David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I stand here to speak about the Digital ID Bill 2024 with very mixed feelings. I'm one of the 10½ million Australians that have a myGovID. I got sucked in and gave all my details, which the government already has through my tax files and through my multiple passports. But, for some reason when I was in the ministry, I needed something, so I had to sign up to it.

This is an initiative that we all know about and that was created following the review in 2014 known as the Murray inquiry. The resulting initiative is commonly known as the Trusted Digital Identity Framework. There is some merit in the system, but what is proposed is an economywide system, which is different from the way the government and citizens interact, when government provides a lot of services to Australian individuals. But the fact is that this is going to change and be virtually universal.

I'm concerned that there will be multiple identity providers, or multiple issuers of digital identities. There is a private provider already within AGDIS system. But, under what is proposed in the transitional arrangements, they will transition over.

The whole idea of it was to get efficiency for businesses that want to know who they're dealing with. To know that you're not a fake person or a criminal, they want some form of ID.

If we're going to have this system, it should be available to everyone. And there are plenty of people who don't want the government to have more and more ability to digitally track them. There is freedom of movement and freedom of association, but, if it's all in one spot, as the previous speaker mentioned, it puts a lot of architecture in place for long-term digital surveillance. We have seen problems in other nations with social credit systems that are enabled by being tracked. Your behaviour, in some autocratic nations, gives you social credit or brownie points, so you can access more services—or, secondarily, you can be denied services.

At the same time, we have two other digital phenomena happening in the world. We have the cashless society being foisted on us by bankers because it suits them. I have no doubt that most of us like the ability to have a credit card and to tap and go, but most of us also like the fact that we can have real money—real cash—and deal in that way. There are plenty of people in our country who don't have access to the cashless society, so we need to keep cash.

This is just another part of a phenomenon. We are clever monkeys and we have developed amazing technology. But, when you combine social credit systems, a cashless society and digital tracking, and you put artificial intelligence on top of that, it gets to be a very scary combination of digital skills that can upend your life.

We've all heard of identity theft. What if someone were to be able to hack into the government super system, which this federal government seems to be wanting to happen? There are state based systems existing in some jurisdictions, and there have been high-level intergovernmental meetings to try and force everyone onto the one system. If it's going to be here, I'd prefer that there were some private providers, because they might be a safer venue to hold your critical information, rather than a monstrous central government system that can be hacked.

We hear about it all the time. Could you imagine if someone got an image of you and made a 'digital you' with artificial intelligence? You've seen some prominent people who've had their images stolen, a digital fake made of them and appeared in financial scams, advertising goods and services, and they have no idea. I've seen pictures of some of these celebrities and elected officials that look remarkably like them. It's a case of buyer beware with this technology. I'm happy to give my identity—that the government already has to a central location—as long as it's secure, but a lot of people aren't and they should have the right not to do that.

As we've seen up in the Senate, they tried to ram this through and did that without a full discussion. The amendments to the Privacy Act haven't been confirmed, there is a mixture of ministers who have legislative and regulatory control over the system versus another minister that has control about the creation of the licences—some are in Finance, some are in DSS. I think this is a shoddy bit of rushed legislation, and that we really need to take a slow breath, get through all these issues and make sure that when it does come in that other entities that are setting up aren't restricted from being part of the system. And people should absolutely have the voluntary right to be able to establish their identity by traditional paper, in-person attendance, written name and address, and all those things and it shouldn't be used as a vehicle for restraining trade and changing conditions of existing contracts with service providers, be they government or not government.

All in all, it's a pretty complex issue. I just think the issue is not urgent. It needs proper and thorough evaluation. It would be good to send it off to a committee that can really pull it to pieces, and we'll get a better product in the end. I reserve my rights on how I proceed in the vote on this issue.

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