I will put a link to the discussion held by the Australian Privacy Foundation .Find link here regarding a national ID card .
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The various states and territories can’t even agree on what it is called - offering it as a legal document but with no consistent legal name - one can’t formally, on a legal document, ask a resident of the NT for a ‘Drivers Licence’ because such a document doesn’t exist. From memory the same was the case in South Australia for the longest time until they renamed it. Other locations vary as well. While it seems a little pedantic, the requirement for a driver licence to prove something usually has some basis or expectation that it leads to a legally enforcable or binding situation. It’s a great starting point 
Some kind of ‘national solution’ would surely be better than letting each state and territory conjure up their own solutions? - look at the national standards on anything that is enforced regionally and they are almost amusing if the implications are put aside - driver licences and licensing standards/conditions, working with children clearances, firearms licences, work safety training/clearances/endorsements, to name just a couple.
Yep. At least the mark of the beast uses disparate sources so no single point of failure - forehead and hand … slap one with the other maybe?
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One would like to think that the right to avoid being impersonated and the obligation to identify yourself are also balanced with the right to anonymity and the right to privacy. Somehow I don’t think that will be the case.
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I forgot to add that the ‘Beast’ also demands to be worshipped if people want to participate in society (described as buying and selling).
At present, are we not face down on our knees enough, have we not surrendered enough of our privacy before being allowed to have access to our phone, our banking, our shopping, etc. etc.?
Is there something more expected of us? (Rhetorical question as I think we have been trampled enough by the beast 
)
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I seem to hear a creepy refrain spinning around in my head like an earwig … doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo!
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Further suggestions for extending a centralised government solution, or using mobile device digital wallets as supposedly the secure solution.
The first relies on using an existing government system for something more than it was intended/designed for?
The second is an incomplete solution that requires further analysis and development? Does it also assume the devices used are unable to be compromised, by hacking, human error, or simply lazy behaviours?
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Definitely spells “single point of failure”.
I would caution against any kneejerk reaction.
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A drivers license or a passport are documents not everyone have.
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Yes, there are issues or concerns for some as discussed in,
Photo ID has become a default requirement in many instances. There are those for whom getting a suitable ID remains a challenge. There are further issues with some forms of ID not being acceptable to meet critical needs.
That it is problematic and due mostly to differences across state and territory, increases support for a single solution nationally. More so given the frequencies of failures and increasing fraudulent activities, IMO.
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FWIW I have been trying to raise this in Vic and Federal and at best have received crickets in return from Federal and my state member’s staff wanted to help me with my problem-a problem I personally do not have. When they finally understood the issue they went missing.
I got onto a gent at Digital Transformation who understood the problem and pointed me to what turned out as ‘thank you for coming’ experiences.
@BrendanMays, could nationally accepted ID beyond a driver license or passport be something Choice could champion?
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It is not obvious that this would be in the interests of the consumer, depending on exactly what it ends up meaning.
The starting point is obviously “visions of an Orwellian totalitarian government”, as the OP put it, and the actual failure to introduce the Australia Card. The ability to prove ID will no doubt encourage governments to require proving of ID in more contexts, in more places, and maybe companies can get in on the act too, which will then extend the surveillance state even further.
Given where we are today, it may be appropriate to advocate for nation-wide acceptance of the mishmash of state-issued drivers licences and photo ID cards, and importantly for the upgrading of security on those licences / cards so that they are on par with a passport (i.e. become a chip card). We’ve been able to have chips in cards for internet banking and in credit cards for a decade or more, so why not drivers licences and photo ID cards?
With the Document Verification Service up and running (not yet in use in Queensland and Victoria) surely the first part of the previous paragraph should be achievable (although based on the previous link, photo ID cards may not be supported by the DVS as yet, so that would be an additional gap).
However all of these approaches have one thing in common: single point of failure - or, more accurately, a point of failure such that a compromise in one aspect automatically spreads to a large number of other aspects. In that regard, we should be looking for more entities that are authorised to vouch for your ID, not fewer.
We also need to make the whole system more hackproof. Since government is primarily the problem here, they need to get real about the likelihood of human error and the likelihood of a security breach, and design the system accordingly.
Does this lead to the inevitable that no identity is the only solution?
I might be concerned about how identity could be used to track one.
I’d be more concerned that those I do business with can’t tell the difference between me and an imposter.
Hence the problem is not my ability to prove my identity. The problem is the ability of an imposter to prove they are not me.
Too few may be that honest.
I don’t think that is going to be acceptable to many, as long as ownership of property (assets) is a thing. However in theory we could move to an all-digital solution where ownership can be asserted but without having an identity (similar to the way cryptocurrency works). The reality of this though would be that if your “cryptowallet” is lost (i.e. all copies of it) then you just lost ownership of your house etc.
I really can’t imagine that the government would ever accept that anyway.
My honest opinion is that what will happen is that government will ram some new law through, time and time again, ignoring the chorus of objections, until we do actually achieve Orwellian totalitarian government.
If you were looking for a compromise that respects human rights while acknowledging that government needs some oversight then it might require a constitutional amendment establishing a general right to privacy and the right not to be surveilled and the right not to be tracked. This would then create some kind of limit on what laws the government could ram through and would force it to justify each incursion (and would more comprehensively prevent surveillance capitalism).
In my post I did throw in several ideas that don’t need to go anywhere near radical ideas like “human rights” or “no identity” i.e. accepting the likelihood that things will mostly continue in the direction they are going and that only small steps can be taken to improve things.
This is a current discussion. My post derives from an older topic about some people not being able to authenticate their identity online. The online systems only take driver licenses, passports, and medicare numbers. One needs 2 of the 3. I am unable to find that older topic 
A point was there are ‘ID issuers’ such as Auspost (and others) that offer supposed ID products that are not universally accepted for online authentication and maybe more; proof of age cards are another example where the purported ID falls short as ID. The person then has to get certified copies and/or personally appear with their docs somewhere, often inconvenient and getting worse, for the 100 point check. From memory possible examples included such as a resident in an aged care facility or in long term hospital care sans driver license or passport, or a person in a remote community trying to open a new bank account.
For clarity I did not endorse a national identity card I proposed one or more cards should be legislated to be universally accepted for domestic online 100 point checks.
A proposed solution was the state driver license agencies issuing a legal Id like a DL but not a DL that could be reasonably authenticated as if it were a DL for the purposes of ID checks.
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It’s more than a hypothetical. It is a lived experience from the immediate past.
Our mum changed states and banks. Whatever is the future solution, wheeling someone of limited physical ability into a bank to complete a 100 point ID is something I never wish to relive. There are some things an EPOA cannot do.
Consider the majority of land titles, the one and sole major asset many of us hold are now recorded digitally. Proof of who one is and proof of who one is not is fundamental to our financial security and financial independence. The evidence of physical ownership by paper record has been extinguished. Which ever way one might like to proceed, government is responsible for ensuring the solution.
“Some oversight” seems to evade the fundamental need to protect not one’s right to privacy, but one’s right of ownership and thus to identity. We need the last two to be assured of what is more valuable than all else. Our entitlement to demonstrate ownership and protect that.
It seems a false argument to suggest protection of privacy, and a right to avoid surveillance or tracking should take precedence. To do so one surrenders all ability to establish ownership. Physical confrontation might be the exception.
I’d suggest that as of the day of granting of a birth certificate and subsequent issue of a death certificate, inclusive of key details, the right to be surveilled is fundamental to our existence. It’s not a choice.
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The first paragraph of my post specifically acknowledged that i.e. that, as currently implemented, you need identity in order to have ownership.
You’ve probably read more into what I said than is warranted. The point of wording it the way I did is a legal one. If the constitution establishes a right then it is not the case that the right takes precedence over all other considerations. The point is that every single time the government passes a law that transgresses that right, the government must (potentially) justify that transgression as being necessary and proportionate.
The constitution somewhat implies a right to own property. If we were engaging with a completely hypothetical discussion about constitutional amendments, that could be made more explicit.
I didn’t specifically make any comment that suggests that you have a right not to have an identity or that you have a right to have an identity. I didn’t comment either way. In fact, the fact that I was mentioning “no identity” at all was in response to your introduction of the idea.
Why government can’t be trusted with data:
Questions raised over why West Australian government will keep G2G pass data indefinitely
WA Police to keep G2G pass data for 25 years before handing over to State Records Office - ABC News
And further commentary on this story: G2G data storage at odds with privacy promise made to West Australians during pandemic - ABC News
The WA government is starting to look “mean and tricky”.
