impostors posing as war veterans have surfaced from time to time.

There are good reasons to be concerned about identity theft in our society. It was reported in August 2006 that 600 privacy breaches occurred within Centrelink, where staff had accessed customer records without proper cause or authorisation. Also, a report by the Child Support Agency found that 405 privacy breaches occurred in nine months. In at least two of these cases, mothers and their children had to be physically relocated at taxpayers’ expense because improper release of information had put them at risk.

Also, there is the problem of errors contained on the central records. According to an internal Centrelink random sample survey conducted by the Audit Office and published in June 2006, around 30 per cent of Centrelink records contained an error which resulted in wrong payment. I am sure that some veterans and war widows would be familiar with the problems of errors in records leading to incorrect payments. It would be a tragic thing if the new central registry exacerbated this problem.

The government has said that this card will be voluntary. This is a false argument for the general population but it is a particularly misleading argument in relation to the veterans community. Veterans and war widows will need the card to access Medicare, medicines covered by PBS, social security payments, their veterans’ entitlements and all government benefits and services that they receive. The government says that it is voluntary, but it is only voluntary if you are willing to forgo these services. Veterans and war widows who refuse to apply for the card will not be able to use any of these services.

Under this proposal all Australians needing access to these cards will have to undergo an interview process. At the interview process they will be required to present a number of documents and provide information to prove their identity and entitlements. The government has not even told us yet what documents they will be requiring, but it is thought that they will at least require Australian-issued birth and marriage certificates. As shadow minister for veterans’ affairs I have deep concerns about this registration process. This will affect at least 299,352 veterans and war widows who currently hold a gold or white card. It also affects non-gold-cardholders in the sense that all Medicare users will need to have access to this card.

Many veterans and war widows have already engaged in lengthy and sometimes stressful application processes for their current entitlements. To have them subjected to another interview and registration process to get a card that they are already entitled to seems to me to be unreasonable. They will have to go through the hassle yet again of collecting copies of forms and information to provide to the bureaucracy. In some cases this could cause them financial harm, as they may have to pay to obtain copies of original birth or marriage certificates.

When the Department of Veterans’ Affairs was asked whether any financial assistance would be provided to the veterans community due to the expected costs of the registration process, the head of the department, Mr Sullivan, replied:

... no, if a person does not have the documentation and wishes to procure it themselves, we are not offering at this stage financial assistance in procuring that documentation.

So we can expect veterans and war widows, again, to be out of pocket in order to register for a controversial card that will give them no more entitlements than they already have. I think veterans and war widows are in a special position, as they have already gone through so much bureaucracy and administrative processes to get what they have; therefore, I believe they should largely be exempted from a registration process. When the department was asked about possible exemptions at the recent estimates hearings, Mr Sullivan, the department head, said:

There will be exceptions where people are exempted from registration, and those will definitely include some of our gold card population, so they would not be required to enrol. As a general rule, a gold card holder would need to register for the access card.

When further pressed on what exemptions there would be, Mr Sullivan replied:

… they have not been decided yet, but people in high-care nursing homes and in palliative care institutions are possible examples.

I welcome this but, as you can see from that response, it is far from certain. Also, a relatively small category of current gold card holders will qualify for this exemption. Therefore, I am not sure why the government is even pushing this bill through before it has decided these issues.

Another concern I have is that veterans and war widows will also be required to travel to different locations to undertake this interview. While there will be some mobile registration vans for regional and remote areas, interviews will not be conducted in the veteran’s home. Many veterans on a high-range disability pension, a totally and permanently incapacitated pension or an extreme disablement adjustment pension will be required to travel. Many of those who fall within this category are restricted in their mobility and are already probably sick of having to travel the distance they are required to travel for their medical treatment. The department has said that it may look at financial assistance for travelling costs but, again, it is not sure. This is not good enough and again I ask: why are we debating this bill when these decisions have not yet been made?

Some of my colleagues in this debate have also raised the prospect of fraud occurring during this registration process, and I share their concerns. It is an issue that the veterans community should be worried about and should insist is fully resolved before we even look at this proposal.

So far I have outlined my concerns about the privacy and security of the card, and the undue administrative burdens that the registration process will place on the veterans community. Another major concern I have is the cost of the card. The government, in an extraordinarily arrogant move, is refusing to release any details of the cost-benefit analysis of this card. It has argued that the card will save money by reducing fraud, but it can produce no evidence of figures on this.

We do know that the card already has a budget of $1.2 billion, a budget that quite possibly will rapidly grow. The great fear is that these growing costs could mean that departments such as Centrelink, Medicare or even Veterans’ Affairs will be required to shoulder some of these costs, which means possible cuts to existing services. This would be completely unacceptable. Instead, the government are asking us today to accept their proposal that is full of holes, a proposal where they cannot provide any evidence of the benefits and one that is extraordinarily expensive.

The bill in its current state is full of holes and raises some real concerns for the veterans community. We should be clear: the Howard government is asking our veterans and war widows to accept a card that raises real privacy concerns, is costly and has yet another long bureaucratic registration process. We are asking our veterans and war widows to accept a card that many individuals and groups—for example, the Australian Privacy Foundation and the Australian Medical Association—have expressed their concerns about.

Even some coalition MPs have expressed their concerns. The member for Moncrieff has said that the access card could become a trojan horse for a national ID card. The esteemed member for Mackellar said that it does not pass the Nazi test, and the Attorney-General has admitted that the access card could in the future be exploited by governments. Yet this is the card the government wants for our veterans community. I appreciate that the government has recognised the importance of having a gold coloured card for veterans who currently possess a gold card and which also specifically recognises TPI veterans. Labor fully supports that. However, this bill is not good for the veterans community. In its current form, it gives the veterans community a card that has real privacy and security concerns that have not been addressed. It gives them a costly and burdensome registration process. It comes at great cost to government and we are yet to see any real evidence of the proposed benefits.

I do think smartcard technologies can make a difference and can be used effectively. However, the current proposal is so full of holes and will cause unnecessary hassle and burdens for the veterans community, which is why I cannot support it as it currently stands. I fully support the amendment moved by the member for Sydney, as it begins to address the problems with this bill. I also note that Labor reserves the right to make further amendments to this bill in the Senate.

I had hoped that the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs would have been more successful in representing concerns of the veterans community on this issue. Instead, the government has neglected to consider exactly how this proposal will impact on the veterans community and the fact they will be left with the problems I have outlined today. This is just another example of the veterans community being taken for granted by the Howard government. This card is not good for veterans, it is not good for war widows and it is not good for their families. That is why I cannot support this bill without the appropriate amendments, such as the one moved by the member for Sydney, to address these issues.

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