Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I draw attention to yesterday's Optus outage. Payment terminals using the Optus network went down, requiring businesses to close or accept cash payments. The Optus failure makes a mockery of our arrogant, lying, profit-gouging banks' campaign to totally remove cash from our society and to remove bank branches. I call on the Treasurer to use his regulatory powers to ensure banks do not remove cash from one more branch, do not close one more branch and do not close one more ATM. Anything less is asking for trouble the next time the internet goes down.

The Optus failure reminds Australia of the insanity of persisting with a single digital identity linked to a digital currency as the only approved payment mechanism. What happens if the government's Identity Verification Services Bill passes and these myriad identification services are replaced with one central government run digital ID, complete with your biometric data? It will be a hacker's paradise, with everything hackers need for identity theft and fraud located in a single data file. All that's missing from the government's digital ID plans is a massive sign saying, 'Hack me!' With digital ID, the government is not protecting us from identity theft; it's making identity theft easier. If digital ID and digital currency are implemented, the next time Optus or Telstra go down, every Australian's life stops. There will be no transport, no telephone, no keeping track of children and no buying anything. The government is creating a pinch point every time the internet goes down—a chokehold that comes at a terrible human and economic cost.

The government's predatory billionaire mates are salivating at the control that digital ID and digital currency will give these parasites. The government and its parasitic billionaire mates aren't good enough to make the technology work. It's going to stuff everything up and screw everyday Australians and small businesses. To a digital prison, One Nation says no.