On April 26, federal cabinet decided to proceed "in principle" with the introduction of a new "access card" to be used when accessing government-run health or welfare services.
Despite claims to the contrary, the introduction of the card lays the basis for the backdoor introduction of a compulsory national ID card along the lines of the ALP's widely loathed 1985 "Australia Card" proposal, which John Howard opposed at the time. Big Brother is not merely a character in George Orwell's 1984 - he's alive and well, and living in the Lodge.
Announcing the card's introduction, Howard's office claimed: "The government is ruling out introducing a compulsory national ID card." Canberra is wary of the parallels inevitably being drawn with the Australia Card proposal, and is trying to present the access card as an opportunity to prevent "welfare fraud". Ironically, in 1987 Howard himself commented that "the assumption of the Australia Card legislation is that every Australian is a cheat".
There should be no mistake: however appalling the welfare-recipient bashing of Howard and his pollie mates, who are always willing to stick their snouts in the trough of the public purse, their proposal is aimed at introducing a national ID card, not at another clamp-down on "welfare cheats".
By 2010, the access card would be compulsory for everyone who depends on government health and social services. The card would incorporate the holder's name, a photograph, their signature and a number - a universal ID card in all but name. It would be a simple legislative change to convert the card formally into an ID card once the system is in place.
Even without such a formal change, it would be possible for the police, including the political police - ASIO - to treat the card as an ID card. As Philip Ruddock, the federal attorney-general and the MP most likely to be mistaken for a Night of the Living Dead extra, has admitted: "Security agencies of course are able to get access to data for the purposes of carrying out their task of protecting our national security. And police for investigations are able to access a whole range of data for that purpose."
The idea of introducing a national ID card to help "combat terrorism" was raised by Howard in the aftermath of the 2005 London bombings. On July 15 that year, Howard commented, "We haven't made a decision to have an ID card in this country, but it should properly be on the table".
Even though the government is attempting to distance the access card proposal from the Australia Card and similar national ID card schemes, it is hoping that the fear of terrorism that has been whipped-up since 9/11 by scare campaigns and actual events will work in its favour.
The debate over the card is already being framed in terms of what level of "individual rights" Australians are willing to trade-off to be safe from terrorism. Framing it this way, however, avoids the real issue.
No ID card will make Australia safe from the threat of a terrorist attack, or an actual attack. The horrific London bombings would not have been prevented by such a scheme. The perpetrators weren't some cell of foreign-born terrorists who had infiltrated the country; they were middle-class youths radicalised by the horror of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and alienated by the Islamophobia whipped up by Western powers to justify their invasion and occupation of sovereign countries.
It isn't a question of "trade-offs", of individual rights versus the rights of the majority. Instead, the ID card's introduction is part of the insidious rollback of civil liberties that is being implemented under the aegis of the "war on terror".
Canberra's aim? Not to end terrorism, but to exert greater political control over ordinary working people, and harass and intimidate anyone who dares challenge its unjust political and social order.
From Green Left Weekly, May 3, 2006.
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