studies and reports

This page highlights studies regarding the Australia Card and national identifier and registration schemes in Australia.

It covers -

• introduction
• national registration, citizenship and ubiquitous identification
• 1980s debate and the TFN
• Medibank, Medicare and health payment identifiers
• identifiers and the 'war on terror'
• the 2006 Access Card

     introduction

There have been no major academic, government or industry studies of the evolution of Australian or New Zealand national registration schemes since the early 1900s.

The literature on particular aspects such as 'aliens registration' is uneven and often narrowly-focussed; areas such as the registration of birth, deaths & marriages (RBDM) have attracted little scholarly attention outside the fields of epidemiology and genealogy. Other areas such as the nature of citizenship and nationality - and particular state practices - have been explored in more detail over the past three decades.

For context some salient works are John Torpey's The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship & the State (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2000), Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2001) edited by Jane Caplan & John Torpey, Rights of Passage: The Passport in International Relations (Boulder: Rienner 2003) by Mark Salter and 'Watching me, watching you: privacy attitudes and reactions to identity card implementation scenarios in the United Kingdom' by Adam Joinson, Carina Paine, Tom Buchanan & Ulf-Dietrich Reips in 32(4) Journal of Information Science (2006) 334-343.

     registration, citizenship and ubiquitous identification

Context for citizenship, registration and exclusion is provided by works noted above and by Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso 1991).

Salient works on the Australian regimes are From Subject to Citizen: Australian Citizenship in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) by Alastair Davidson, Defining Australian Citizenship: Selected Documents (Melbourne: Melbourne Uni Press 1999) and Citizens without Rights: Aborigines & Australian Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) by John Chesterman & Brian Galligan, Enemy Aliens: Internment & the Homefront Experience in Australia 1914-1920 (St Lucia: Uni of Queensland Press 1989) by Gerhard Fischer and Redefining Australians: Immigration, Citizenship & National Identity (Marrickville: Hale & Iremonger 1995) by Ann-Mari Jordens.

For driver licensing see in particular The National Road Transport Commission: An Experiment in Cooperative Federalism (PDF) by Kirsty McIntyre & Barry Moore and reports by that Commission.

The 1939 National Register is discussed in War Economy 1939-1942 (Canberra: AWM 1961) by SJ Butlin & Boris Schedvin and volume 2 of the report of the Committee of Review into Civil Staffing of Wartime Activities (aka Pinner Committee) on microfiche at National Archives of Australia offices.

Cecil Rolph's Personal Identity (London: Michael Joseph 1957) is useful for the 1950 Willcock case and demise of the 1939 National Registration Act in England.

For the US see in particular Joseph Eaton's Card-Carrying Americans - Privacy, Security & the National ID Card Debate (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield 1996) and Robert Smith's Ben Franklin's Web Site: Privacy & Curiosity From Plymouth Rock to the Internet (Providence: Privacy Journal 2000), A National ID: A License to Live (Providence: Privacy Journal 2000) and 2002 Social Security Numbers: Uses & Abuses (PDF). For Malaysia see Matthew Thomas' 2004 paper Is Malaysia's ’S MYKAD The 'One Card To Rule Them All'? The Urgent Need to Develop a Proper Legal Framework for the Protection of Personal Information in Malaysia.

Four outstanding assessments are the US National Academy of Sciences' 2002 report IDs - Not That Easy: Questions About Nationwide Identity Systems, its 2003 report Who Goes There?: Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy, the 2004 European Commission Joint Research Centre report Biometrics at the Frontiers: Assessing the Impact on Society (PDF) and the June 2005 The Identity Project: Alternative Blueprint for a National Identification System (PDF) from the London School of Economics.

The latter is of particular interest in considering the 2005 Australia Card II debate because it is recurrently - and often very selectively - quoted by card proponents and critics.

     1980s debate and the TFN

Consistent with the paucity of major studies on the shaping of privacy legislation, policy, practice and community attitudes in Australia there are only a few works regarding the 1987 Australia Card.

The major items are Graham Greenleaf's 1987 paper The Australia Card: Towards A National Surveillance System and 1988 paper Lessons from the Australia Card: deux ex machina?, Roger Clarke's Australia Card paper, Simon Davies' dystopian Big Brother: Australia's Growing Web of Surveillance (Sydney: Simon & Schuster 1992), Peter Graham's Bureaucratic Politics and Technology: Computers & the Australia Card (Nathan: Centre for Australian Public Sector Management, Griffith University 1990) and the 1987 Privacy International note on Campaigns of Opposition to ID Card Schemes.

Other works are highlighted at the Australian Privacy Foundation's site - essential reading.

Ewart Smith's The Australia Card: The Story of its Defeat (Melbourne: Sun Books 1989) is an account by a protagonist. Pieties are questioned in Brett Mason's important Privacy Without Principle: The Use and Abuse of Privacy in Australian Law and Public Policy (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing 2006).

Perspectives are offered by Neal Blewett's A Cabinet Diary: A Personal Record of the First Keating Government (North Adelaide: Wakefield Press 1999) and John Edwards' Keating: The Inside Story (Ringwood: Viking 1996).

Most of the major federal parliamentary committee reports and associated public submissions/testimony are unfortunately not online. They include -

• Report of the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card, Commonwealth Parliament Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card - May 1986
• Report on Feasibility of a National ID Scheme: The Tax File Number, Commonwealth Parliament Senate Standing Committee on Legal & Constitutional Affairs - October 1988
• Numbers On The Run, the report of the Inquiry into the Management of Tax File Numbers (Review of the ANAO audit report No 37 1998-99), Commonwealth Parliament House of Representatives Committee on Economics, Finance & Public Administration - August 2000
• User friendly, not abuser friendly, the report of the inquiry into the integrity of the electoral roll by the Commonwealth Parliament Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters - April 2001
• Management and Integrity of Electronic Information in the Commonwealth, the report by the Commonwealth Parliament Joint Committee of Public Accounts & Audit - 2004

Reports by Commonwealth and state agencies include -

• Privacy Issues & the Proposed National Identification Scheme - A Special Report, NSW Privacy Committee - March 1986
• Establishment and administration of a national identification scheme: the Australia Card program, Health Insurance Commission - August 1985
• Management of Tax File Numbers, Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) Report 37 1998/99
• Audit into the ATO's Administration of Australian Business Number Registrations, Australian National Audit Office Report 59 2002/3 - June 2003
• report on The cash economy under the New Tax System, Australian Taxation Office - September 2003

     Medibank, Medicare and health payment identifiers

For the development of Medibank and Medicare see Richard Scotton's 2000 account Medibank: from conception to delivery and beyond and The Making of Medibank (Kensington: AHSA Books, UNSW 1993) with Christine Macdonald, Gough Whitlam's The Whitlam Government, 1972-1975 (Ringwood: Viking Penguin 1985) and successive parliamentary committee reports.

For health benefits fraud in Australia see in particular Russell Smith's concise 1999 Electronic Medicare Fraud: Current & Future Risks (PDF).

Recent health network and national identifier developments are highlighted in the National Electronic Health Records Taskforce 2000 report A Health Information Network for Australia (PDF), the HealthConnect Project Plan (PDF), and Christopher Kelman's upbeat 2001 dissertation Monitoring Health Care Using National Administrative Data Collections.

Privacy aspects of the health network are discussed in Livia Iacovino, Danuta Mendelson & Moira Paterson's 'Privacy Issues, HealthConnect and Beyond' in Disputes & Dilemmas in Health Law (Leichhardt: Federation Press 2006) edited by Ian Freckelton & Kerry Petersen.

     identifiers and the war on terror

Australian government reports include -

• Inquiry into the Review of Aviation Security in Australia, report by the Joint Committee of Public Accounts & Audit - 2004
• Managing the Border: Immigration Compliance 2004-05 report (PDF) by the federal Department of Immigration & Multicultural & Indigenous Affairs - 2005

For developments overseas see in particular the June 2005 The Identity Project: Alternative Blueprint for a National Identification System (PDF) noted above, March 2005 The Identity Project: an assessment of the UK Identity Cards Bill and its implications (PDF) and January 2006 Update (here).

Those studies are by the London School of Economics (LSE) on UK government proposals. The LSE broadly accepts the usefulness of a national identity scheme but is critical of particular aspects, noting that ID cards might cost up to £300 each and that over the following decade the cost of running the scheme in conjunction with a biometric passport would be between £5.8 billion (£93 per card) and £19 billion.

     the 2006 Access Card

For the 2006 Australian government services Access Card salient documents are -

• the 2006 KPMG Access Card Business Case (PDF)
• the 2006 Consumer & Privacy Taskforce Discussion Paper 1 - The Australian Government Health & Services Access Card (PDF)
• Privacy Commissioner's submission to the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee Inquiry into the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007
• the report of the Senate Committee inquiry into the Access Card

Those documents should be read in conjunction with Graham Greenleaf's important Quacking Like A Duck: The National ID Card Proposal (2006) Compared With the Australia Card (1986-87) paper (PDF) and Margaret Jackson & Julian Ligertwood's 2006 'Identity Management: Is an Identity Card the Solution for Australia?' in 24 Prometheus 4.

The 2006 Fels Committee report on privacy aspects of the Access Card is critiqued in a 2006 Privacy Law Bulletin article by Bruce Arnold.

   next page (landmarks)