Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services, Housing, Youth and Women) Share this | Hansard source

You should have got it right in the first place, Joe, and we would not be here fixing it, mate. It is actually a real shame that the previous minister is leaving, because he made such a hotchpotch of this legislation that there are, in fact, 200 amendments that we could have moved. But this amendment about the document verification service actually goes to the government’s own stated reasons for the legislation. The Attorney-General’s Department confirmed in Senate estimates last week that there is no intergovernmental agreement yet on what documents are sufficiently reliable proof for identity processes. Miles Jordana, the First Assistant Secretary, said:

We are hoping for an intergovernmental agreement on identity security in the first half of this year, but that will depend on the positions taken by the various participants in the states and territories.

The department also confessed in Senate estimates that, as yet, there is no proof of identity framework signed off with the states. Senator Ludwig asked:

In short you would agree that a proof of identity framework has not been signed off by the states and territories?

Miles Jordana replied:

I think it is probably fair to say that at this stage, yes.

So there is uncertainty about the proof of identity framework; and a new, major online system that is being developed—the document verification service, which is designed to enable the Australian government to verify that documents presented by applicants for benefits or services are authentic—will not be finished until 2010. Miles Jordana further said:

... the establishment of a document verification service is something which has a time line in the order of four years—

beginning on 1 July 2006—

So where we can get to this year, if we do manage to complete an IGA—

an intergovernmental agreement—

will need to in a sense recognise where our discussions have got to, including those with our state and territory colleagues.

This means that, from the start of registrations for the access card—which are scheduled to start next year in April—through the document verification service which is coming online in 2010, the Australian government has no ability to do bulk checks on documents to check the authenticity of birth, death and marriage certificates, visas, drivers licences and other identifying documents. (Extension of time granted) What does that mean? It means manual checking of proof of identity documents produced by Australians in the course of registration.

There are 16½ million interviews planned. In each interview people will, presumably, have to provide more than one source of identification. The government are planning 35,000 interviews a day. They have set aside 12 minutes for each of these interviews and they are going to check each one of these documents manually with the states and territories. It beggars belief. Tasmania does not even have electronic records of certificates issued before the 1990s. The document verification service trial, which concluded only a few months ago, included only the New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory births, deaths and marriages agencies. The other agencies around the country have an enormous amount of work to do in scanning millions and millions of original documents, including death certificates.

Without the document verification service, registration is logistically impossible and contains dangerous possibilities of fraud. The government simply cannot credibly register 35,000 people a day and manually check those details on birth certificates, marriage certificates and so on to ensure that the details match up with the paper copies kept in registers in other jurisdictions. How will it happen? Corners will be cut, mistakes will be made and a huge backlog will develop. We do not think this is a good proposal but, if you wanted to do it, any sensible government would wait until the document verification service was online so that the public servants who are checking these documents would be able to do it electronically and do a high volume at a time. It is incredible that we heard the member for Moncrieff, Steve Ciobo, say last night:

I have no doubt that the access card will and can be fraudulently produced in the future. Those who would seek to do the wrong thing by society … would certainly be able to produce a forged access card. The notion that in some way this card is unable to be forged is wrong. It of course can be and will be forged.

This document verification service problem actually means that it will be easier to get a card in a name other than your own. If you are a criminal seeking to set up a fake identity, you would be much better to do it in these early stages when documents will not be adequately checked. I reiterate that Labor believes that the commencement date of the legislation should be brought into line with the operation of the new national document verification service.

Question put:

That the amendment (Ms Plibersek’s) be agreed to.

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