Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

One of the greatest things you have in a western democracy is the right to be anonymous. There are so many people for who the biggest thing they want is just to be left alone and to not have the government in their face. This is freedom. And the opposite of that you can see in totalitarian regimes, where they want to know everything you do every minute of the day in facial digital recognition. Once you know as much of what a person does, you can have greater control of their life. There's always some virtuous reason to have more control over a person. There's always a virtuous reason where you can say, 'Well, unless you're doing something wrong you've got nothing to worry about.' I just don't want anything to worry about at all. I just want to be left alone.

Now we have the movement to take away cash and just have digital currency. We already have so much of our information that is held. In this bill, one of our concerns is section 74(4), where it allows business to require the use of digital ID if it's appropriate to do so, and, of course, the first people who think it's appropriate to do so are the banks. We already have banks who say, 'We're not going to lend to you because you're involved with the coal industry, you're involved with the gas industry.' This might be a boilermaker or a fitter-and-turner. They are already encroaching on the basic rights of people to participate in the economics of this nation. So they have proven by their actions that they can't be trusted. And you're going to give them even more powers, more oversight over your life, and as you do this, you hand away your freedoms.

When the Banking Association went before the hearing in Canberra on 9 February this year, it was unable to give any level of assurance that it would not seek an exemption from section 74. So it could get digital recognition access to everything that you do. We've seen this creeping expansion over so many years from what is necessary to do their job to what is exceptional—to know as much as they possibly can about you. If you want people to know everything about your life then put a camera in your house—put a camera in every part of your life. They already track—and, of course, it's what the Chinese love to do. They love to hack your phones—they do—to find out where you go, to find out who you speak to, to follow your GPS. Why do they do this? Because the more they know about you—and, of course, it's not an individual watching this—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

In continuation, in country areas we have satellites watching us. Like everywhere, our engagement with government departments is being tracked. We have banks tracking us and wanting even more tracking of us, and, if they get exemptions from section 74, they will start to get more and more knowledge. We have banks that say there are certain industries they won't lend to. We've got the Westpac bank now saying they're going to start enforcing their climate policy on who they lend money to. Why are we protecting them—the four pillar banking policy? God only knows! They haven't done much in the protection of a lot of our industries. And now so many places in cities have digital facial recognition because they believe it's in their interests, and this is endorsement by the government.

If you want people to follow you into bedroom, I suppose that's your business. If you want them to watch you in the bathroom, I suppose that's your business. If you want them to have control over your currency and what you can and can't spend money on, I suppose that's your business. But a lot of people don't want that, and it's not that they're criminals; they just want to be free. They don't like the idea that anyone can open up a computer and almost see whether their car was there or not the night before—to see exactly what's happening, to always look for the mechanism of possible incrimination or if they've acted against the zeitgeist of certain institution.

One of the cruxes of this bill is: is it truly voluntary? Can people say, 'No, I don't want this to be a part of my engagement with the government or part of my engagement with private business'? The point is that the government did not accept the amendments to make it genuinely voluntary, and, as they didn't, it's involuntary. And, as it is such, it can't be supported.

In everything that comes with the belief of the primacy of the state over the individual, where the state reigns supreme and the individual is a servant of the state, part of that process is encapsulated in what exactly happens here, in this bill. This incremental path to an Orwellian type of existence is precisely that—it's incremental. You can't see it when it arrives. You can't deal with it when it arrives. You've got to deal with it long before.

One of the key factors that has us, on this side of the chamber, is the belief that the individual has primacy over the state. As the individual has primacy over the state, one of the great mechanisms to protect that primacy is the individual's anonymity, their capacity to say, 'The state's engagement with me is as little as possible, and its knowledge of me is as basic as possible and not something that can be used against me.' I hope that, as we move to an election—obviously we had a budget which is just an entree to an election. What the government did with that budget last night has told us all that we're not going to have another budget. So, as we head to an election, which will be sooner rather than later, I hope the government help themselves out by not leaving this on the table for us to belt them up over, because we will.

I think that Senator Canavan and Senator Rennick's forensic examination of this is something that warrants so many people out there having a close read. Senator Canavan is not known for getting anything wrong, and, as a qualified accountant with many years of experience, neither is Senator Rennick.

So, on the Senate vote on 30 November, the parliamentary inquiry was established. The submission process closed on 9 January. One month was provided, including Christmas, for people to submit. When the government start doing things like that don't you get a sniff that they're trying to ram something through? Don't you get a sense that not only do they want to remove your capacity to be free and anonymous but they're not even going to give you the capacity to properly ventilate your concerns and have them addressed? That is the nature of a government that have a motive beyond what they initially state.

The banks, of course, will love this—the greater control. We also see the banks in their quid pro quo with the government. There was no better scene in the so-called Voice referendum than when the banks decided they had a role to play in support of the 'yes' case because it fit the social zeitgeist of, to be quite frank, the upper echelons of the executive of the bank. A formal quid pro quo is coming back right here—give the banks more capacity to have greater control over people.

One of the things we put to the banks, especially in regional areas, is what their future engagement with us will be—and I note the member for Flynn is here. There are issues with allowing boilermakers, fitters and turners who are involved with mining getting access to finance. Farmers should not be impaired in their access to finance—and the great addition to that impairment and that understanding that is encapsulated in this bill.

It is going to really show, as we run up to an election, maybe end of this year—they can't have an election when the Western Australian election is on, even though they probably won't win many seats there. It's unlikely they'll ever go to another budget. Around about November, I think, the flag will go up. I listened to the Prime Minister this morning, and the one thing he didn't do is deny that we're going to an election soon. So it will be interesting to see if they ram this bill through. It's an addendum to the whole socialist policy that underpins where the Labor has now arrived. They're a different Labor Party from Hawke and Keating. They're very much a socialist type of party, with a very strong left-wing view. Socialism inherently needs more control over the individual, and that's what we've got in this bill.

In evidence to the committee, Chris Taylor, representing the Australian Banking Association, and Brad Carr, representing National Australia Bank, said they were unable to give any level of assurance that they would not seek an exemption from section 74. Furthermore, on questioning about ministerial powers to grant an exemption, or the grounds upon which the Digital ID Regulator could grant an exemption, the NAB—the National Australia Bank—and the Australian Banking Association agreed there needed to be greater charity in the bill to eventually articulate properly and quite narrowly the circumstances under which section 74 could be applied—this is the section where they can have an exemption and they can demand that the digital ID applies to you.

As I've said, we've gone from a situation where I could go to the bank and give them dollar notes to them now wanting to move to digital currencies and have a digital identification of me. No doubt, that gets interconnected with other digital identifications.

How many times have we heard: 'Oh, this will never get leaked. It's impervious. No-one will ever hack into this. No-one will ever hack into Medicare. No-one will ever hack into Telstra'? Of course, later on, we find out that they have and that our information is out there on the internet. In the Department of Veterans' Affairs, it was, 'They'll never hack into the benefits that veterans are getting,' and then, in a crossover with the University of South Australia, they did.

As you give up more of your information, it can not only be used against you by the enterprises you're dealing with—banks et cetera—but also float out into the general public. No matter how good people's encryption is, there's a person who has designed that encryption and a person who is just as competent to unencrypt it. With the development of artificial intelligence and as we move towards forms of quantum computing, the coding that you put in that would take thousands of years for a computer today will take seconds for a quantum computer in the future. So the capacity to decode what was initially coded will also be quite apparent.

In closing, I say this: growing up in the country has a lot of disadvantages: removal from services and a whole lot of things like that. One of the greatest things we want in the country and in remote areas, even where I live up in the hills, is to be anonymous. So many people like being anonymous. The reason they live there is the freedom of being anonymous. They're not criminals; they just don't want you in their life. They don't want you in their back pocket. They want to be left alone. But, more and more, we're creating a society where we have to know everything about people. People say, 'That's alright, because the government is good.' Well, not all governments around the word are good, and the actions of vindictive players are not good. And, as a general rule, when people know too much about you, that is not good—not because you may be a criminal but because they can use that information against you.

But, no doubt, we'll hear from the socialists in a moment, and they will tell us how perfect knowledge about the individual and the primacy of the state is nothing but a virtuous outcome, and how, in this, you have nothing to worry about if you've done nothing wrong. I put this challenge to them in closing: if you truly believe that that is the case then why won't you accept the amendment to section 74 so that we can make this genuinely voluntary?

See this speech in context