Government Access Cards A Key To Fraud And Identity Theft Reduction?
Presented by Robert Bromwich.
During 2006, the Australian Commonwealth government introduced legislation to establish an social services access card, requiring that possession of the card to access certain government benefits and concessions. The claimed benefits ranged from fraud reduction to improved access to benefits and refunds associated with certain medical expenditure. Despite claims of substantive savings over a long time period, no independent verification of the savings claims have been produced.
The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the proposed Australian system against the REAL-ID system being developed in the United States of America and the identity card system being rolled out across the United Kingdom – and asks the question “Is the access card system a key to fraud reduction, or a key to introduce the Australia Card?”
