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

I move opposition amendment (5):

(5)    Clause 42, page 39 (line 11), omit

                 “You are not required to carry your card at all times.”. substitute

                 “You are not required to carry your card at any time.”.

Amendment (5) seeks to clarify what this government has said about the card not being a national ID card. If this is not a national ID card, then Australian citizens should not be required to carry it in their day-to-day lives. At the moment the legislation says that Australians will not be required to carry the card at all times. That is fantastic. So if they are in the bath they are not required to carry it or if they are out swimming they are not required to carry it. Labor believes the legislation should say that they are not required to carry it at any time other than the times they need the card to access particular government services. This is a simple change that the government should agree to on the basis that it will clarify that it is not their intention for this to be a national ID card—unless it really is their intention for this to be a national ID card.

I am not sure whether the wording the government has used is an example of poor drafting—it could be because, goodness knows, there is enough poor drafting in this legislation to move 200 amendments—or whether this set of words is intended to leave open the possibility for the access card to be demanded in broader situations than just those of accessing health and social security services.

The need for this amendment was exemplified a couple of nights ago during the debate when the member for Moreton enthused in the parliament ‘Perhaps police officers will be furnished with a portable smartcard reader’ in the future so that Australians can be stopped in the street for an identity check. I thought this was not an ID card. Are we going to have police checking people’s identity cards with portable smartcard readers?

It is worth remembering that there is a Crown exemption included in this legislation, which means that if you are a public servant and you ask for the card, even when you are not entitled to ask for the card, you cannot get into trouble for doing it. If you are a Department of Immigration and Citizenship official and you stop someone and ask to see their identification card, you are doing the wrong thing, but because of the Crown exemption in this legislation you do not get pinged for doing the wrong thing. If you are a police officer and you ask to see a person’s card, although you are not entitled to see their card in the circumstances, because of the Crown exemption you do not get into trouble for it.

We believe that if it is true, as the government says, that it is not its intention for the access card to be an identity card then the government should clarify that by changing its wording that you are not required to carry the card at all times to, ‘You are not required to carry the card at any time,’ obviously with the clarification that you need to present it when accessing particular services.

The member for Moncrieff hit it on the head when he said that this is a Trojan Horse for an identity card. We think the entire legislation is incredibly problematic, but we are hoping that the government will improve some of its most glaring weaknesses by accepting our amendment on this point.

Question put:

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

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