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What is the Digital Identity Bill?

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The ‘Trusted Digital Identity Bill 2021’ is a piece of legislation designed to act as the framework for a permanent and expansive ‘digital identity’ for all Australian citizens.

‘Digital Identity’ acts as a master ID, joining together previously disconnected government databases containing confidential personal information.

Where the myGov app links things like a driver’s licence, passport, Medicare card, and vaccination record – the Digital Identity sets out to link ALL government data related to a person. Future iterations of the Digital Identity propose to pair this data against private sector information, such as purchasing records, to create a rich digital view of a citizen.

While Australia lacks the corresponding technological infrastructure to utilise a Digital Identity to its sinister potential (such as China’s spying street lights and billboards), this Bill – whether intentional or accidental – acts as the foundation for a China-style Social Credit System.

Governments do not create large citizen data collection points for no reason. This information is valuable, not only for research purposes, but for political strategies and future policies (such as ‘incentivising’ green initiatives). Once this information starts being collated by the government against a citizen, it will become like a browser history session that cannot be cleared. While the Bill does not specifically lay out applications for Digital Identity, accompanying documents and industry articles (from banking and insurance sectors) have already begun discussing its potential.

The Trusted Digital Identity Bill 2021 cannot be read or understood as a stand-alone policy. It forms part of an extensive policy framework under the government’s 2030 digital goals laid out in the Digital Economy Strategy 2030. According to this strategy (worth $1.2 billion in the 2021-2022 Budget), Australia’s Digital Identity is intended to connect into a global digital identity economy.

In other words, the problem is not so much with the technical setup/certifications of the Digital Identity as laid out in the Bill – the issue is with the intention of the Digital Identity and that catastrophic change to both privacy and the existing separation between the economy and the government.

What is also of concern is the heightened level of control that the government seeks to wield over the direction of the economy once it transforms into largely digital entity – as stated in its goals – and therefore its motivation for the establishment of a Trusted Digital Identity. The strategy stresses that Digital Identity is aimed at keeping us ‘safe’ and recovering from a ‘Covid economy’, but as we have learned, government is poorly equipped to carry out these tasks.

Australians have to ask themselves, do they really want the government acting as an omnipresent policeman standing guard over every commercial transaction?

Should the government be able to prevent a citizen from being ‘certified’ to purchase items from a private seller (something that is not possible with cash)?

Further, do Australians want to give the government power over the economy to micromanage its future by monitoring, punishing, and rewarding transactions in the same way they have started to interfere in the ‘green’ energy market?

Also of chief concern is the reason Digital Identity has been created in the first place. The government did not come up with the Trusted Digital Identity on their own to solve the issue of outdated government databases. As stated by the policymakers in their accompanying documentation, the Trusted Digital Identity is the brainchild of the World Economic Forum and their global digital identity roadmap.

The Trusted Digital Identity is required for the Digital Economy Strategy. The following is the intention of the government strategy:

‘The digital economy is key to securing our economic future and recovery from COVID-19. The Digital Economy Strategy targets investments that will underpin improvements in jobs, productivity and make Australia’s economy more resilient.’

Then, from the Digital Identity Consultation Regulation Impact Statement, the government quotes  Shaping the Future of Digital Economy and New Value Creation directly from the World Economic Forum.

‘Further, research conducted by the WEF suggests that digital identity is essential for the growth of the digital economy more broadly encouraging digital, as well as physical engagement with public and private sector services, it has a pivotal role to play in rebooting the global economy in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Digital Identity uniquely positions businesses, the research concluded, to gain and maintain user trust and remain competitive, ‘…guarantee[ing] the realisation of greater economic potential…and advancing an economy that is more inclusive, equitable and stable for all’.’

And from the linked article:

‘The Platform on Digital Economy and New Value Creation helps companies leverage technology to be agile in the face of disruption and to create the new digitally enabled business models for a new normal – post-COVID, purpose driven, sustainable and inclusive. […] An estimated 70% of new value created in the economy over the next decade will be based on digitally enabled platform business models. However, 47% of the world’s population remain unconnected to the internet.’ – Shaping the Future of Digital Economy and New Value Creation and the Davos Agenda Digital identity Frameworks.

In How digital identity can improve lives in a post-COVID-19 world, the WEF states that, ‘To re-boot the global economy and re-connect society physically and virtually in a new reality, people will need to engage physically and digitally with public authorities and businesses.’

The World Economic Forum is encouraging domestic policymakers to ‘move quickly’ and build ‘trust’ with citizens around the secure usage of personal data, which allows extensive third parties to create digital frameworks previously forbidden by privacy laws.

‘But the potential is bigger: the possibility to safely claim who we are will impact how we live and how fast the world economy can recover – alleviating key risks highlighted in World Economic Forum’s COVID-19 Risk Outlooks Report.’

The linked Outlooks Report (tied to the Global Risks Report) seeks to keep the changes made during Covid rather than encouraging business and society to return to its in-person, normal operation. This is no doubt because the biggest winners under Covid were digital services and banks who profited off an unsustainable economic model almost entirely propped up with public money. To encourage this system would be a catastrophic error.

This report includes the header ‘An opportunity to build back better’,directly connecting the Liberal Party’s Australian Digital Identity to the hated ‘build back better’ global mantra. It also forms part of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and, littered through the supplementary data, are references and intentions to eventually incorporate the global Digital Identity into Climate Change policy.

‘Despite the grim economic outlook, the solidarity created by the Covid-19 pandemic offers the possibility of investing in building more cohesive, inclusive and equal societies. When it comes to the environmental agenda, the implementation of green stimulus programmes holds the potential to fundamentally change the way economies and industries operate, especially as societal behaviour change may spur more sustainable consumption and mobility habits. For businesses, the opportunity exists to accelerate a transformation towards more sustainable and digital operating models, while enhancing productivity. When it comes to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, technology has demonstrably helped societies manage crisis and provided a window into the benefits of more technology-enhanced ways of learning, working and producing – from telemedicine to logistics to the knowledge economy. There is a potential for a new era of innovation, growth and enhanced technology governance in the service of societal and environmental goals.’

To be clear, the WEF is the backbone from which the Australian government is drafting Digital Identity policy and the assumptions made by the WEF to justify their recommendations are, frankly, wrong – both historically and logically. To give one example, the need for swift digitisation is based on a prediction that nationalistic tendencies driven by competition for pandemic resources will see countries isolate themselves from the global market and sink into recession. We know from history that nations do the reverse – they expand into trade after traumatic events and the less intervention from global authorities, the better as countries find their economic niches mores quickly.

The Australian government do not challenge any of these assumptions, but rather assumed them as fact with the WEF’s recommendations littered throughout the Bill.

Part of this framework is a concept called ‘Human-centric digital identities’ – which is essentially what the Australian government is attempting to create as a form of ‘alleviation from global health risks’. The description of Trusted Digital Identity in the linked WEF policy is nearly identical to the Australian legislation.

The other WEF reference made is to Reimagining Digital Identity: A Strategic Imperative, which is more of the same except it summarises the other nations creating their own Digital Identities and includes a few worrying insights.

‘Businesses must understand that they will be required to redesign and rethink their relationships with their customers to remain competitive in a changing business landscape. As user expectations change regarding how digital identity is managed, organisations must reposition themselves regarding how they interact with their customers. And the time to act is now. The digital identity revolution has already begun.’

At which point we can point to the Australian government’s Digital Economy roadmap which says:

‘We’ll be succeeding when:

  • The significant majority of Australians over 19 are registered for myGovID or other trusted digital identity.
  • By 2030 all businesses will be digital businesses. To be a leading digital economy and society in 2030, every business needs to become a digital business.
  • Businesses can verify the digital identity of customers and suppliers with absolute confidence.
  • All transaction are electronic, integrated and secure – from registration through to employment, reporting, marketing, banking, accounting and security.

Which, if you read carefully, attempts to end anonymous cash transactions within the economy under the excuse of ‘progress, efficiency and safety’, removing the essential liberty of customers and businesses to purchase goods and services without heavy-handed oversight.

The recurring theme throughout these documents is that in order to be ‘safe’ and expand after Covid, the government must forge a new digital economy. In reality, a heavily regulated economy is less resilient and slower to recover than an old fashioned chaotic one. This is probably why a black economy in Australia is on the rise (suggested by the staggering increase in physical cash circulation) as individuals seek to recover their jobs outside the inflexible layers of cost and regulation ill-suited to a disaster. The government puts the cash increase down to pandemic hoarding, but it is far more likely that those individuals ‘locked out of the economy’ by state governments are having to find ways to survive. Instead of fixing the environment that has caused this behaviour, the government seeks further regulation to prevent it.

What’s in the Trusted Digital Identity Bill:

The Bill simply introduces itself as, ‘A Bill for an Act to establish the ‘trusted’ Digital Identity system and to provide for the accreditation of entities in relation to digital identity systems generally, and for related purposes.’

In order words, it creates a Digital Identity, sets out how other digital entities can interact with it, creates code of conduct guidelines, and puts forward some general (but by no means exhaustive) application processes, and lists penalties for failing to comply. The word ‘trusted’ is in the title to represent the ‘trusted’ accreditation process that the Bill sets out for third parties to access citizen data. Finally, the Bill sets out an Oversight Authority to monitor the system.

The vast majority of this Bill deals with the technical nature of accrediting digital businesses to interact with your data. Instead, we wish to ask if the Bill should exist as a concept.

Forgetting the more serious consequences of the Bill, does it actually achieve what it sets out to do? The answer is, ‘no’. Based solely on its primary aims, the Bill is a failure of concept.

There are two stated purposes for the Bill’s existence.

  1. Simplify access to clunky government databases for individuals and businesses.
  2. Create, stimulate, and shape a ‘Covid-safe’ economy.

Instead of fixing the government’s disjoined, outdated, and woefully error-laden databases, Digital Identity acts as a band-aid.

It creates a brand new central identity and collects information from the same broken databases. Third party applications then talk to the Digital Identity, where all the information is nicely ordered for modern systems. The Digital Identity did not fix the problem – those databases are stilling heading toward failure. Why not simply spend the billions of dollars allocated to this project to fix the master databases? Or at least fix the databases before using the mess as the foundation for Australia’s largest digital environment…

A good Bill would simplify and reduce government databases, this Bill vastly extends government-held private data into a wide range of accredited domestic and international corporations who can, upon exemption, host data on foreign servers.

This data – crucial to the safety and identity of an individual – is now collated under the Digital Identity where it is shared, used, and hosted by corporate entities for a range of unspecified reasons related to government services, research, and economic practices. The Bill even lists the potential for these services to charge citizens an access fee for their data.

The main selling point on the Digital Identity website is the time people will save.

These promises are unlikely, given the experience and difficulty with both myGovID (created by the same company given the contract for Digital Identity) and the service trouble experienced with vaccine passport certification – the Trusted Digital Identity will probably take people longer to set up and fix than the total time saved by its existence. The government’s time-saving problems do not factor in any difficulties in service which are not part of the current system.Once passed, Digital Identity will be used as a way to validate transactions in the same way that a Vaccine Passport unlocks access to previously unregulated areas.

The Bill is careful to insist that its use will remain voluntary, but the accompanying documentation implies that Digital Identity is a mandatory condition of service in the economy in the same way that vaccine passports are ‘implied’ as mandatory if you wish to continue trading.

‘Digital Identity will give Australian people and businesses a single, secure way to use government services online. Creating a Digital Identity is like doing a 100-point identification check. It removes the need to visit a shopfront with your identity documents. Digital Identity is already being used by over 2.3 million Australians and 1.2 million businesses to access over 75 government services. Digital Identity ensures personal information is securely encrypted and stored in Australia and no personal information is presented through a double blind system. The proposed new legislation for the Digital Identity system will extend these protections and standards to businesses and state and territory governments who will use the digital identity.’

And then it sets out this Digital Identity as a government-controlled protection for fraud against private digital transactions:

‘The Trusted Digital Identity Framework sets out the rules for the national digital identity scheme. This Framework will make it easier and safer for people to access online services and provide additional protections against identity crime, which is estimated to cost the economy over  $3.1 billion a year. The Government will progress legislation to enable the rollout of the Framework to the private sector and other governments. The legislation will embed privacy, security and fraud prevention mechanisms to build trust and confidence by those who choose to participate.’

And finally, from the Digital Economy Strategy:

A digital economy is characterised by online transactions and engagement – a virtual, paperless and cashless world […] This means that by 2030:

  • All businesses are digital businesses, using e-Commerce tools and new technologies to improve productivity, innovate and generate high-paying jobs.
  • All transactions are electronic, integrated and secure – from registration through to employment, reporting, marketing, banking, accounting and security.
  • Government services will all be easily and safely accessible online, saving people and businesses time and money. Government service delivery will by supported by better public data availability and sharing that is used by a highly-skilled public service to deliver more targeted policy and programs.

And for individuals:


• The significant majority of Australians over 18 are registered for myGovID or another trusted digital identity.

While not explicitly stated in the Bill, if the government’s Digital Economy Strategy by 2030 is aiming for all business transactions to be digital (no cash), and those transactions require the integrated and secure Digital Identification check to validate them – then those who do not partake in the Digital Identity scheme will be effectively locked out of the economy.

The Digital Economy Strategy also states: ‘To be a leading digital economy and society in 2030, every business needs to become a digital business.’

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How is the Digital Transformation Agency going to handle the Digital Identity Bill?

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The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is meant to be the Government’s shining beacon of making things better with technology.

Instead, they have a long list of failures, from paying google to harvest government data, to abandoning cloud storage projects and dumping possibly sensitive source code into the public domain.

You have to ask, if the DTA is meant to be the Government’s leading technology agency but has such a dismal record, what hope do they have of implementing the infamous Digital Identity Bill?

Transcript

[Fechner] I’m happy. No opening statement. Thank you.

All good. Thank you. Senator Roberts, you have the call until 11:00 PM.

[Roberts] Thank you, Chair.

And then I’ll cut you off.

The Digital Transformation Agency has concluded an enterprise deal with Google in respect of Google Analytics 360. The Digital Transformation Agency charges Australian government agency websites for their Google data, which I assume is a cost-recovery exercise. How much are you paying Google for this service? Either 2021 actual or 2022 projected, please.

Thank you for the question, Senator. So the Google Analytics service is actually put in place to ensure that we actually have good information on the utilisation and feedback of government services, so it provides for the continuous improvement of our government activities. I will need to –

[Roberts] So what does it cost?

So we have our Head of Procurement here, Michelle Tuck. Can we take that number to find out what the actual costs are for Google Analytics?

[Tuck] Take it on notice?

Take it on notice.

[Roberts] Thank you. Google can obviously see all the data that you can see. After all, they just sell it back to you. On a normal private website, Google would be able to see identifying information for the website, visitor or entity, being IP address, device identification, sign-in If they are logged into Chrome, etc. Google would then store that data in the data file they already maintain for that entity. Google’s data file does not include names, but it does include locality, age, gender, employment, purchases, interests, travel, search and web history, and much, much more. Are Google adding data about private citizens who use a government website to Google’s own data records?

Senator, I’m happy to seek advice on that, but the actions of Google and those particular activities would be a subject to Google and any prevailing laws.

So, it’s quite easy for them to harvest the data because nothing precludes them from doing so?

Senator, there are aspects of data, so the DTA generally refers to the digital components of these. There are some specific data areas and they’re subject to PM&C, so potentially that question could be referred to PM&C.

Are we able to get them on notice from you?

If it’s an issue for PM&C, Senator, I’d say it would have to go on notice for them.

Thank you. Now let’s change topics to the Federal Government’s style guide. This will interest the chair. Recently the Senate rejected the use of gendered language and sent the style guide back for review. Who instructed the Digital Transformation Agency to de-gender language in the style guide?

Senator, the style guides have actually moved to be the responsibility of the Australian Public Service Commission. You need to refer those questions about the use of the style guide to them.

Thank you. So I’d have to ask them for a hard copy of it?

They’re responsible for the management of the style guides.

Okay. So let’s turn to cloud.gov.au. This was an attempt, as I understand it, to create a single standard for cloud storage of data, including websites across the whole of federal government. Did I get that right?

That was the original intention.

Okay. Original. Okay. This project was shut in 2021. And the source code for this web standard was put into GitHub, which as I understand it is a repository for code, freely accessible, where anyone can download it. Could a hacker learn anything about what could be in use in federal government websites and data servers, based on the information that they can freely obtain and contained in the GitHub files?

So Senator, the purpose of cloud.gov.au was to produce a safe and secure, and freely available to government entities, access to cloud services environments. As that capability has progressed, it was clear that the market was able to provide those services and the intent behind the security has been largely replaced with other components that we have, such as the hosting certification framework, which accredits cloud service providers to make sure that the controls that are in place for those services sit with government, so we have protections about where that data is stored, how does is transit and who has access to it. So cloud.gov.au became redundant from that purpose.

Yeah, I understand that, but apparently the source code for the web standard was put into GitHub where anybody can access it.

Senator, it’s my understanding right now that the services that are used, or used in that function, are all being decommissioned or moved onto alternative platforms.

[Roberts] But they’re already there on GitHub, which anyone can access.

Senator, GitHub is a repository for code services. It’s not necessarily the code service itself. It’s separate. It is actually the description of the language, and if it’s going into those GitHub repositories and it’s open source, meaning it’s freely available, it really is in public domain. Much of GitHub is actually contributed to by other parties other than government and it becomes a community of development services.

So why was this project cancelled?

Simply because of the transition to highly available public cloud services, the high security associated with those things, and the addition of additional controls, such as the hosting certification framework that added specific controls to make sure that government was clear where government data was stored, how it was actually moved, and where that data was being managed by others, including third parties, that it was safe and secure in those locations.

How much did this undelivered project cost across the project life or the arc, I think you call it, from January, 2018 to September, 2021?

Senator, I can take that on notice. So I commenced on October 13th, so it’s a bit before my time for those specifics.

Okay. So, okay, you and I are both scared of the wrath of the Chairman, so we’ll move on. This is not the only terminal outcome of one of Digital Transformation Agency’s programmes. May I reference the whole-of-government platform’s programme, which was retired. Once again, the source code for the six different projects under this programme was put into GitHub for anyone to download, but you’ve explained that. So my question is the same as before. No, you’ve explained that, that doesn’t matter. What was the cost of the whole-of-government platforms programme across its project arc, or life?

Senator, can I take that on notice again?

[Chair] Last question.

[Roberts] We’re getting there, Chair. [Chair] Last Question.

Okay. myGov is a joint venture between Services Australia and the Digital Transformation Agency. The app is proving problematic at best with a rating of 2.4 out of 5, which is on this graph here, so being less than half, that’s a fail by my understanding. We can see a pattern emerging here. Any attempt to modernise and standardise federal government data formats, storage and handling runs into apparently turf wars and gets terminated. Now we have the Digital Identity, and I’m leading into the question, Chair, now we have the Digital Identity, another of the Digital Transformation Agency’s projects, which will be part of life for every Australian. And in many ways it will enable control of many Australians in their lives. So a rating of 2.4 won’t cut it. How long will it take the Digital Transformation Agency to put in place the framework necessary for the Digital Identity to function at 5, not 2.4? How much will that cost, and what are your chances of success?

Senator, I think I’d like to seek a clarification on that. myGov does not currently have an app that’s in the public domain. They’re currently in a private beta for it. There is no myGov app that’s currently available.

Okay. So come to the question, then, there’s a history of failures going on in this area, digital transformation, how long will it take the Digital Transformation Agency to put in place the framework necessary for the Digital Identity to function at a rating of 5 out of 5? How much will that cost, and what are your chances of success?

So Senator, just again, to clarify, the App Store ratings generally rate the particular functions in there. So the Digital Identity is a framework and it allows multiple providers to go through. Part of that framework allows for the government to have a digital identity, and that’s the myGov ID as it currently stands. There is an app associated with that, and that app is simply about ensuring that people can enrol a Digital Identity for the government. Its actual main purpose is to provide access to safe, secure services through government via that identity in place of providing other digital credentials. So, yes, part of the aspect, but also the stepping up of credentials as well, that sits in that space, Senator.

[Roberts] Thank you, Chair.

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Freedom ends with a cashless society – Digital Identity Bill

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Without cash, there is only a system of ‘government approved purchases’. Even if you don’t use cash, having it banned will mean the government can take complete control of you and access to your money at any time. The Trusted Digital Identity Bill aims to track every single purchase you make so they can cut you off whenever Government decides, this isn’t possible when you the option to use cash.

Transcript

The reason we have a Constitution is to enforce absolute boundaries and to stop politicians taking liberties with our liberties. The behaviour of government during COVID has shown everyone how quick many politicians and bureaucrats were to abuse rights and coerce citizens into undergoing unwanted medical procedures.

By its very existence, the Trusted Digital Identity Bill is a violation of our historic privacy laws and consumer protections.

The final design of the Bill and its accompanying Digital Economy Strategy 2030, involves the complete removal of cash from the Australian economy. This means that every transaction, every purchase, and every sale through the till must pass a Digital Identity check by the government.

Without cash, there is no free capitalist economy – there is only a system of ‘government approved purchases’. The Trusted Digital Identity Bill will give premiers and the Prime Minister the power to take such action at any time by locking citizens out of the economy – a threat already issued by the Victorian premier during the pandemic.

Once the public understand how much we’re going to lose under the global reset, it will be too late to unpick the laws that allowed it to happen. Just like emergency pandemic legislation, Australia will be stuck with it.

The Trusted Digital Identity Bill is a framework for oppression and control. It is a global surveillance system designed by a foreign bureaucracy for the benefit of profit-hungry corporations and power-mad politicians.

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Life by subscription – the Trusted Digital Identity Bill

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https://youtu.be/HB7E-AouvGU

The Liberals have spent $1 billion on their Digital Economy Strategy. It aims to move everyone to an “access model”, which is really a life by subscription where the World Economic Forum says you will “own nothing and be happy”. The Trusted Digital Identity Bill: https://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/1984-the-bill-the-trusted-digital-identity/

Transcript

If the World Economic Forum is meant to be a ‘conspiracy theory’ why is the Federal Liberal Party copying its policies? Scott Morrison’s ‘Trusted Digital Identity Bill’ is a copy-paste directly from the World Economic Forum’s Global Digital Identity Project – which is part of the digital transformative initiative.

It is designed to shift the global economy away from private ownership and into what the World Economic Forum calls an ‘access model’ where you own nothing and instead rent goods and services from the world’s billionaire corporations.

In other words, the goal of ‘digital identity’ is a ‘life via subscription’.

Without assets and ownership, Australians will have no power over government or the corporations that want to control their lives. In their eyes, this will help the world ‘live sustainably’, but in reality it is a form of slavery to a closed-loop economy where you have less and the rich have more. The Liberals have already spent a billion of your dollars on their Digital Economy Strategy 2030. All they need to make the global socialist dream a reality is to pass the Trusted Digital Identity Bill.

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“1984: the Bill” – The Trusted Digital Identity

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Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, tonight I draw attention to a new government bill, the Trusted Digital Identity Bill 2021. This is no time for subtlety. The Trusted Digital Identity Bill represents a watershed moment in Australian history. We stand at the divide between a free, personal-enterprise future and a digital surveillance age in which the government sits in the middle of every interaction Australians have with each other and with the world. It achieves this in the same way China does, creating a digital identity that forms a central part of a person’s life. Call it a licence to live.

This bill removes the privacy protection currently preventing this exploitation and allows the government to keep one massive data file with everything the government knows about you and to sell that file to private companies overseas. Those companies can add your private sector data to build up a complete digital record of every Australian—everything: medical, shopping, whom we associate with, social security, veterans services, travel, web viewing, employment, our social media comments. Everything will go on the record and be available to any large corporation that can pay for access. We will each have to pay to access our medical records from that corporation. In Morrison-Joyce news speak, it’s a ‘human-centric digital identity’—sounds great, doesn’t it!

This has frightening ramifications for government and corporate control of everyday Australians. Policy documents attached to this bill promote digital identity as a benign housekeeping bill to fix antiquated and incomplete government databases ‘to save a few minutes filling out that government form’, they say. ‘This will reinvigorate the economy after COVID,’ they say. What the economy really needs is for the government to get the hell out of the way and let Australians lift ourselves up through our own hard work and enterprise—remove vaccine passports or, as I call them, digital prisons; ditch QR codes; stop spreading fear; and let the Australian spirit do the rest.

One Nation believes in technological advancements and in streamlining services. We would love to see a bill come forward to clean up the government’s databases and improve the online experience of Australians trying to access our own data. This is not what the digital identity bill does. Digital identity will do nothing to fix the government’s IT, yet it creates a crown-jewel scenario for hackers to steal not just one set of government data but, rather, personalised treasure troves. Far from safe, the Australian government’s is one of the most hacked databases in the world. This year, medical records became a highly sought after target. If you want to know the direction in which global policy is headed, watch what the hackers are trying to steal.

Another concern is vaccination. Digital identity links medical history with consumer purchases. What’s to stop a government locking out an uninjected person from the economy, as more than one state premier already threatens? It is a social credit system. We should not have to ask these questions, because the power should not exist. Digital identity represents the cornerstone in a larger World Economic Forum and United Nations campaign to implement a global digital identity system.

Why is the Morrison-Joyce government allowing the World Economic Forum to write Australian legislation? This bill is a copy-and-paste from the World Economic Forum’s Global Digital Identity Project—part of the digital transformation initiative. The Morrison-Joyce government brought this package to Australia, and this bill will start the World Economic Forum package’s implementation. It’s designed to shift the global economy away from private ownership and into what the World Economic Forum calls an ‘access model’—in other words, control. Australians have heard the slogan of the globalist Build Back Better campaign. You will own nothing and you will be happy. The goal of digital identity is life via subscription. Put simply, everyday Australians will not own assets like a house, car or furniture. Instead, they will rent these from corporations—corporations that the cabal owns—or, as the UN calls them, ‘corporate partners’.

When they talk about us having less, or living sustainably, or living in a closed-loop economy, what they mean is: we will have less—a lot less—so that billionaires can have more. It’s this principle that informed the Liberal Party’s billion-dollar Digital Economy Strategy 2030 which is reliant on the Trusted Digital Identity Bill. Indeed, the bulk of the supporting commentary around digital identity and the Digital Economy Strategy 2030 obsesses about how the government will be able to manage Australia’s economy onto a so-called sustainable path—a UN path.

For a glimpse into this future, we need only look at the food menus on display at the UN climate summit that the Prime Minister attended earlier this month. Each dish listed its carbon footprint, with a United Nations pledge to reduce the carbon footprint of every meal consumed across the world, including ours, every day. What happens when a government, obsessed with pursuing digital net-zero policies, decides to encourage people to reduce the carbon footprint of our food choices? We already know the UN is pushing vegetarianism and limiting red meat consumption to one mouthful per person per day.

The level of control this legislation provides to the UN is frightening. Instead of allowing businesses to seek out and explore natural market forces and people’s needs, digital identity is a tool to introduce a controlled economy under international direction, where implementing something like net zero can be mandated individually.

One Nation rejects providing more power to unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable UN bureaucrats to control everyday Australians in what we can eat, where we can travel, how much water and power we can use, under the threat of being shut off from the ability to feed, clothe and house ourselves.

It’s evident that this policy robs businesses of control over their own future. The government will dictate each and every business’s future interactions with customers and suppliers. Small and medium businesses will have to contend with a massive technology overhead and be forced into an unfair David-versus-Goliath fight against large, incredibly well-informed businesses that are in the globalist information-sharing club. More Australian businesses will fall to foreign multinationals.

Digital identity is the end of personal privacy, anonymity, confidentiality, sovereignty and choice. Despite the bill repeatedly insisting that it offers a voluntary service to make life easier, it’s clear from the full documentation that digital identity will be made compulsory in the same way that vaccine mandates are now.

With this bill, once again, Prime Minister Morrison is trying to ban cash. One Nation was successful in striking the government’s cash-ban bill from the Senate Notice Paper last year, after public outrage. Cashless payments are popular, but the complete loss of cash opens up an entirely different conversation. Cash is a safeguard. When we have cash, we have purchasing power. A digital identity, though, could easily limit our individual purchases based on government or corporate policy. So, under this bill, cash has to go and, under this legislation, cash will go.

Australian banks have already voiced their interest in the Trusted Digital Identity Framework, saying it will allow them to create a rich view of their customers. Most people do not want banking institutions creating rich data maps of their personal and private information. This bill will allow banks to micromanage our spending in the name of whatever social justice cause banks are promoting. The design of the new payment platform that the Reserve Bank of Australia introduced in 2018 and forced on all Australian banks, allows for the addition of a digital identity. In fact, the basic architecture of the new payment platform was designed for a digital identity. Under the new payment platform, every transaction, every retail sale, interbank transfer, pay, online sale, all come through one central server. This allows the digital identity of each party to be checked and approved before the payment is finalised. Just how long have the World Economic Forum and the UN been planning this? For decades.

In China, a person’s phone controls their lives. The same thing has happened in Australia during COVID. Without a phone to prove our identity and to cough up medical data, citizens are excluded from society. The need to carry a phone at all times—charged and ready to offer their digital identity to buy something as simple as a cup of coffee—can be replaced with a wearable or an implantable chip. I can’t wait to see how they sell that! All forced at the start of a social credit system.

The Trusted Digital Identity Bill makes a wild claim that it will solve online fraud and protect businesses and customers. The government even put ‘trusted’ in the title, so it must be true! Anyone with any experience in online fraud knows this system will not solve fraud; it will likely make it worse.

The reason we have a Constitution is to enforce absolute boundaries to stop politicians taking liberties with our liberties. The behaviour of politicians during COVID has shown everyone how quick many politicians and bureaucrats were to abuse rights and to punish and coerce citizens into undergoing untested and unproven medical procedures. This bill will give premiers and the Prime Minister the power to take such action at any time. What a terrifying prospect! For this government, once the public understand how much we’re going to lose under the global reset, oppression becomes essential. This bill becomes the framework for that oppression. The Trusted Digital Identity Bill is a global surveillance and control mechanism that profit-hungry corporations and power-mad politicians drafted and crafted. It aims to introduce the total-control economy where citizens own nothing and have no freedom and no choices.

One Nation opposes this inhuman dystopian future that the United Nations promotes as the great reset, and we condemn this parliament for signing on to it. The only way to stop this monstrous plan is, at the next election, to throw out the globalist cheer squad—Liberal, Labor, Nationals and Greens parties—and develop a potent One Nation representation to hold government accountable and return parliament to serving the people of Australia.

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