Australian Digital ID Bill to be passed without debate

The bill explains the "governance" at length. It does not explain the technology. In fact it reads like a wish list of what they want the technology to do.

To me it falls into the same trap as a recent Prime Minister, when he said: “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia”. Counter example: when Uber came here, it was illegal. So they had inspectors catch Uber rides and fine the drivers for not having licences. Problem: to catch an Uber you had to install the app, and once a inspector prosecuted one driver they knew who were and via the app where they were. After that happened oddly there were never any Ubers in the vicinity of the inspector. Outcome: the law lost to the new reality crafted by technology.

One thing they definitely haven't come to grips with is their monopoly on punishment is gone. An example of that assumption is how the law treats a signature. You can use anything you want as a signature, even an X. In fact the worst signatures I've seen in my life come from lawyers - some are barely more than a straight line with a few dents. That's worked for centuries because you can dispute the signature is yours. When you do, a huge expensive machine springs into action that does a pretty good job or validating if you really signed the document, punishing those who falsely sign. But now ID fraud is most perpetrated by people outside of Australia's borders, people who can't be punished by the law. Technology has broken an assumption that's been true for 1000's of years, and as a consequence we are seeing an ever increasing tidal wave of ID fraud sweeping the country perpetrated by people who are beyond the reach of the law.

So yes, there are lots of words in the act addressing the fears. But to me they read like empty pronouncements: "we ordain the problem goes away". There is no hint they have a clue about what it will take to make the problem go away or any realistic plan to make it happen.

Perhaps your response is it's not the Bill's place to proscribe the technology. Perhaps, but the whole point of the Bill is to introduce an ID scheme, and the assumption it is centralised around what they call the "Australian Government Digital ID System". Choosing a single source of truth for proving your ID is a technological decision.

For some reason governments love to centralise things. Mygov and the tax office did that, creating a honey pot of every citizens personal information guarded by a single ID scheme - mygov. I've personally spent days on the phone trying to get Mygovid to work because some government departments insist you use it (contrary to the assurances in this very bill). It didn't work because they insisted I use one email address as my true name, despite the fact most people have several email addresses that change over time (and mine did). So they invent work around and kludges to fix that, which of course created lots of social engineering loopholes. So far the outcome is they've lost billions to ID fraud perpetuated by hacking their first attempts at ID schemes.

And now they want to fix that by inventing a bigger one???