Peter,

You have articulated an argument that stands above all other commentaries on the National ID Card debate.

The ID card, as you have outlined, would not be solely a method of combating terrorism. It would be a means of vastly improving government and corporate efficiency in identification. The card itself, as a physical item, is unnecessary, and the true benefits of the card are not in the card itself but in the centralisation and processing of personal information in a way which improves the effectiveness of any organised body that requires an understanding of individual's identities.

I commend the way in which you have thought outside and above the debate within the media, which seems to be confined to terrorism v civil liberties I also would like to commend your foresight in seeing the wide, long term benefits of the philosophy behind the ID card. If the government had adopted your line of argument, there would be an ID card already.

Dear Peter
Thanks for your post...

I am opposed, was opposed in 1987 and am still opposed to a single ID card.
I cannot see even if biometric data is added to a card how it cannot be used by someone else. Hypothetically, would you take some biometric feature of a person and match it with the card every time the card is used? How foolproof is it and how sophisticated would a computer system have to be to individually seperate every peice of biometric data?

More importantly I am personally opposed to governments becoming more of a master than a servant of the people..Then again I am idealistic..

Am I confused, or have the last two posts missed the point? I don't think Peter was at all implying that the government should adopt a policy of storing its citizens' biometric data--in fact, quite the contrary. What do you make of the following, from Peter's article, otherwise?

"Technology can undermine this essential political design but only if we lose sight of why we have the political structure that we do. The irony is that those with the liberal philosophical bent proposed this design, while it may be a Liberal government that undoes this essential safeguard."

"The Commonwealth recognises that it is easier to suggest this debate is about giving us all another card than saying that they’d like to sample everyone’s DNA. While governments like to be personable, most Australians might find that a little too intimate."

Seems the writer of the main article referring to the intentions of the Framers of the constitution didn’t bother to consider that there is no constitutional powers for the Federal government to implement any so called ID card!

Surely, when writing about something the first issue is to ask where is the constitutional powers for this?

Then again, that was also ignored in the past with the Australian Card issue.

In my 30 September 2003 book;

INSPECTOR-RIKATI® on CITIZENSHIP
A book on CD about Australians unduly harmed.
ISBN 0-9580569-6-X

I did set out how ongoing the Commonwealth of Australia was acting outside its constitutional powers.

If the Commonwealth of Australia has no constitutional powers for any ID Card then why bother to argue about the pro and cons of it further?

And, just consider we need just another Hitler (by whatever name) to use a ID card and it makes it simple to round up people being it to terminate all those with some genetic defect or other wise of a religion or otherwise to make the desposal of certain people very easy. Your bad luck if the datea stored happens to wrongly include you in a group marked for extermination!