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

The Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 relates to the government’s plan to spend almost $1.2 billion over four years on an access card which will replace the Medicare card, the pharmaceutical benefits concession cards and all Centrelink cards. The government claims that the card will: firstly, make it easier for people to deal with government agencies; secondly, speed up payments and rebates; thirdly, reduce fraud; and, fourthly, replace up to 17 other cards.

Of course, these are all good aims. If this legislation delivered on these aims, we would not have difficulty supporting it. But without significant change, this legislation does not deliver on those goals. In addition, it will have a number of other significant negative impacts. Our concerns about this legislation are not, for the most part, with the technology proposed but rather with the systems designed to collect, store, maintain and transfer information on the card and on the database which backs it up.

Labor support the use of smartcard technology in service delivery. We support the aim of improving service delivery in Medicare and social security and the aim of reducing fraud, but we do not support this proposal because it is full of problems. We will not support a half-baked proposal that simply reproduces identity fraud, that allows a whole lot of personal information on every Australian to be collected and stored without adequate protection and that potentially costs the taxpayer more than it saves.

The first claim made by the government is that the access card will make it easier for people to deal with government agencies. I think it is worth saying that the card will make it a little easier for some people to deal with government agencies but only in that users will not need to notify several government departments if, for example, they change their address. The central register will have the address details changed and that will notify other government departments. But this is a very small change compared with the other improvements that it is possible for the government to make when it comes to service delivery for citizens.

For example, anyone who has seen the body of Centrelink paperwork will know that Centrelink claim forms are far too long and repetitive. Information is required to be provided over and over again—even information that does not change, like the dates of birth, names and ages of children, and so on. Australians should not have to give their income estimates separately every time they apply for a different benefit. Parents will know that they continually get a barrage of letters in the mail querying details of childcare use, of income and of their children’s immunisation status. These come regularly even when there has been absolutely no change in a parent’s circumstances or there is not likely to have been a change in the parent’s circumstances. Anyone who has dealt with Centrelink would know that the paperwork and the correspondence that has to be entered into is long and unnecessarily complicated, and questions are often included that have little or no relevance to the issue at hand.

If the government were interested in improving service to citizens, we would see a greater commitment from the government to the proper resourcing and training of Centrelink staff. An internal Centrelink random sample survey conducted by the Australian National Audit Office in June last year showed that around 30 per cent of Centrelink records contained an error which resulted in the wrong payment. These errors will not be fixed by the access card, and it is one of the greatest difficulties for people who are interacting with Centrelink. The access card will certainly not make fixing these errors any easier. All it will do is have some marginal effects around people establishing their credentials with Centrelink. The access card also does nothing about issues such as the time that Australians are spending in Centrelink and Medicare queues. That is probably one of the things that is raised most often with members of parliament when it comes to dissatisfaction with social security and Medicare services. Again, this card does nothing to improve that issue.

The government’s second claim is that the access card will speed up payments and rebates. There is simply no evidence in the legislation or any of the explanatory material of how an access card would do that. It is certainly a short cut to proving identity to government agencies, but it does not change the way that claims are processed or payments are made. The access card is not related to the separate initiative for Australians to receive their Medicare rebate electronically, which is planned for sometime this year in any case. So while electronic payment of rebates will reduce the time that Australians spend in the Medicare queue that I was just talking about, the access card is a separate initiative to this e-payment of Medicare rebates.

The third claim made by the government—that the access card will reduce fraud—is perhaps the most difficult to understand. The government says that the access card will reduce fraud, in particular through the registration process which will seek to verify the identity of everyone who currently possesses a Medicare card, health care card, veterans card or any of the other cards I mentioned. This would be a much more convincing argument if the registration process was rigorous and watertight. Unfortunately, the fraud-reducing potential of the access card has been completely undermined by the fact that the registration for cards is supposed to begin early next year, long before the planned national document verification service comes online.

As the proposal stands at the moment, it is actually possible that the access card will make things worse when it comes to perpetuating existing fraud. On top of that, it obviously puts at risk the security and privacy of the vast majority of honest Australians. But focusing specifically on the issue of proof of identity, there is currently no efficient way of checking the proof of identity documents of the 35,000 Australians that are supposed to be issued with cards each day until this national document verification service comes online.

From April next year, the government plans to start registering 35,000 people every day. The national document verification service that is being developed by the Attorney-General’s Department to check the authenticity of birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates and so on—along with drivers licences, visas and other forms of identification that applicants for the access card will be presenting—is simply not ready. This system, a massive online data-sharing network, is just not built yet. And it will not be built by next year. In fact, the Attorney-General’s Department last week said in the estimates hearings that that system will not be completed until 2010.

The document verification system is critical to the registration process and, as it will not be ready until 2010, it makes little sense for this legislation to bring the registration period forward to as soon as April next year. Anyone who was really clever about wanting to set up a false identity would make sure that they did it in the first months of the operation of this system, when the government’s ability to check identification documents will be much weaker.

The government’s fourth claim, that the access card will replace up to 17 cards, sounds all very well on the front page of the newspaper, but most people have only one card—they have a Medicare card—a small number of people have two cards and fewer still have three cards. At the same time that the government is claiming people will be liberated by the access card—they will be able to throw out their bulky old wallets—they are introducing another card. The childcare smartcard is an ill-conceived idea that childcare operators have unanimously said is stupid. And parents have just shaken their heads about the idea that they will have to pull out a card every time they drop the kids off or pick them up at child care. They will have to work out which parent is going to have the card at which time of the day when they drop off and pick up the kids.

It seems to be nonsensical to try to spruik a benefit of this access card as reducing the need for all these government cards and at the same time talk about introducing extra cards like the childcare smartcard. I think the fact that people have two or even three cards is generally of less concern to them than knowing that their identity is secure from hackers and that any information that they have provided to the government is safe and will not be stolen and used inappropriately. The notion is that there is a clamour out there for people to have the number of cards reduced. It is not a bad aim; it is a good aim, but it has to be done with all of the proper safeguards to ensure that this card, with all of the important information stored on it, will not become a honey pot for criminals interested in stealing people’s identities.

Our main concerns with the proposal are, firstly, the accuracy, security and privacy of the data to be stored on the card and the database which supports it. Many individuals and groups have expressed their concerns about the card, including the Australian Medical Association and some government members of parliament. The member for Moncrieff said that the access card could become a Trojan Horse for a national ID card. The member for Mackellar said that it does not pass the Nazi test. And even the Attorney-General has admitted that the access card could be exploited by future governments. I am surprised that he thinks that only future governments might do the wrong thing. I would be a little more concerned about the current government.

There is too much information stored on the face of the card. All of the public critics of the card say that it is unnecessary to have a number of the key identifiers on the face of the card. The government says that it is not an ID card by stealth but critics—including Professor Allan Fels, who the government had work on the privacy issues surrounding the card—rightly point out that if this is true then it is unnecessary to have so much information printed on the card. The bill provides that a name, a unique personal identification number, a digital signature, a photograph and an expiry date must all 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—their blindness listed on the face of the card.

With so much on the face of the card it is difficult to see how it is not an identification card. As I said, Allan Fels was commissioned by the government to report on the privacy aspects of the card. That means that the government probably knows that there are some very significant privacy issues here and that the decisions should not be made on the run when we have to decide on such important and technical matters relating to privacy.

Allan Fels recommended to the government that the unique identifying number and the electronic signature not be displayed on the card because they are unnecessary and pose a risk to people’s security. The government has ignored this recommendation but did not give any reasons for ignoring it. The digital signature is an obvious risk. A teller at a video store could take a photocopy of your card and use your signature for all sorts of inappropriate reasons. In relation to the unique number which Professor Fels is concerned about, if people want the convenience of having their number on their card, why not make it voluntary like some of the other information that is included in the card? Indeed, many people have said that you could contain the photograph within the chip in the card rather than having it on the face of the card.

There is a great deal of concern about the amount of information on the face of the card and how this makes this card a de facto ID card. The information stored on the chip repeats the information on the face of the card, and there are some additional pieces of information that are contained in a microchip embedded in the card. The information will be divided into what can be read by any card reader that you can get for a few dollars at your local Dick Smith shop or any other electronics store and information which requires a personal identification number as well.

Last week Professor Fels brought down a report on the voluntary medical information to be stored on the chip. He said in that report:

The decision about what specific health and emergency data might be listed in the card is a considerably more complex matter than might have been anticipated ... This is because the data entered into the chip is data which is intended to be acted upon by other people—

in life-threatening situations. The example that the AMA and others have given is that, if there is incorrect information about medication or the information has not been updated recently, you can be given other medication that interacts, potentially fatally, with the medication that is noted on your card. So the information has to be dead right, and the fact that the information can be loaded on and changed by anyone at any time who has access to the card reader is obviously of concern. There is no real detail in this legislation about who can load on the information and under what circumstances. I think Professor Fels’s comment about the potential uses of the card initially sounding appealing but turning out to be a lot more complicated and problematic than they seemed is a pretty sound comment on a great deal of the suggested uses of this card.

Turning now to the information stored on the database, the registry, as it is called, will include: a date of birth; citizen or permanent residency status; sex; residential and postal address; date of registration and status of registration—full or interim, for example—the personal identification number; veteran status; and electronic copies of documents used to prove your identity when initially registering. Information that people can opt to have on the register includes Indigenous status, email and phone contact.

The government proposes that scanned copies of original documents presented when Australians are interviewed before being given their card be kept on an electronic file. That makes this register an enormously valuable resource for criminals, who can hack into it or bribe public servants to get access to it. A criminal could steal a person’s whole identity by getting access to the information contained in this register.

For the most part, I believe government information is closely held and well managed, but there are examples of identity theft that has depended on false documents and on unauthorised accessing of databases by public servants that should give us pause for thought when we consider just how valuable this honey pot of information is. Just recently, at the end of last year in December 2006, an Australian man was arrested in New Zealand for using the birth certificate of a baby born in 1965 who had lived only 13 days. He used that birth certificate to apply for a New Zealand passport. There were 600 privacy breaches within Centrelink reported in August 2006 where staff had accessed customer records without proper cause or authorisation. There was a report by the Child Support Agency obtained under freedom of information in June last year that found that 405 privacy breaches had occurred in the previous nine months. In at least two of these cases mothers and their children had to be physically relocated at taxpayers’ expense because the Child Support Agency’s release of information had put them at risk. You can see the very high stakes of people getting access to documents not their own and information that they should not have access to. Bringing all of this information together in this way and including electronic scanned copies of original birth certificates and so on seems to me to be asking for trouble.

The additional problem that has been raised by a number of critics is something that we call function creep. The concern is that every minister and every department will want to use the card for some other new whiz-bang purpose and that over time the amount of information stored on the card and the purposes of the card will expand. That makes the card more valuable, not only to the owner but to anyone seeking to steal the card and use it for improper purposes. The more functions the card has, the more valuable it is to a criminal and of course the more vulnerable it is to theft or misuse. The issue of function creep is particularly concerning because of the vast amount of discretion left to the minister about the information which can be collected in this legislation. There really is nothing to stop the minister changing what information is collected over time or the uses to which the information is put.

The AMA has suggested that this problem could be minimised by the government specifically legislating what the unique identification number on the card could be used for. But, like a number of other sensible suggestions made by the AMA and by people who have commented on the draft legislation and made other comments about this bill, this suggestion has been ignored.

When it comes to the forgery of cards, it was interesting to hear the chief of the Australian Federal Police, Mick Keelty, say that he is very enthusiastic about the card because it will help reduce identity fraud. He has happily acknowledged that the devil is in the detail, because this card will not reduce identity fraud unless we can be confident of the security of the information on the chip and on the register. There will be many people who tell you that smartcards are easily forged, as all mass-produced cards are. Even if the chip on the card is inactive, the face value of such a card will be high because of the hoops you have to jump through to get it in the first place. Dame Stella Rimington, former chief of MI5 in the UK, said in relation to the UK ID card:

ID cards have possibly some purpose. But I don’t think that anybody in the intelligence services, particularly in my former service, would be pressing for ID cards. My angle on ID cards is that they may be of some use but only if they can be made unforgeable - and all our other documentation is quite easy to forge. If we have ID cards at vast expense and people can go into a back room and forge them, they are going to be absolutely useless.

She said that in a speech in 2005. The government says that this is not an ID card. It keeps denying that this is an ID card, but obviously Mick Keelty is excited by the possibility of using it as a source of identification, and I think it is pretty plain to anyone who has followed this debate that there is nothing to distinguish this card from an identification card.

There is a danger, obviously, with lost and stolen cards. The government currently runs the ASIC—the aviation security identification card—system, which is used by officials who need access to sterile areas of airports. Three hundred and eighty-four of these cards were reported as stolen or missing in 2005 alone. The government says that access cards which are lost or stolen will be deactivated the next time they are swiped, but of course the face value of the card is still very useful.

The strongest opponents of this in the community are the people who believe that this is to all intents and purposes an ID card. It is just amazing to have members opposite who were such strong opponents of the Australia Card proposal, including the Prime Minister himself, now seeing no problem with introducing something that is essentially the Australia Card on steroids. This card and the register contain a great deal more information than the proposed Australia Card, and the use of biometric technology means that it is much more useful for surveillance measures than the Australia Card ever would have been. The biometric photo on the card can obviously be matched with surveillance video taken in public places to track people.

The government says that people will not be able to ask to see your card as a form of ID and that there is a two-year jail term and a 120-penalty-unit fine for people who do, but this relates to people who require you to show your card, not to people who request, not to people who ask nicely, not to people who might offer the option that you might want to show your card. On top of that, there is what is called a Crown exemption, which means that, even if someone improperly asks to see your card, the fact that they work for a state or federal government department means that they cannot be prosecuted for it. We also think it is incredibly unlikely that the poorly-resourced Privacy Commissioner will have the resources to follow up on the misuse of this card or that the police would ever have the resources and energy to investigate and prosecute in this area.

There is no guarantee that the collection, storage and maintenance of the information on the database will not be outsourced. It could be outsourced overseas; we do not know. We do not know what that means about the protection from onselling of very sensitive information.

The government says that the card is voluntary, that nobody is forced to get one. You are only forced to get one if you ever want to use a Medicare service; if you ever want to have access to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme; if you are a veteran and you want to access your veterans entitlements; or if you ever want childcare benefit or family tax benefit. That is not voluntary at all!

The biometric technology that is used has a very high failure rate. It can be affected by weight gain or weight loss. It has about a 10 per cent failure rate, we are told. That means that people may actually be stopped from accessing services that they are entitled to because of faulty technology.

The registration process is going to be an absolute nightmare, with people needing to present all sorts of documents. For people living in the outback, the government say that they are going to send out vans, but I do not believe that they are going to send out a van to every community and every farm in Australia.

On the cost, the government say that they will save $3 billion over 10 years. They keep claiming this figure, although the KPMG report that they have released in a highly censored version says that they could save between $1.6 billion and $3 billion over 10 years. If the figure is actually $1.6 billion, they would save more money by putting the $1.1 billion or $1.2 billion that they are going to spend in the bank and collecting the interest.

This also restricts the Medicare access of 16- and 17-year-olds in a way that is of extreme concern. For this reason and a number of others, a second reading amendment is proposed by Labor. I move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “while supporting the use of smart card technology to improve service delivery in Medicare and social security; to reduce the number of cards necessary for people using these services; and to reduce social security and health fraud; the House is of the opinion that the bill should not proceed in its current form because:

(1)

there are inadequate safeguards to protect the accuracy and privacy of information on the card and in the register;

(2)

the Government continues to keep secret key information about the costs of the card; and

(3)

there is no guarantee that the Document Verification Service will be fully operational with appropriate safeguards by the commencement date proposed”.

Labor will be moving further detailed amendments both in the House and in the Senate, particularly after the Senate inquiry into this bill. The inquiry is rushed and inadequate but nevertheless may cause us to come up with further amendments to be moved in the Senate.

Kim Wilkie (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Labor Party have yet again put a proposition to Australia that if they were elected they would have a ministry for victims. The heart of the member for Sydney really was not in her contribution to this debate tonight, but she went through the philosophical nightmare that she has to face because of the extreme left of politics that is her favourite ground. She put the case: ‘No matter what benefits you think are possible, don’t worry, you will be a victim—you will be made to feel a victim. Everything will fail; everything you have will be lost.’ We are going to see and hear a lot more of this from the Labor Party between now and the federal election day—an alternate government that believes in growing the numbers of victims in Australian society. A constituency of victims suits the Labor Party. To create an environment whereby people are downtrodden and feeling as though they are somehow or other consigned to some sort of threatening environment suits the Australian Labor Party. It is not the way Australia operates in 2007, and they need to get over this philosophical hurdle that continues to encumber them and continues to cause them to fail to do the hard work to understand what is before the House right now.

What is before the House tonight is a bill that starts the incremental steps towards the creation of this access card regime. This is not about a national identity card. That was 20 years ago—and 20 years ago the member for Sydney probably led student protests in favour of the Australia Card. She can exercise as many ironies as she likes, and she can besmirch the professional standards of public servants in this country under parliamentary privilege for as many days as she likes, but the simple reality is that what this government is doing is putting in place a system that will suit the law abiders, the people of Australia who do the right thing by the system. As the ad says, it supports the system which supports them. In my electorate of Moreton, if we want to talk about Medicare and Medicare services and benefits, there were 1.6 million services in the 2004-05 financial year, according to the complete set of ratified figures that I have, some $67.3 million worth of services; in the electorate of Sydney there were 1.9 million services, some $86 million worth of services. So I do not know whether the member for Sydney is somehow putting a case in favour of this higher use of Medicare. If the AFP’s figures are right, 50 per cent of fraud against the Commonwealth is committed in Medicare transactions, so maybe she is putting a case to make sure we do not put pressure on those in her constituency who are a party to that. Either way I think her contribution tonight has missed the point completely.

Nor is this about following the British model. I have to say that a few of my colleagues have had a few comments to make about what has happened through the Home Office. When I went to the Home Office four years ago as a minister in this government and spoke to them about a variety of things, one of the things I clearly understood was that the UK circumstance is very different from Australia. For a start, they have far more porous borders. There are a lot more illegal entrants in the UK than in Australia—in fact, I think the estimate at that time was about one million people in that country. They did not know who they were. So the British government—and particularly in this post-September 11 environment it is not an excuse for draconian measures but an excuse to look at and refine further good conduct to society—brought in, basically, a system which said, ‘No card, no access,’ to flush out all those who were unlawfully in society. That is not an issue in Australia today, because we have a very different and in fact much-envied system of organised migration to this country.

The Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 is the first of a series of bills, a point the member for Sydney did not highlight to the House. This is about establishing the framework of what is to come next, and it could not be done in a more open and accountable way than with this series of staged legislative responses to the variety of issues which the member for Sydney has raised. Frankly, in the absence of an understanding that this is the first of a series of bills, it might have been a legitimate series of things she raised, but she forgot that key point: this is not the endgame; this is the beginning of it. This is about establishing a framework for the card. This is about addressing matters of community interest, including establishing the objects and the purposes within this legislation to prevent things such as function creep—and I will deal with some function creep ideas that have come out of my constituency by way of example; there are a variety of them and I will come back to them in a moment. But this is also about establishing the register and the card to provide certainty so that information will be on the register and the chip within the access card. It is about prohibiting unauthorised demand for and use of the access card for identity purposes, and it is about vesting the ownership of the access card with the cardholder.

The Minister for Human Services, Senator Ian Campbell, and his predecessor Minister Hockey made it absolutely plain that a variety of subsequent legislation will be brought into this place. Before the people of Australia, we will see a full and open debate—before the first registration of the access card, which is due by April 2008. A variety of matters are expected to be dealt with, including the protection of the information on the register and the card. Legislation will be put before this place that will set out completely the limited circumstances of access, use and disclosure of information, including its relationship with the Criminal Code covering such things as hacking offences. It will deal with matters such as the effective oversight and governance of the access card system; issues regarding use of the access card—in other words dependants, carers and other linked persons and their access to the information on the card—circumstances giving rise to the suspension and cancellation of registration of the card; and the replacement of lost and stolen cards. It will also deal with some of the issues relating to the individual’s area on the chip, where they can store some voluntary information that may be of use to them in their interaction with government. It will be about presenting the card to obtain Commonwealth benefits from 2010 and other transitional issues.

Listening to the member for Sydney tonight, the people of Australia would be confused and think they are about to have what the Hawke government tried to introduce in 1987—that is, a one-size-fits-all compulsory stamp across their forehead in the form of a plastic card. That is not what this government is proposing. We want to deal with the convenience of access to government services, and we want to deal with the opportunity for people to put additional information on the card to make that journey with government a lot easier. We want to make it possible for those who are dealing fraudulently with the Commonwealth to be put under pressure. The minority of people in this country who do the wrong thing should be penalised and should be reasonably under threat of restriction. We are not trying to control the population or to restrict legitimate access to the support afforded to those in need.

In my electorate there are 4,519 people who are non-income support healthcare cardholders; 8,520 people who are healthcare cardholders; 15,071 pension concession cardholders; and 2,248 Commonwealth seniors healthcare cardholders. That is 30,358 people who are no doubt very interested in whether or not the variety of combined access to Commonwealth services could in fact be better facilitated by the use of this one card which would provide them with easy access to those services. I do not know the exact figures on veterans, but I have a very strong local veterans community in my electorate. There are about 200,000 veterans in Australia; 135,850 of them have gold cards, 47,000 have white cards and 15½ thousand have orange cards. There are 109,487 dependants who also have gold cards. So there are a lot of Australians who can get what the member for Sydney either was too lazy to raise or quite deliberately forgot to raise in her presentation to the Australian people tonight.

What the government is out to do with this legislation is to put in place an improved access regime that ramps up the protection for the taxpayer and ramps up the integrity measures associated with interaction with government. A lot of government departments like to have their own systems—that is, what suits them and the way they operate. It is a bit like the oft talked about Yes, Minister series in that nothing is going to happen until the system is in place. So, in a lot of ways, this is a bold set of steps for the bureaucracy to get their heads around as well. They have to work very hard in a cooperative way to make sure that they are seeing things from a whole-of-government point of view, not simply from the view of what suits their own department’s logic. It is not fair or right to suggest, as the member for Sydney did tonight, that public servants are somehow or other in the trade of information game. That was the impression she tried to give.

Our constituents are very interested in this—there is no doubt about it—and perhaps for the sorts of hysterical reasons outlined by the shadow minister for victims, the member for Sydney. People can see that there are some possibilities associated with this card. Mr John McGregor, from my electorate, wrote me a letter saying that he sees all sorts of possibilities. I do not think it hurts, as a contrast point in this discussion, to put some of these things down. For instance, he says that in the debate we are going to have in Australia he would like to see a high-memory capacity discussed. He would like to see his access card able to store a wide variety of digital media, from standard text files and doc files to audio MP3 files. I see the member for Macarthur is at the table. He would possibly like a few MP3 files on his card too, but I do not want to put words in his mouth.

Mr McGregor is making the point that it is not so much about listening to your favourite song as being able to format image files such as X-rays, which could be of some use in the sorts of emergencies that people have talked about. The government is not planning these things, but the point is that these technical possibilities are there. As we move forward, we have to be careful that we get the balance right, as the government is trying to do in this incremental advance towards the access card.

Mr McGregor also said it would be nice to hold secure and non-secure information on the card. That could be quite handy in your contact with state and local governments. His point is that perhaps his library card could be displaced by this smartcard. He would have a ready reckoner on file of the sorts of books he liked, not just simply a secure Medicare file. All of these things would be opened by a personal identification number and perhaps some other biometrics, such as digital fingerprints, iris scans and so forth. Either way, he would like to have control of his card. That is not an unreasonable expectation.

Whether or not the government want to move down that path will be discussed in the weeks and months ahead, as we work our way through incrementally. It is not the intention of the government to go down that path, but the possibilities, technically, are there. Offering secure ID functions on the card could, my constituent says, allow people to opt to use this as a way of dealing with authority in helping to check people’s identity. There are all of the Big Brother overtones associated with that. Perhaps 20 years ago, in the ID card debate associated with the Australia Card, we were right to say no. But the possibilities are still there in a technical sense and we may see an incremental move towards that.

Perhaps police officers will be furnished with a portable smartcard reader. The member for Sydney says you can get them from Dick Smith pretty cheaply. They would have to be cheap for the Queensland police to buy them. Nevertheless, there are real possibilities to access particular data that is authorised to be accessed. There could be some sort of open folder format, just like opening a passport. That is Mr McGregor’s viewpoint. His idea is to be able to use the technology associated with this card not just for the official, secure transactions with government but perhaps as a passive means to carry out transactions for things within the community.

We will have an interesting debate as we work our way through this issue. It is a debate that the government are rightly sponsoring through the responsible way that we are working our way through this legislation. There is the opportunity to bring in further legislation to harness the protocols that Mr McGregor and others aspire to. At the same time we will make sure that we are not ignoring those sorts of possibilities out of some great hysteria because we are worried that data will not be protected and we will all be stamped with ‘the mark of the beast’, as Revelation puts it.

I remember 20 years ago working in the media—I think this time 20 years ago I was working for The 7.30 Report on the ABC—and there were plenty of people in the community who were fostering all of the conspiracy theories that the member for Sydney tried to put in her contribution tonight. Those sorts of approaches are quite real in the minds of the sheltered few, but the simple reality is that in Australia and the world in 2007 there is a demand for us to be more accessible to a range of services using digital formats. Equally, our digital identifiers are well established and well known: if you are on the internet, you have an internet provider associated with your particular website; and as you access the internet your information is gathered and stored. There are reasons to be fearful about how secure some of those sites are—and lots of money is spent by governments in particular to secure certain sites, as indeed they should. I think the lessons of the last 20 years are based on the practical reality of the way a lot of information has been accessed by those who we do not want to access it, and it means that we are a lot better at protecting information than we have ever been in the past. People like Mr McGregor are saying that we should look at opt-in and opt-out options within this access card regime. On the identity theft front, we should demand of government that it has the protocols in place to make sure that any transaction, voluntary or otherwise, that we happen to transact by use of this card is afforded the greatest level of protection that is technically and scientifically possible.

The simple reality in the job that you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I do is that we know from the information we gather—because people offer it to us in our dealings with our constituents; and we know because of the insights we are afforded through committee work in this place of the way in which police protocols and information-gathering protocols are supported in this nation—that there is a lot of information out there about each and every one of us. The question then is: do you want to combine all that in a convenient way? If you are an honest law-abiding citizen there is nothing to fear in the slightest.

At the end of it, this legislation is about supporting the law-abiding decent Australian citizen—and there are millions of them—who transacts almost on a daily basis with government departments and ensuring that those transactions are easy and properly coordinated processes. It is about ensuring that those people are also well protected against those who misuse those processes and cause, by government estimates, billions of dollars of funds to be siphoned away to where they should not go.

Where the technology and the possibilities of this take us is in the hands of this parliament, and that is why the government is embarking on a set of very careful steps down this path for a 2010 start and for the registration process to start in April 2008. We are starting the process in this debate, and I commend this bill to the House.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in this debate to raise a number of concerns with the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 and to support the second reading amendment that the member for Sydney has moved. Essentially this is a bill to introduce a compulsory access card, a card to replace the Medicare card, a card linked to new electronic databases containing essential and personal details about individuals. Labor are not opposed to an access card but are opposed to the way in which this card is being introduced. We are very concerned about aspects of the card which have not been fully considered and fully explained by government. On one front, we are not being given information commissioned by the government in justification of its move and, on another front, the government are not picking up key recommendations of Professor Fels into privacy issues—again, information advice commissioned by the government but which they are ignoring.

The second reading amendment moved by the member for Sydney spells out those concerns and in essence we believe that there are inadequate safeguards in the bill as it stands going to protect the accuracy and privacy of information. We believe that the government continuing to keep secret information about the costs of the card and what it is designed to do is not appropriate. We also are concerned that there is no guarantee that the document verification service will be fully operational and contain appropriate safeguards. Having said that, if the government supports those issues and amends the legislation accordingly, we will support the bill; if not, we will oppose the bill.

It is important in our view to have a robust and secure system to prevent welfare fraud but it is equally important to protect personal privacy and to prevent identity theft. Labor have consistently opposed welfare fraud and theft and we have supported measures to prevent it. Centrelink, Medicare and veterans payments should only go to those who need them, and we must be vigilant against the rorts that undeniably exist. The question is: will this access card prevent or significantly reduce fraud? That is the assertion that the government makes. On the information available to us, it is not possible to answer that question. The government has not released the work commissioned through KPMG which it says supports its case. It argues the need to access information to prevent fraud but it will not give us the justification of the solution.

KPMG was asked to identify the costs and benefits of introducing the access card, but the government will not release that information. We again call on the government to release in full the detail that they are withholding. KPMG points out that its proposal represents a significant change from present practices to combat fraud through detection and investigation. The new approach that they propose, and to which this legislation is intended, is aimed more at prevention and deterrence. But how effective will the new methods be? What are the costs in inconvenience to users of essential health and welfare services? What about the possible erosion of individual rights and privacy? KPMG’s analysis has been reported to the government, but it has not been released. We call on the government to release that information. In the absence of the information, it is very hard to accept the government’s bald assertions.

KPMG asserts that a robust and uniform registration process, underpinned by strengthened proof of identity requirements and the provision of a card which will properly authenticate the user, will make fraud much more difficult. KPMG says that it will not only help prevent fraud at the outset but also give Medicare and Centrelink better information with which to detect fraud. All of that may be true, but we have no way of judging the merits of those claims—it is just the government’s assertion. It is not backed by information that the government has released but by information it says it has seen—and which it will not share with the rest of the community. Significant sections of KPMG’s report have been deleted for ‘cabinet-in-confidence’ reasons.

And then we have to deal with the financial costs of implementation. Detailed costings have been removed for commercial reasons. The government has released KPMG’s broad indication of possible fraud savings, ranging from $1.6 billion to $3 billion over a 10-year period. The minister has quoted the higher figure—$3 billion—but omitted the time scale, giving the impression of large and immediate savings. Whatever the savings, they could be completely swamped by the costs of implementation of the scheme—costs that could well blow out to more than $1 billion. No-one really knows how much welfare fraud there is—and, if the government knows it, it certainly is not telling us.

It is a fact that people claiming welfare benefits under false identities are only one aspect of waste and fraud. Centrelink does make mistakes, and applicants make honest and inadvertent errors in applications. No identity card will stop applicants claiming in their own name payments to which they are not entitled.

The integrity of registration and information gathering for the access card will clearly be an important factor in achieving its goal of fraud prevention. The government envisages personal interviews for registration. There will need to be, therefore, more than 16 million interviews and photographs, with verification of identification documents. The government has based its costings on the assumptions that each interview will take no longer than five minutes. In our view, this is likely to be a gross underestimate, particularly where there are language difficulties or where documents are not verifiable, have been forgotten or cannot be produced.

There will also be significant costs to families in obtaining birth and marriage certificates, up to $45 each. Certificates from foreign countries may not be acceptable because their authenticity cannot be verified. People from war zones and areas of civil disturbance may not be able to obtain the necessary certificates; indeed, they may not even exist. Proof of residence over the past 10 years may be required. That will be very difficult for itinerant people and anyone who moves frequently. The government still has not explained how people such as the mentally ill, the homeless or otherwise severely disadvantaged people will be able to qualify for their cards. What is the status of their carers? The aforementioned people’s very survival will depend on the card, because they will have to produce it to access the benefits upon which they so desperately rely.

We also raised concern about people living in regional and remote areas. This is a field of one of my portfolio responsibilities. They may have to travel long distances to present for an interview, with the possibility of a return trip if there is a problem with their documentation. The government has said that mobile teams will register people in regional areas. This is to be commended, but obviously problems will arise if people are away from their homes when the mobile teams visit.

Much greater thought and public consultation needs to be put into the development of this proposal. It is not something that can be rushed through the parliament when significant aspects remain unresolved. We are being asked in essence to buy a pig in a poke, and I must say that this pig needs much closer examination. I have said before that the opposition want this information from KPMG released. We believe it is in the public interest in order to test whether the government’s claims stack up.

The new card will have a name, a personal identification number, a signature and a biometric photograph. It will also have a digital chip that can carry medical information, an address, emergency contacts, concession status and stored value—or money. The biometric photo is an interesting concept in itself. A biometric photo is a digitised image of a mathematical formula of the measurements of facial features, making it easy to compare the image on the card and the database with images from video footage, newspapers or other sources. Clearly, this has implications for surveillance beyond access to welfare services. It is expected that state and federal police will have access to the database, which will hold photographs of the entire Australian adult population. There are concerns about the accuracy of matches between images. There is a failure rate, and there are obvious problems with significant changes in appearance, such as weight changes or other physical changes. This may cause people to be misidentified and possibly denied benefits to which they would otherwise be entitled.

The minister says that the new card will protect privacy in that it will show less information than current drivers licences; for example, it will not show date of birth and home address. It is true that much information will not be visible on the card itself, but it will be able to be read by authorised electronic readers. Professor Allan Fels, as head of the Consumer and Privacy Taskforce which was established as part of the consideration of this legislation to advise the government, proposed two significant amendments to the government’s plan, which the government has not accepted: that the personal identification number and the digitised signature not be displayed on the card. Professor Fels says that a digitised signature is not necessary, in that signatures on similar cards are very rarely checked, and the inclusion of the signature provides an opportunity for identity theft.

Professor Fels has similar concerns about the unique number being visible on the card. He accepts that it will have to be on the chip, but a visible number can be easily copied and used to assist in identity fraud. Professor Fels has further concerns that the card may become a national identity card which has to be produced on demand. The government says that the card is voluntary. This is an entirely disingenuous statement, I would suggest, because anyone who requires access to any government benefits or services—which is just about everyone at some time—will need to have the card. Given that that is the obvious consequence of entitlement to benefit, it would be very easy for a future government to change the law to require everyone to carry the card at all times and to produce it on demand.

Professor Fels has also said that there must be strict security surrounding the databases on which the card is based. I am concerned that collection, storage and maintenance of information on the databases may be outsourced—perhaps even offshore, beyond the reach of Australian security and privacy mechanisms and legislation. Further, Professor Fels said that the public must have confidence in the card, and this can only be ensured by strong legislation. He has called for the government to put its commitments regarding privacy and data security in the legislation, but this bill does not do that. We all know about the record of this government in terms of broken promises and the redefinition of promises, with ‘core promises’ being the only ones that have to be honoured.

In summary, we are being asked to agree to a card before the full facts are known, before all the rules have been made public, before the full need for it has been disclosed to the public, before projected costs and benefits have been thoroughly examined and disclosed, and before full consultation and discussion have taken place. This is another example of this arrogant and out-of-touch government not trusting the people and not seeing the need to take the people into its confidence. It applies double standards. It wants the card to build trust in the system, but it will not trust the people who make up the system.

I want to briefly allude to the fact that the Hawke government proposed the Australia Card back in 1986-87. It was proposed to carry a unique number, the cardholder’s name, address and signature, and it was to be used only for taxation, social welfare and Medicare purposes. It was not to carry a photograph, and the technology at the time precluded any thought of including a chip with digitised information. As president of the ACTU back then, I supported the proposal. I believed then, as I believe now, that abuse of the welfare system cannot be condoned. It constitutes theft from the public. Abuse of the system and misdirection of limited resources mean that deserving recipients are the ones who miss out. Then, I was satisfied that the privacy issues had been sufficiently addressed and protected in the proposed legislation and in the limited scope of the proposed card. There had also been extensive community consultation. As is well known, the Australia Card was abandoned following legal advice that, although the legislation could have been passed by a joint sitting of parliament, the Senate could have disallowed regulations crucial to the implementation and operation of the card. Of course, at the time, public opposition to the scheme was also undoubtedly a factor in the government’s decision to abandon the bill in 1987.

It is our view that, since then, this government has learnt very little from the circumstances at that time. There are many unanswered questions—and I detailed those earlier—but the real concerns about the proposed access card go to the fact that, despite the government’s denials, the access card will inevitably become an identity card, even if the legislation seeks to prohibit its use as such. The very strength of the card will lead to it being requested and used as proof of identity. We are also concerned that there may well be function creep—further functions added—and that, whilst the parliament may legislate for data protection, it cannot ensure compliance. There is a real possibility of data misuse and consequent loss of privacy.

It is against that background that we moved a second reading amendment, and the member for Sydney will also be moving amendments in the consideration in detail stage. We believe that the Senate inquiry should be given more time to consult and report on the issues that we have raised and will continue to raise. I support the second reading amendment and I indicate on behalf of the opposition that, if the amendments that we have proposed are not adopted by the government, we will oppose this bill.

Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate you, Mr Deputy Speaker Secker, on your appointment to the Speaker’s panel. I rise in support of the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007. My support for this legislation is premised on a very clear need to update Australia’s delivery of health services. The current Medicare arrangements which govern delivery of over $16 billion in health benefits have been in place and unchanged since 1984—the same year the dollar coin was introduced and the same year Advance Australia Fair was proclaimed as our national anthem. Many things have changed since that time—but not the Medicare card.

The Medicare card uses outdated magnetic strip technology. The Australian Federal Police estimate that more than half of identity fraud cases in Australia each year involve a Medicare card. It is because it is cheap and easy to copy, and there is no photo on it. The Federal Police also tell us that a high-quality fake Medicare card can be purchased on the black market for $150. The Australian people should be able to expect their government to provide a robust form of protection for their personal information. The current Medicare card and the other 16 cards and vouchers that the smartcard will replace do not provide this protection. This, of course, leads us to the issue of welfare fraud.

It is estimated that the smartcard will save some $3 billion in health and welfare fraud over the next 10 years. My understanding is that this is a conservative estimate. When one considers that the Department of Human Services distributed $100 billion in health and welfare benefits last year, I think it would be fair to say that we could realistically expect even greater savings than effectively three per cent of our total health and welfare expenditure, especially when we consider the degree to which those who have been fraudulently using the card have been able to use it under the current system. As examples of this, there is the case of a Victorian man who allowed his father, a non-resident, to claim the Medicare rebate to the value of $3,300 for laser eye treatment and related consultations. A Sydney woman’s stolen Medicare card was used in 2005 to claim the benefits associated with a kidney operation. The thief had a cyst removed during a procedure at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney. A deregistered doctor in Queensland used 21 false identities involving Medicare cards to obtain almost 20,000 morphine tablets, with a street value of $2 million, to sell to drug addicts and abusers. The fraud cost the taxpayer over $50,000 and put countless Australian lives at risk. Then there was the lady who made up false birth certificates to claim benefits for nine sets of twins—which is quite some achievement—worth over $600,000. She was getting benefits from the government for 18 fake children. So, not surprisingly, we have to change this situation. The level of fraud is totally unacceptable.

It is plainly evident that the government has to improve and update the delivery of health services to Australians in a manner that is more appropriate in today’s technologically advanced world—it is not 1984 anymore—and a solution is necessary to deliver the $11 billion in Medicare benefits every year. The smartcard would improve the delivery of Medicare benefits in a number of ways. But the smartcard is not just replacing the Medicare card; it in fact replaces 17 different Australian government health and welfare benefit cards, in particular the veterans card, the healthcare concession card and the pensioner concession cards.

In terms of fraud, these other cards are, in technological terms, even less sophisticated than the Medicare card. Most of them are made of cardboard, which is quite surprising. Concession cardholders claim 80 per cent of the $6 billion the government spends on the PBS annually. That is $5 billion of Commonwealth money that is claimed every year by showing a piece of cardboard—one with no photo of its owner and which can be readily forged by the most amateurish of counterfeiters. The Australian National Audit Office estimates that one-quarter of all concession cards are cancelled before the actual expiry date that is printed on the card. This means that at any given time there are 1.5 million Australians claiming heavily subsidised prescriptions they are not entitled to and effectively stealing hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money every year.

This goes to the heart of how the smartcard improves this system. When it is introduced, those entitled to a concession will have to swipe their smartcard at the chemist and the chemist’s machine will instantly communicate with Centrelink and tell the chemist: ‘Yes, this person is entitled to a concession rate,’ or ‘No, this person is not entitled to a concession rate.’ It is quite simple. It is just like a normal bank ATM system. Banks have been using this with EFTPOS for some years—yes, there is money in the account or no, there is not. It is quite simple.

There have been four concerns, in particular, that have been put forward. Some of my colleagues have brought these issues forward. I respect their views and opinions on this issue, but I take a different approach. The first major concern is that the smartcard is an ID card. The second concern is what has been termed ‘function creep’, whereby the smartcard’s function becomes, over time, more far-reaching than it was planned to be. The third concern is in regard to the eligibility of minors to be cardholders. The fourth concern, as I see it, is over privacy.

Let me firstly address the charge that the smartcard is an ID card or a rehashed version of Labor’s Australia Card. This is simply not the case. The smartcard is a health and social services card, nothing more. Individuals will not be required to carry it on their person like the UK ID card. No person or organisation can require you to present the card for any reason, except when claiming Commonwealth benefits. The premise is simple: bring the card when you need it; show it when you want to. In fact the legislation specifically prohibits anybody from requiring you to present your smartcard.

For example, security staff at a hotel would be specifically prevented from requesting to see your smartcard for proof of age. You can offer it as ID if you wish, but you cannot be required to produce it. In fact under this legislation there are penalties if people demand to see your smartcard. So there is no credibility in the claim that the smartcard is some kind of national identity card. The United Kingdom’s ID card, for example, which is used for national security, immigration control and all public services, includes up to 13 biometrics—that is, fingerprints, iris scans and so on. The smartcard only has a biometric photo and will display less information on it than a drivers licence. You can choose to have your date of birth on the card, but this is entirely optional. That will not be a major problem.

No extra functions can be added without changing the law. Some have raised concerns about ‘function creep’—that we will find that additional functions will be added and before we know it we will have a brave new world where all aspects of our lives will be on the card. In fact the Commonwealth agencies that can use the card are explicitly listed in the bill. No other agency can use it. If another agency does want to use it—and I am sure that some will think, ‘Yes, I’d like to have access to this card’—it would require new legislation. There is no capacity for function creep without further change to the law.

The arrangements for minors will not change. I know that there has been some concern that the card will somehow prevent teenagers from accessing health care. This is a particularly sensitive area in terms of reproductive health for teenage girls and becomes problematic for legislators trying to protect children while at the same time upholding the rights of parents to be involved in any medical treatment their children might be seeking or receiving. The current arrangements in terms of minors will not change. I believe that currently 16- and 17-year-olds can get their own Medicare card without parental consent, and there are strict guidelines for certain categories of children under 15 years of age getting a Medicare card without parental consent, such as homeless children and children who are estranged from their families for a variety of reasons. The majority of children under 15 years old do not have their own cards and are listed on their parents’ cards. There is zero change in this area: the guidelines that govern the Medicare card arrangements of minors will transfer directly to the new smartcard.

The fourth area of concern as I see it is privacy. Many people legitimately fear that, with the progress of technology, the government’s capacity to act in a way that infringes on the personal privacy of its citizens is enhanced. What I am sure of is this: the smartcard does not equip the government or any other organisation or individual with any greater power than they already possess. The fact of the matter is that there is no data stored by the smartcard database, called the customer registration system, that is not already held by Commonwealth agencies. The government already holds an enormous amount of information on each citizen at various different levels. The smartcard does not change information-sharing arrangements between government departments and agencies. It does not combine data that was not previously combined.

The smartcard database will sit separately from the Medicare database and the Centrelink database. None of these databases will communicate with each other any differently or share information any more than they already do at present time. The only real difference will be that the government will now store a photograph of each cardholder. Currently the Commonwealth holds photographs for various uses, like passports. The only change is that the photo will be stored on the smartcard database, but, again, the legislation explicitly nominates the agencies that can access this information and by law no other agencies will have access to that data.

The real myth buster in terms of privacy concerns is the nature of the information stored. The smartcard database only stores basic details: name, address, date of birth et cetera. It is hardly groundbreaking information. People are free to store extra personal information if they wish to—such as blood type or allergies—but this is entirely optional.

There are already multiple layers of privacy protection in federal law, including the Privacy Act and a raft of other statutes. The introduction of this bill does not remove any pre-existing safeguards that exist in current law; it simply establishes another level of protection with specific reference to the card. The privacy of information collected by Human Services for the purpose of the smartcard is protected by this legislation. The higher grade of security will actually increase privacy protection, not threaten it. Smartcard chips are the way of the future. The banks are embracing this technology, and it is time the government did too. So there is no ID card by stealth being introduced, there will be no capacity for function creep, there will be no changes to arrangements involving children and there is no mega database being created to invade the privacy of unsuspecting Australians.

It is plain to see that Labor are flip-flopping on this issue. Labor’s position on this policy is quite confounding. The member for Sydney has outlined Labor’s opposition to the bill. Yet her colleague the member for Lilley said only last year that ‘a smartcard for social security purposes is a very good thing. It would help us detect fraud’. Also last year the member for Sydney’s predecessor in the Human Services portfolio, the member for Wills, said that Labor’s position was to acknowledge ‘that smartcard technology has the potential to streamline services and reduce costs’. There has been quite an incredible about-turn by those on the other side of the chamber in regard to this policy. My view is that they have transplanted the public interest at stake here for perceived political gain.

The Australian government is making more than $100 billion worth of payments every year. It is absolutely self-evident that there should be a decent system in place that reduces fraud and is convenient for customers; a decent system that brings our health and welfare service delivery into the 21st century. It is the least we can do to ensure that the right payment is going to the right person at the right time. This card will help deliver on that promise and stop most of the fraud that has gone on in the past.

I am sure that there will always be those with entrepreneurial flair who will move to fraud, but this will make it so much more difficult and the types of flagrant abuse of cards that we have seen right around Australia will cease. I support this legislation. I want to see an end to the fraud. I want to see the money placed in the hands of those people who deserve it: pensioners, concession card holders and those who are due for PBS rebates for their medical bills and a whole range of services that are provided by the government. It is a huge amount of money. New technology has evolved. There are always challenges; there are always issues. I am sure that most of us are concerned about issues of privacy. Will this be the brave new world where we have the intrusion of government into aspects of our personal lives? I believe that the safeguards and the protections are there. This new smartcard will bring us up to 2007 technology. We will avoid much of the fraud that we see today and there will be a significant reduction in government expenditure, which will allow greater expenditure on those in genuine need. It will stop those who are simply out to defraud the system by duplicating bogus cards rorting the system across the board. I commend this legislation to the House.

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Secker. It is good to see you sitting there, Patrick. The Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 proposes to streamline access to government services and combat fraud by issuing all Australians with a new access card. However, Australians have always been wary of any card that contains a cardholder’s name, date of birth, signature, unique identification number, gender, residential address, Medicare number, concession status, details of children and other dependents, allergies and emergency contact numbers. A card with this unprecedented amount of detail is only one step removed from a national ID card which any government could use to monitor its citizens even more. Many Australians are justifiably concerned that this bill is really a euphemism for a national ID card.

In his second reading speech, the minister alluded to the access card’s dominant purpose as being a reduction in welfare fraud. The minister is quite right to suggest that ‘Australian taxpayers have a right to expect that their money is spent in a way that ensures that only those individuals who are entitled to benefits receive them.’ However, I do not share the minister’s arrogant attitude to those who have shown genuine concern at the scope of such a card. Given the scale of the project and the amount of information the government will be collecting, the response is naturally one of concern and hesitation.

I do not share the minister’s view that those expressing a concern about the scope of this card are scaremongers, nor do I share the minister’s view that members on this side are ‘friends of fraud’, as he outrageously suggested in his second reading speech, simply because we are relaying the concerns of our constituents to this parliament. Perhaps the minister could repeat those claims to the numerous constituents in my electorate of Lowe who have raised their concerns about this card directly with me. One of those constituents, Miss Evelyn Smith, sums up the mood well when she says, ‘It will contain much information which will become available to many establishments and persons who have the equipment and means to decipher it.’ Indeed, as Miss Smith also mentions, ‘It may be considered that the use of this card will be limited but I can foresee reasons where it will be more widely needed.’

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely: function creep.

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed. The previous minister has already mentioned that the card would only be used to 40 per cent of its capacity and that it can store a wide range of additional information. We have heard the current minister suggest that his department is already in talks to explore opportunities for state involvement in the card’s roll out. Where will the use of the card stop? Rather than arrogantly taking a stick to the concerns of Australians, the Howard government must explain the reasons for and the limits of this Department of Human Services card.

The minister and his department have repeated that this card will combat fraud and that it is not a national ID card—indeed, this appears to be enshrined in the legislation. However, when Australians run the risk of having the finger of God follow them everywhere, they naturally speculate as to whether the scheme will remain limited for long. We all should be wary that this card does not become a wolf in sheep’s clothing. If the bill remains in its current form without Labor’s amendments, the scheme may be relatively easy to expand. I have grave concerns, which I will mention in further detail later, about the unique identifier proposed by the government and rejected by the task force into the access card headed by Professor Fels.

The minister’s claims that the card will be used to fight fraud and that it will not be an ID card may be a tactical move designed to lessen opposition to the scheme’s introduction, with the intent that it will be expanded later. There seems to be a sense of getting the infrastructure in place by selling a popular message now and worrying about the card’s unpopular uses later. The question my constituents are asking is whether the so-called benefits of this card to taxpayers outweigh the risk that the boundaries of the card will be expanded to their detriment at some point in the future. It is a question that the Howard government has done an appalling job of answering and it is question that no amount of Work Choices style advertising can conquer. Why has the government only released a heavily censored version of the KPMG business case study on the access card?

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What have they got to hide?

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If there truly is a $3 billion return on a $1.1 billion investment, why can’t we see the full report for ourselves? The member for Hotham interjects very appropriately; he has a paralysing insight in relation to that. I will take the opportunity to wish him a happy birthday, because it is his birthday today. I hope that you are having a great birthday, Simon, here in the national capital.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am. It is just the place I want to be.

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure that you want to be here celebrating your birthday by listening to my speech when you could be doing something else. Thank you for your contribution to this country. It has been immeasurable.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Happy birthday.

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for endorsing that.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The birthday wishes, at least.

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He is a great Australian, Simon Crean—no doubt about it. I have been privileged to be his parliamentary secretary. He is a good friend of mine and he is having a great birthday here in the national capital.

Returning to the bill, the same can be said about privacy protection. Australians need detail. While the Howard government has had the law firm Clayton Utz prepare a privacy impact statement, the government refuses to release it. The privacy impact statement is itself being made private by the government. The government is not making a strong case for the Australian people to trust it when it refuses to trust them with this information. It is still not entirely clear what the government is trying to achieve by introducing the access card. As my colleagues have suggested, the lack of information available suggests that the access card is a solution in search of a problem and not the other way around.

Given the enormity of the scope of this scheme, the government must start from the assumption that individual rights are superior to the rights of the state. If the government seeks to erode individual rights, it must surely be forced to discharge an onus of proof that there is an overwhelming public benefit in private rights being eroded. It has failed to discharge that onus of proof. It has failed to give a full explanation as to why the relationship between the state and the citizen should be dramatically changed in this fashion. The compelling reason that the government says necessitates this access card is protection against fraud—in particular, welfare fraud. There is a healthy scepticism in asking whether welfare and Medicare fraud is as rife as the government suggests. In an article titled ‘Knowing me, knowing you’, published—

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Billson interjecting

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Right on cue, Minister. Your singing brings back memories. In the article, published in the Age on 1 June 2006, the vice-chairman of the Australian Privacy Foundation, Mr David Vaile, said:

It’s very easy to make outrageous claims about security and fraud crackdown, but (we have) only 1 to 2 per cent welfare fraud—lower than credit-card fraud. It’s beyond (the Government’s) return on investment ...

I am sure the member for Hotham would have said it is a disgrace.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a disgrace. He has endorsed that. The full public disclosure of the KPMG report would certainly help us to get to the bottom of this matter, but the government has chosen to keep it locked behind closed doors. Nonetheless, the government insists that there are current fraud risks that are unacceptable. The minister in his second reading speech also accepts that there is currently a ‘cumbersome and time consuming system for delivering health and social services benefits’. What neither the government nor the minister has addressed is why the current bureaucratic processes are not working.

Why has the government allowed fraud to become the problem it says it is? Why has the government allowed the system of delivering health and social security benefits to become as cumbersome as it is? The Howard government is trying to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat. It is attempting to divert attention away from its own failure to clamp down better on rampant fraud, assuming this fraud even exists. It is attempting to divert attention away from its own failure to deliver essential services efficiently. That is what I call projection. What better way to divert attention away from its own failures than by a promise of a panacea in the form of an access card?

Rather than debating the government’s failures, we are now debating the pros and cons of an all-new access card that will apparently make those failures a thing of the past. However, those past failures will still be relevant. No government can rid itself of system failures by turning everybody into a number and issuing them a card. No government can rid itself of problems within a bureaucracy by blindly putting in a new layer of bureaucracy. To date, the government has done nowhere near enough to address the issues of security of data, privacy of data and quality of data. Changes in this bill and the implementation of an access card will do nothing to rectify these problems. Will a huge national database of identity details make Australian details less or more secure? Will such a database make Australians less or more vulnerable to counterfeiting, hacking or illicit sales of their details?

When commenting on Britain’s proposed smartcard, Frank Abagnale, the real con man on whom the film Catch Me If You Can is based, said:

I give it six months before someone replicates it perfectly ... Everything you need to clone an identity is in one place.

In an article entitled ‘Smartcard not so clever: fraudster’, published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 16 May 2006, a British ex-government expert suggested that there are inherent risks with the access card being proposed in this bill. Mr Heath said:

It is an extremely courageous step to put all your identification, all the different departments, on to one identifier.

The Howard government cannot shake off its past. The access card is not a panacea for fraud. The issue of identity fraud does not simply disappear with the introduction of a new card, no matter how sophisticated it may be.

The compilation of a national database of the whole population has serious implications in relation to potential fraud and misuse. The government’s past failures in fraud prevention are made more relevant—not irrelevant—by this bill before the House tonight. It is more important than ever before for the government to show extreme diligence in data security—diligence it has not always shown in the past. Despite an overwhelming majority of public servants performing their duties ethically and responsibly, we have heard numerous cases of staff mishandling information at Centrelink, the Australian Taxation Office, the Child Support Agency and Medicare.

I am not entirely convinced that the government has discharged its obligation to demonstrate the broader public interest in eroding individuals’ rights and privacy. Citizens should not have to prove a right to privacy or a right to be left alone; rather, the government must fulfil its obligations to prove it has a legitimate reason to put everyone’s personal details on one database. Proposing a so-called panacea for problems of fraud and service delivery to mask the government’s highly relevant past failures does not amount to a discharge of this obligation. For this reason I firmly believe that the Senate inquiry into this bill should be given much more time to take submissions and more time to report.

Nonetheless, I will support the bill with the amendments proposed by those of us sitting on this side of the chamber. I make particular reference to those amendments that would give effect to all recommendations made by Professor Allan Fels’s consumer and privacy task force.

The access card will facilitate the collection, retention and handling of personal information on a scale never seen before in Australia. The slightest breach of data security will have amplified effects on the privacy of individuals. An effective way to minimise interference with privacy is to adopt the underlying principles of privacy law and practice: only collecting information if there is a specific, necessary and lawful reason for doing so. No robust reasons have been advanced for including a cardholder’s signature on each register, card chip and card surface. Rather than providing any forensic value in detecting fraudulent uses of a card, the presence of a signature will only increase the potential risks of identity fraud should systems be inappropriately accessed or cards stolen.

The government has ignored the advice of experts in the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and its own task force on the access card. Indeed, in its response to the Access Card Consumer and Privacy Taskforce the government has advanced the nebulous argument that a signature will ‘provide greater utility and security for the cardholder,’ without advancing a skerrick of evidence in its favour. As I have mentioned before, the risk of identity theft and fraud features prominently in the government’s case for the access card, yet a specific task force that was given carriage over these matters unequivocally states that the presence of a digitised signature on the card increases the risk of identity theft and fraud. What does the government do with the advice it has commissioned?

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hides it!

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hotham is right again. I support him, because the government has ignored the advice. Under the proposed access card scheme, each individual will also be assigned a unique personal identifier number, or UPI, which will be stored on the chip and on the surface of the card. The government has advanced the argument that the UPI is vital for service delivery and the convenience of cardholders. The benefits of such a number have been doubted by the task force.

Nonetheless, a universal identification number, no matter how attractive its purported benefits are, poses too great a threat to the privacy of individuals—as the member for Hotham so clearly understands. Indeed, the task force has said:

... if the card number is displayed it increases the risk of fraud. This risk outweighs some advantages for government administration and user convenience.

The government should not arrogantly depart from the recommendations of its own task force on issues of privacy protection and fraud prevention. It is worth noting that the unique universal identification number is also a crucial element of any national ID card. Despite proposing to put the necessary infrastructure in place, it is not inevitable that this health and social services access card will become a national ID card in the future. That said, it is not impossible either.

The government has provided assurances in this legislation that the card is not, nor is it intended to become, a national identity card. However, the bill still facilitates such an expansion by putting the necessary infrastructure in place. The potential for this access card to become an ID card remains, even if the likelihood of that risk eventuating remains low. If the government has the courage of its convictions it ought to remove the means by which this access card could become an ID card in the future. It could do so by scrapping the universal identification number from its proposal. In concluding, I hope you have a happy birthday, Simon.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise tonight to speak in the second reading debate on the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007. In some respects I find it a strange debate. It is a strange debate because in many respects it is a debate about tomorrow that is being held today. I have been listening to this debate with a great deal of interest in the contributions that have been made by the various speakers.

It is popular custom to label each age that we live in. If we go right back, there was the Bronze Age; more recently we have had the industrial age, and today we say we live in the digital age. The digital age is the popular name for a time when the developed world continues to embrace digital technology. Ones and zeroes—binary language—is, I suggest, the most common language used throughout the world today. As each of us goes about our business every day we leave a digital trail of who we are, where we have been and what we have been up to. In this time, collecting, collating and analysing this data is far easier and more comprehensive than at any point in our history. What is more, if the current trend continues, we can expect these tasks to become even easier.

Therefore, a bill like the one being debated here this evening provides reasons for all of us, as representatives in this chamber, to pause and consider. I can certainly say that I have done that very thing in approaching the debate tonight. The goal of the Howard government, of implementing this access card, warrants support. There can be no doubt that within government departments there is much duplication, inefficiency and scope for improvement. There is much in the government’s dealings with Australians that essentially operates on the basis that it is the customer’s problem and it is up to them to fix it. There can be no doubt that in many respects the closest a department or agency gets to customer services is a sign on a wall, a numbered ticket or a recording saying, ‘Please hold; your call is important to us.’ The fact that this government is willing to embrace new technology and to take solid steps that overturn decades of often poor service, inefficient processes and a perverse attitude which places the onus on the customer rather than on the service provider is a very positive move in the right direction.

That said, the devil is in detail. In supporting this government’s initiative to introduce the access card, I have outlined my ongoing and strong view that there must be adequate protections built into the legislative and technological framework surrounding this card to prevent this technology being misused or leveraged in the future. I have made it clear over the past year or more that I am opposed to a national ID card. The national ID card, I believe, would turn on its head the relationship between the individual and the state. The card we are talking about tonight, in the legislation and its intent, is not a national ID card.

There is, however, a risk that the technology being rolled out in implementing this access card could be used by a future government—and, let me make it clear, not this government—to form the platform for a national ID card. My very small role in this place on this matter is to seek to minimise the opportunity for a future government to undertake this task. That is why at the outset I say that this is a strange debate for me, because it really is a debate about tomorrow that is being held today.

The access card this legislation governs, the information contained on the face and the back of the card, the information contained in the chip and the information held on government databases are directed toward the enhancement of government service delivery and the opportunity to minimise welfare fraud.

I have been particularly heartened by Minister Campbell’s approach to the roll out of the access card. Within government I have greatly valued the opportunity to raise issues and ideas and to have these considered as part of the package of bills that will govern the roll out of the access card. From my perspective, we must have clarity of purpose with respect to the access card. Information on the card must be confined to strictly comply with the purposes of the card. Information on the database should be confined to strictly comply with the purposes of the card across the respective agencies. And information on the chip of the card must be confined to strictly comply with the purposes of the card. For example, we know that this legislation and the access card concern themselves with government services, their enhanced delivery and opportunities to combat welfare fraud. No more and no less should be sought with respect to the information contained on or in, or networked to, the card.

Fundamentally, though, it would be dishonest to say it can be distilled into this most basic statement, because there remains a fundamental conflict in assessing the merit or otherwise of this debate—the conflict between the utility of the card and opportunities for future governments to obtain function creep by using the technology and the card in the future. In this respect I have welcomed the fact that the minister has been so pleased to take on board comments and to consider various criticisms, positive and negative, that I and others have put forward. Also I welcome future legislation which, as was outlined in the first and second reading speeches, will deal with further elements of information protection and legislative issues relating to the use of the card.

I do not seek to take any politically opportunistic stance with regard to the legislation that is introduced into the House. I certainly intend to work as part of government to ensure that the card and its surrounding legislation as passed by both houses will be the very best, will guard against future function creep and will remain true to the purpose that this government has in mind in introducing them.

I will touch on a number of measures that I have sought and discussed with the minister that I am confident in the future will be part of the package of measures to be introduced. They include, for example, audit trails. In addition to that, they include safeguards against additional database compilation as well as strong measures for enforcement of any breaches of this and other related legislation. Additionally, I would like to seek replacement time frames in the legislation, such that if a person’s card was stolen or lost there would be binding time lines on the Public Service to replace the card to ensure the continued delivery of government services although a card may not be able to be presented.

In this respect, especially with regard to audit trails, I believe there is much that can be achieved, and I was heartened in looking at a number of the comments that the minister and others have made on the access card to see that there are a number of measures that will be taken. For example, the fact that Australians will be able to have confidence that the access card will not change the current data-sharing rules between government agencies is one that I certainly put great stock in. The fact that in addition to that there will not be a change of arrangements between human services agencies with respect to delivery of government services, that Centrelink staff will be the only ones able to access the Centrelink data they currently have access to and that Medicare staff will only be able to access the same data that they currently have access to, is very comforting and certainly underscores and highlights that this card is a far, far cry from a national ID card. But, as I said, we should ensure that the total package of legislation, and not merely this one bill in isolation, is recognised as putting in place the appropriate safeguards that are required.

I mentioned the need to ensure that there are safeguards against database compilation. I have certainly welcomed this government’s commitment to ensure that those databases remain separate. I believe the fact that the minister has stated that we do not believe in a single database holding every Australian’s health and social service details and that agency specific information will continue to remain and reside solely with that agency does provide some reassurance that future database compilation will not take place. Of course, I recognise that the Attorney-General in speaking on this very issue said that it is impossible for a government to bind a future government. But in that respect there is a reason and a rationale for why I have sought more than merely a legislative prohibition on such database compilation.

It is very clear that, as much as possible, there will also need to be technological safeguards. In this respect, I have merely called for the architecture pertaining to the technology that is used to roll out this card to be designed from the outset to prevent future database compilation as much as is feasible and economically sustainable. I suggest to the House that as Australians we can take comfort in the fact that, if this kind of architecture and these technological safeguards were incorporated from the outset with respect to the roll out of this legislation, a future government seeking to compile it into one large database—as is occurring in the United Kingdom—would not be able to achieve that outcome. The reason that would not be able to be achieved is that it would require the system and particularly the technology and its architecture to be rewritten or to be rolled out again. And that, of course, would come at significant cost and give pause to any future government that sought to compile into one database, for example, every Australian’s health, welfare or other services and records, to such a point that it would probably be unsustainable or certainly, at the very least, a matter of much public debate. Those kinds of basic safeguards, I believe, provide reassurance to all Australians.

In this respect, I also welcome Professor Allan Fels’s chairmanship of the Access Card Consumer and Privacy Taskforce. The comments that I believe Professor Fels has put forward are very sound. In a number of respects, I certainly look forward to seeing the way in which this legislation interacts with following pieces of legislation to ensure that the various issues that have been raised by Allan Fels are incorporated—to the extent that, as I said, a decision also needs to be made about that fundamental conflict between card utility and function creep opportunity. In this respect, I am a realist. I recognise that it would be simply impossible to develop a piece of legislation that would prevent any future government from taking it one step beyond where it is. But, that said, it also would be remiss of any of us in this chamber to not recognise the opportunity for this kind of information collation and this kind of technological platform to be used for further data compilation in the future.

I must say that, in listening to the debate this evening, I have been a little alarmed at some of the poor policy positions that have been espoused by some in this debate—but also publicly. I was a little concerned that the member for Lowe kept referring to the fact that this legislation would see the creation of one single database. That is very wrong. I certainly would place myself at some distance from those who have in some way indicated that this legislation is seeing the creation of a single database. That is not the case. In addition to that, I have been concerned at some of the comments that have been made by others in the political arena. Senator Kerry Nettle, the Greens senator, for example, indicated their opposition to the access card, saying: ‘It simply is incredible for the government to pretend this is not an ID card. Each access card will have a biometric photograph and record all of the holder’s essential identity details.’

The issue is—I believe I have made it very clear that I am opposed to a national ID card—that this is far from a national ID card. As was outlined by the minister, there are very great differences between this card and a national ID card. Under this bill, this card will not be compulsory for every Australian, although it cannot be disputed that a large number will be using it every time they want to access government services. It will not be an electronic health record. It will not record financial details. It will not be required to be carried at all times. It will not be required to transact normal, everyday business. It will not be required to be shown other than for the provision of health and social services benefits provided by the Australian government and to confirm concession status. In this respect, the extension that this in some way is a national ID card is wrong.

But I also have said in the past that I want to ensure that this card cannot become a national ID card. And there is a great, gaping gulf between those two statements. So, in this respect, I would say to the Greens Senator Kerry Nettle, as well as to Senator Natasha Stott Despoja from the Democrats, who says that she is concerned that this is a national ID card—

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

What about me? I said that too.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and to the shadow Labor minister—that they need to understand what is before them. Certainly approaching this debate and this legislation in a dishonest way for political advantage is, I believe, to do the wrong thing by the Australian people.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Macklin interjecting

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I take it as an opportunity to make it very clear. I say again what I have said on numerous occasions—that is, this access card is not a national ID card, but there could be opportunity in the future for a future government to make it a national ID card. And that is the very reason why—I repeat again—I have been very pleased to work closely with the minister to ensure that there are in place safeguards to prevent such an event from occurring. In this respect, I am certainly pleased to recognise the reality that we should embrace new technology but also play our role to ensure that that new technology is not abused.

I will raise a number of additional points as well. There can be no doubt that the access card will be used fairly commonly. To suggest otherwise, I believe, would be naive. In the same way that originally a drivers licence was simply a permit that indicated someone was able to and licensed to drive a vehicle, yet now it is used for all intents and purposes on everything from renting a video to getting into a club or pub, I suspect that in the future we will see the access card used for the same reasons. It is with this knowledge that I say that the message should be made very clear that the access card is not a proof of identity document. If this government or any future government sought to hold out the access card as indicating that it is proof of identity, it would be completely wrong, because 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, those who would seek to do the wrong thing in 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. In that respect, production of the access card as a form of identity verification is of no consequence whatsoever. If, for example, a Qantas attendant or someone at a bank counter asked for ID and what was proffered was the access card, I would suggest to that bank or to the private sector generally that that should not be accepted as a form of proving identity, because that could be a forged card. It could be a card that was forged that very day.

It is this kind of scenario that raises for me some concerns about function creep on the slippery slope. In this respect, I suggest that it is only a matter of time—and, indeed, we have seen some evidence of it thus far—before the private sector will say, ‘We seek access back to the national registration database to ensure that the card presented is a valid card.’ The private sector will seek to have access to the government’s records to ensure that a card as presented can be verified as being valid. In this respect, I would suggest that it would not be very long and certainly not much of a stretch to suggest that continued production of the card to verify identity would see widespread calls from the private sector for this purpose.

So, in supporting the legislation tonight and in supporting the future legislation by this government, I also take this opportunity to underscore and make clear the fact that this card in no way, I believe, provides any verification as to identity. It certainly does within government. It certainly does within Centrelink or Medicare or for any of those purposes where the government is able to pull up the central files, including a photograph, to determine whether the person presenting the card is presenting a valid card. But, without access to the central database, the card itself does not verify identity and, in this respect, I would make that a very clear point. That is not concerning to me and I do not believe it should be concerning to government, because in that respect this card is for the purposes of providing government services and nothing further. So people seeking to extend the coverage of the card do so in the full knowledge that the card could simply be a forged card and therefore of not much weight to the private sector.

In summary, I look forward to welcoming the comments that will be made by the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration, which, I understand, are undertaking an inquiry into this matter. Their report on 15 March, when tabled, will be interesting reading. I certainly am supportive of this government’s intentions and of this first piece of legislation, and I look forward to seeing additional safeguards put in place that touch upon a number of the issues I have raised this evening. I also condemn some of the misleading statements that have been made by members opposite who seek to use this for political advantage. (Time expired)

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What an extraordinary speech from the member for Moncrieff. On the one hand, he says that he supports the legislation we are currently debating and, then, as he is summing up his remarks, he says that this card ‘can be and will be forged’. In another extraordinary statement, given that the whole purpose of this card is for it to be used to deal with the identification of people so they can get access to Medicare and social security payments, he goes on to say that it ‘in no way ... provides any verification as to identity’. Out of his own mouth he says that it can and will be forged. That is extraordinary criticism from the member for Moncrieff who, I understand, also said in the lead-up to this debate that this card is a Trojan Horse for a national identity card. The legislation has not changed since he made those remarks and, as he walks out of the chamber, it just demonstrates that his arm has been so extraordinarily twisted up his back that it hurt so much he had to come in here and say he supported the legislation, even though, in his own remarks, he has damned the legislation by saying that this card can and will be forged. That is out of the mouth of the Liberal member for Moncrieff. That sums up one of the major criticisms we have on this side of the House—that is, the very practical realities facing this legislation.

We know what the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 is supposed to be doing. It is supposed to be a new way of delivering $100 billion in health and social security payments, and we know that those payments touch the lives of almost every single Australian. Our social security system is there to help millions of Australians—families raising children, the aged, the unemployed and those who cannot work—and to help those who are looking for work get back into employment. Our health system has been built on the back of Medicare, designed and supported right from the beginning by Labor—in contrast, I must say, to the chequered support it has received from those opposite, but that is a debate for another day. Medicare has right at its heart a very simple Australian concept, one that we are so proud of on the Labor side: that if you get sick you will be able to see a doctor. But, if this legislation goes through, you will need this new access card to see a doctor—and most of us at some time in our lives will need to do that. This proposed new access card will become a requirement—and the member for Moncrieff understands this—for all Australians wanting to use these services. By 2010 a person will need an access card to obtain any Commonwealth benefit—that is, Medicare, pharmaceutical benefits that are subsidised through the PBS, and social security and veterans’ entitlements, and the list goes on. We on this side of the House support the use of smartcard technology in service delivery; we know it can be helpful. We also support the goal of improved service delivery for both social security and Medicare. We want to get rid of fraud because, most of all, we want to make sure that social security support and Medicare go to those who need it.

But we do not support this proposal, because it is full of holes and full of problems. Once again, it was best summed up by the Liberal member for Moncrieff, who said that it can and will be forged. We on this side of the House support a social security system that reflects our vision for our nation: the concepts of egalitarianism, community and compassion. All of these we want to see at the heart of our national consciousness. Unfortunately, under this government, these concepts have been diminished in favour of individualism, competition and a distrust of institutions.

The concept underlying this bill that we are debating tonight is that our social security system should be strengthened by ensuring access for those who need it most—a concept that, at its heart, is supported by this side of the parliament. Of course we want to get rid of fraud and abuse so that government help goes to those who need it most. But, unfortunately, the way that the government has gone about it in this legislation will not in fact achieve this end. As I said, reducing welfare fraud is a good thing. People should not make unjustified claims. But spending more than $1 billion to issue cards to all those who access social security and health services is going to be a very expensive and complex way to reduce fraud. You might say that it is worth it, but the question is: will it actually work? We know the member for Moncrieff does not think it will work. He has made that clear tonight. He does not think it will work because people are going to be able to fraudulently reproduce these cards.

The second thing is: do we know anything about the nature of social security fraud? We do know that people claiming welfare benefits on false identities are only a small proportion of those getting wrong payments. For years we have had Auditor-General’s reports showing that Centrelink itself makes administrative mistakes. We know that the card that we are debating tonight is not going to fix the administrative mistakes made by Centrelink. This is the most important point on the issue of fraud: this card will not stop people claiming in their own names for payments they are not entitled to. That is what we suspect is the prime source of fraud in the social security system, although we cannot get the data. We suspect that is where the fraud is taking place. We would like to see that fraud reduced as much as possible, but this card will not do it because these are people who are claiming wrongfully in their own names. They will be able to use this card to do so.

The minister, in his second reading speech, was at pains to suggest that this is no more than an upgraded Medicare card to try to put to rest the concerns in the Australian community. Obviously, he has not put to bed the concerns of the member for Moncrieff. There are a number of other government backbenchers who also have made some pretty extraordinary criticisms of this legislation. They say—and the member for Moncrieff made it clear—that the government is introducing an identity card by another name. Again, in an attempt to stress that the government is not introducing an identity card, the minister went through in great detail the measures the government is introducing and the legislative statements it is making to try to get around the reality. I have to say that it does seem like a case of the minister protesting too much.

The minister’s argument, at its core, is that with an identity card you could not conduct your normal affairs without having to produce your card; whereas, he claims, this access card is nothing of the sort. Life will carry on as normal without the card, it is claimed, if an individual so choses. But normal life actually does include going to the doctor, claiming family payments and, if you are an elderly person, claiming the aged pension. Graham Greenleaf, Co-director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of New South Wales, makes the point that the access card is:

... effectively compulsory and near-universal for adults, in exactly the same way as was the Australia Card. It is not as a rational and practical matter possible to do without a Medicare Card in Australia in 2006 ...

So if it is not rational and not practical to do without a Medicare card then the new access card will become a requirement for virtually all Australians—certainly all Australians who want to see a doctor. It will be a national card for all Australians to access near-universal services.

The reach of the card is set to expand before it even begins. This is another matter that members opposite should contemplate. The Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs has already floated the idea of the new access card being used to swipe children in and out of childcare services. Indeed the new childcare management system currently being developed by the government and due for implementation next year will require all parents to sign their children in and out of their childcare services, and that information must be transmitted automatically, electronically, to Canberra. It is no big leap of logic to see how the government could say, ‘We might as well use the access card system to gather this information. Parents could just swipe in and out with that.’ It is very possible that the government could require the parents of the almost 600,000 children in formal care who receive the childcare benefit each year to use an access card every day. So much for it not being a normal part of life for those parents. If they do not use it, they will not get any government support for their children’s care.

We have significant concerns also about the privacy of the personal information being stored on the card, as have many Australians. We know that the cardholder’s name is going to be on it, as are a digital signature, a new identifying number, a photograph containing biometric data, the expiry date and other information. All of that will be 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 apparently ‘private’ area. All the information on the surface and chip of the card will be held in a new government database called the access card register. Officers at Centrelink, Medicare and other Australian government agencies will be able to access the register.

The scope of the information on the card register database has given rise to concerns amongst many in the community about unauthorised access. I certainly share those concerns. Commonwealth officers are there to serve the public and we all know that in the main they do an outstanding job, yet always where there is a human element it is inevitable that privacy breaches will occur even inadvertently. We know this because breaches have occurred in the past. There are also examples of identity theft and unauthorised accessing of databases by public servants. They include reports in August 2006 that 600 privacy breaches had occurred within Centrelink where staff accessed customer records without proper cause or authorisation. Most concerning, a report by the Child Support Agency found that 405 privacy breaches occurred in the previous nine months. In at least two of these cases, mothers and their children had to be physically relocated at taxpayers’ expense because the Child Support Agency’s release of information had put them at risk.

Another key concern has been the use of biometric data in the photograph on the public face of the card—remember: the member for Moncrieff said that this could be forged. This biometric data is included to enable your image to be compared with other photographs and video footage very easily, therefore making surveillance easy. It is expected that police—both state and federal—will have access to the register, which will contain for the first time photographs of almost the entire adult Australian population. Currently there is no requirement for police to get a court order in order to access this database. These and many other concerns about the information to be stored and the security of the storage have been well voiced by many in the community on both sides of politics, and I urge the government to listen to these concerns and take them seriously.

The underpinning network of social security benefits, payments, pensions and entitlements will remain a feature of the Australian community. It must; it is a fundamental aspect of a compassionate society. But compassion is not an end in itself; it is part of the overall approach of the welfare system that is about enabling participation in our community. The welfare system should be encouraging active participation in the economy and in society. It should be actively seeking to provide people with assistance to overcome barriers before they slip through the cracks—in other words, on this side of the parliament we want a welfare system that responds to the needs of our modern community and does more than provide a safety net to catch people when they fall. Our welfare system should lift people out of poverty by giving them the capacity to fully participate in society.

Unfortunately, poverty and disadvantage still remain deeply embedded in many Australian communities. Life is not a bed of roses for many Australian families, despite the economic boom. Just today we saw new research by Professor Tony Vinson for Jesuit Social Services entitled Dropping off the edge: the distribution of disadvantage in Australia, showing that:

Extreme social disadvantage in Australia is real and it’s measurable. It’s endemic to a small number of locations in this country, and it can be fixed ...

Professor Vinson has found that just 1.7 per cent of postcodes around Australia account for more than seven times their share of the factors that cause intergenerational poverty. This poverty has been entrenched for years. The more reports we hear of families struggling, unfortunately the less the government seems to care. It seems to be the case that this Prime Minister has stopped listening.

Even with 15 years of economic growth, children in places like West Heidelberg in my own electorate, Kempsey in New South Wales and Hervey Bay in Queensland still miss out on basic education, health care and the other important underpinnings of life. A child missing out in a wealthy country like Australia in this day and age is nothing short of heartbreaking. This comes on top of a report from ACOSS from the community sector, also released today, which shows that 1.5 million Australians sought help from welfare agencies last year—that is up four per cent on 2005.

One of the big messages of today’s reports is that we need to get in early to give children a good start to life. These are the critical messages coming from the people doing research into struggling families who are suffering from intergenerational poverty. They are not out there saying, ‘Spend a billion dollars on a new ID card’; they are calling in fact for the recognition of the particularly strong link between intergenerational poverty and low educational attainment. That is what they want to see from this government; that is what is needed to turn this dreadful poverty around.

Labor understands this link, and with our $450 million a year plan to give every four-year-old access to 15 hours of early learning a week we intend to do something practical to help. Labor is about addressing the causes of intergenerational poverty rather than what this government is doing, which is the introduction of a billion dollar-plus access card. When it comes to addressing the very deep and ingrained causes of intergenerational poverty in this country, you would have to say this government has got its priorities wrong.

I support the second reading amendment moved by the member for Sydney and stress the problems we see with the access card proposal in its current form, particularly the inadequate safeguards to protect the accuracy and privacy of information on the card and in the register, and that the government continues to keep secret key information on the true costs of implementing the card. Labor wants to see our social security and health systems protected from fraud and abuse so that they can continue to provide future generations of Australians the support they need. (Time expired)

Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The measures in the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 will strike the right balance between providing convenience to people in how they use their access card while protecting their privacy and minimising the opportunity for fraud to take place. It is estimated by the AFP that 50 per cent of fraud cases involve Medicare cards. The measures in this bill will substantially reduce fraudulent claims for benefits, will reduce claims based on inaccurate concession information and will prevent a person from using someone else’s card to claim an entitlement.

It is conservatively estimated that the new access card will save around $3 billion over 10 years in fraudulent payments made using the existing outdated Medicare card. I recall doing a report when I was on the economics committee titled Numbers on the run. We found that we had significantly more tax file numbers than we had people so, if we think there is not some sort of fraud taking place in many areas simply because there is not an ability to recognise or to store information about people, we are greatly mistaken.

Earlier this month in my electorate of Riverina, the Minister for Human Services, Senator Ian Campbell, announced that 19 Centrelink customers in the Riverina had payments cancelled or suspended following a crackdown on the cash economy activity. This detection of fraudulent activity in the Riverina alone is expected to save Australian taxpayers around $133,000. This operation was a two-day field operation initiated by Centrelink and conducted with the assistance of business owners in the Riverina harvesting industry. This access card will help prevent this type of fraud, which is happening not just in the Riverina but across all electorates.

Unlike the current arrangements, the new system will detect people trying to register under two identities. Fraudsters will be caught before they cost Australian taxpayers large and often unrecoverable amounts of money. The system will also respond to the concerns of hardworking Australians who are sick of people who are cheating the system and getting away with it. Apart from the clear benefits the card will provide in combating fraud, it will also play a significant role in streamlining the current cumbersome and time-consuming system for delivering health and social services benefits.

Around 580,000 people each year make a trip into a Centrelink office and join a queue only to find that they have to go home to find other documents, and they have to start again every time they want to apply for a new type of benefit. There are multiple registration points, with some people having to provide the same proof of identity information to the same agency if they want a different service. Each year, some 50,000 letters are sent to individuals who have incorrectly filled out their name and/or their address on their Medicare claim form. This new access card will mean that consumers will only need to register once for a service and, unlike the current system, will only need to notify participating agencies once of their change in circumstances, such as a change in address.

The services include those now provided by or through the Department of Veterans’ Affairs; Department of Human Services, including the Child Support Agency; CRS Australia; Medicare Australia; Centrelink, Australian Hearing Services; and Health Services Australia. This card will represent the most significant reduction in red tape, and that is something that the consumer is constantly asking for—no more cluttering up the wallets; you will have one card replacing up to 17 health and social services cards.

It is interesting to hear some of the debate that has taken place in the House. It honestly bewilders me at times. Many people entrust their life savings to internet banking. They have no problem in providing all of the information in their accounts, transferring money all over the world—transferring their money online through the internet—yet there seems to be some concern that somebody will have a photograph identity on a card, or information that is stored on the card that may not be protected, when we clearly know that many of the transactions that we do in our everyday lives are not protected. We flash our licence to every airport, staff member and airline operator when we get an e-ticket. We do not have any problems with handing over our licence, having our photograph viewed and date of birth and licence numbers noted, yet we are concerned about this card.

We provide a licence and licence number if we want a refund at a Myer store or any other store when we return consumer goods. We have no problems with putting forward our licence with a photograph to identify ourselves. We have a passport system that we have no problem with. I look at all of the subsequent legislation that will include the protection of information on this card and issues relating to an individual’s area of the chip, on which they can store voluntary information and transitional issues. All of this legislation will be put there to protect those people who hold this card.

Some concern has been expressed about the possibility that businesses would be able to demand the production of the card as a form of identity. The bill makes it an offence punishable by up to five years imprisonment, a $55,000 fine or both, for any person, and up to $275,000 for a company, who requires a cardholder to produce their card for any purpose other than for the provision of Commonwealth health or social service benefits or to verify concessional status. But I will go so far as to say—I will guarantee—that this card will be produced because people will want to produce it. They will find it an easy way to verify their bona fides. Rather than businesses seeking the card, I suspect that we, as consumers, will be willing to offer up this card on numerous occasions, as we do now with our drivers licence.

The bill also makes it an offence punishable by a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment, a $13,200 fine or both, for a person to make a copy of or divulge a card owner’s photograph, signature or card number unless it is for the limited purposes of the legislation or with the owner’s consent. That fine climbs to up to $62,000 for a company that commits this offence. I still wonder and question why there is a big issue about this card when we do not seem to have the same problem with our photo identification on our drivers licence, where the photograph is taken at an RTA outlet and is put on your drivers licence. Nobody seems to be at all concerned that there is access to that photograph.

Smartcard technology offers Australians greater privacy because it allows a user to display less information on the face of their card. The face of the access card will contain less information than a drivers licence. This means that more information can be kept out of the immediate view of any unauthorised person. The card will feature a digital photograph, a preferred name, a card number and a signature. Each user will have the option of including their date of birth on the card if they want that added benefit.

People who currently hold veterans gold cards will be entitled to new gold access cards. They will be the only Australians to be given the option of gold coloured access cards. This option is in recognition of the respect Australia has for its veterans and its war widows and widowers. The new gold access card will replace the current veterans gold card. The government will also legislate to ensure that it will be illegal for a pub, a bank or other body to force someone to produce this card as a form of identity.

The basic information on the card, such as the holder’s name and address, will be secured, but the photograph will use biometric technology that measures and analyses the physical characteristics of each Australian. The technology measures features, such as the distance between your pupils, to prevent anyone else from using your card. It is virtually impossible for two people to share the same biometric facial characteristics. In this way, the government can prevent someone from fraudulently using another person’s card or attempting to register more than once. It is a massive protection factor.

Today I had passport photographs done for the very same reason—but I do not worry about that. We hand our passports over, we allow ourselves to be photographed while we are walking through terminals, and everyone measures the distance between our eyes and the width of our forehead; but we do not seem to have a concern about that. When I look at this legislation I cannot understand why people are crying wolf.

Recently, in one of my local papers, there was a vox pop. I am interested in these vox pops because they gave an indication of what the general community is feeling. They ask about five different people their views on an issue, and it is very rare for agreement to occur among the five people. The question that was asked in my local paper was: ‘Do you support the idea of an access card?’ Without exception, everyone who was asked supported it. One person said, ‘It’s a good idea because it makes everything easier and safer.’ Another man said, ‘I’m happy with the way the system is at the moment but, if it comes in, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.’ Another consumer said: ‘Yes, I do support it. I went to Tasmania and you need ID to do anything there, and it works well. Anything to make things safer is a good move.’ Another gentleman said, ‘Yes, because there are a lot of con men out there.’ A woman said: ‘Look, I’ve got no problems with it. I think the only ones who would complain about it are the ones with something to hide.’

That is exactly my point. If you have nothing to hide or to fear then you would have no problems with an access card or an identification card for health benefits, pharmaceuticals or any benefit that the government is going to pay. I think that is what we as taxpayers of Australia should be insisting upon. It is hard enough to work on a day-to-day basis and pay your taxes without having to recognise that, at any given time, somebody is defrauding the system. It is incumbent upon us to try to make this system as secure and safe as possible. If that is not the intention of good government then I do not know what good government should be doing.

I really support the minister with respect to this access card. I think it is sensible and it is clearly a reasonable thing to do. I do not see the average consumer being concerned about this at all. There will always be some problems from civil libertarians, with their fear of big brother and somebody staring over their shoulder and knowing their information; but, as I have said, many of these people will unhesitatingly hand over a passport with a photograph, their mother’s maiden name and their place of birth—a host of information. We unquestioningly present our passports to every Customs officer and we present them in order to open bank accounts. We have no concern about handing over that kind of information, even though people could track you down right back through your past, whether or not you want them to. I absolutely support this bill.

Debate interrupted.