By Paul Collits
Every Australian, or just about every Australian, knew what happened on the 14th of October. The date for the massively divisive, ill-conceived and and problematic Referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament finally came to pass. We were set free – or, at least, set a little free – from the incessant clanging of the Aboriginal industry once the damned voice debate was concluded in an all-but-rigged referendum, with the government and industry pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the “Vote Yes” campaign.
All to suffer an utterly humiliating defeat from which the government of Anthony Albanese is never likely to recover.
Less well known, sadly, is what happened on 10 October. This was the day that the opportunity to make a submission on the Digital Identity Bill 2023 closed.
This is what the government claimed this Bill was about: “The legislation when passed will move Digital ID to a nationally regulated system which will be accessible across both the public and private sectors and will include strong privacy provisions. It will establish the ACCC as the initial regulator.
“Feedback from this process will help shape the effective implementation of Digital ID as the government’s national identity system to make Australia’s online services and transactions safer and more convenient.”
What it is really about is control, control, and more control. Despite what the Minister responsible, Katy Gallagher, says: “It’s simply the digital version of the act of someone looking at you, looking at your picture on your licence and being able to verify that you are who you say you are.
“Importantly, Digital ID is not a card, it’ not a unique number, nor a new form of ID. It’s just an easy way of verifying who you are online, against existing government-held identity documents without having to hand over any physical information.
“And we believe it should be secure, convenient, voluntary, and inclusive.”
Nothing Reassuring About It
So, just like the voice; no change, really. Nothing to see here. Nothing at all to be worried about. Reassuring. Like so much of what governments have been lying about since at least early 2020. Including, perhaps especially, by the same Katy Gallagher. Why would we believe her now?
And there is the usual one hundred and eighty degree lie. It is all about you accessing government information, not about the Government accessing your information. But the latter will be a necessary by-product of the deal, with the State able to use all your information in any ways it might choose to. They don’t ever say that bit out loud. This is a version of the 1984-type lie, where the meaning of words simply flips. Freedom is control. Privacy means they know everything you do.
The Bill as it is currently drafted is structured to see the phased expansion of Digital ID, nationally and then economy wide. Gallagher revealed some of the process. This will be done in four phases:
Firstly, to legislate for Digital ID, establish the rules, the regulator and protections and continue expanding use across government and also the accreditation of public and private providers. We are calling this Phase One.
Phase Two is to allow state and territory Digital IDs to be used to access a Commonwealth services.
The third phase will be to allow myGovID to be used in the private sector; for example, myGovID could be used to open a new bank account with an Australian bank, or verify you when signing a telco contract or real estate lease.
Fourth will be to allow accredited private sector Digital IDs to verify you when accessing some government services. This will be the fourth and final phase.
Pinning You To A Wall
So, it is not just about government services. Operating across jurisdictions. Private sector involvement. Economy wide. It turns out that this thing is broad and long. With good actors, exponentially increasing and revolutionising access to our personal data might be able to be sold to the sceptics. But our polity and our corporates are now awash with bad actors who have been smashing our rights and freedoms out of the park of late, and who have mal-intent. Giving the ever-growing State seamless, turbo-charged access to our lives is asking for trouble. Huge trouble.
Gallagher said at one point:
One great example of this is that Digital ID reduces the time it takes to obtain a Tax File Number from 28 days to just 10 minutes!
If we can get a TFN in ten minutes, it would be just as easy and quick for any branch of government to achieve maximum knowledge about us in the same short time. Gallagher has unintentionally given the game away.
Unsurprisingly, the Australian Government’s Department of Finance gave the punters a mere couple of weeks of “consultation”. These faux public consultations are now just pro forma for this government, which is not the least bit interested in hearing what their constituents think.
Just like government press releases about unpopular issues or dastardly decisions routinely dropped at five o’clock on a Friday afternoon, the Government clearly doesn’t want news of this little gem getting too much airplay.
Comply or Die
There is a reason why this government neither consults or communicates properly on any of its major initiatives. If too many people found out about it, there would be shouting in the streets, right? Or would there be?
The once famous, now embarrassing, Australian insouciance on display during the Covid dictatorship will probably mean that only the truly awake – still, alas, a small minority of us – will know about this Bill and what lies behind it. And how it fits in to the bigger picture.
Rebel Queensland politician George Christensen describes this, and the coming Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) push as “the final pieces in the puzzle”. Not to mention the “1984” Bill (relating to so-called online safety). I think of it as the creation of an ecosystem of totalitarian control. It is largely driven by technology. The latter is critical, since Australians go nuts over anything involving new technology. The phrase “early adopters” doesn’t nearly cover it. We get excited in the pants over technology, for whatever reason.
The obsession with technology is one of four reasons why Australians are likely to go “ho-hum” over the Digital ID Bill.
The second is our aforementioned insouciance. Anything we don’t fully understand, we don’t give a rat’s about. We don’t bother to research it. We are a nation of midwits, just aware enough to think that we know it all and that the ravings of conspiracy theorists can safely be parked. We don’t know what we don’t know, and that is very dangerous.
The third reason for the national ho-hum is that we have been distracted by the hullabaloo over The Voice. We live at a time of carefully constructed ignorance.
The fourth reason is that it plays right into the twin Australian obsessions with “safety” and “convenience”. The “Optus hack” of September 2022 is cited as one of the arguments for the legislation. This will make us all “safe” from that.
Not coincidentally, the last point is the way the Digital ID Bill is being sold to us. Digital IDs will stop online fraud (how, exactly?) and will save everyone from going through all the rigmarole of producing multiple IDs for the increasing range of transactions for which we need ID. Knowing your date of birth used to be enough. Not anymore. Then there is the whole, dystopian facial recognition agenda. And global digital health certificates. Or, as some call it, the creation of a digital prison. You can find all this in the Global Digital Health Certification Network, buried in the World Health Organisation’s International Health Regulations (IHR) proposed amendments.
And restrictions on flights – some want four per lifetime. And the millennials and Gen Zs love it!
The Road to Ruin
All of the evidence – based on the Covid experience – suggests that the fears that some have about the evil uses to which this proposed system can be put are absolutely well-grounded. The same tactics – abuse and isolate those who raise alarm bells – that worked so well for the globalists and Covid maniacs, are being rolled out again.
At the G20 summit in New Delhi, leaders from the world’s leading rich and developing nations have recently agreed to a plan to eventually implement digital currencies and digital IDs on their respective populations. This comes amid concern that governments might use digital currencies and IDs to monitor their people’s spending and crush dissent.
Though discussions are underway to create international regulations for cryptocurrencies, the G20 stated that there was “no talk of banning cryptocurrency” at the summit. Critics are concerned that governments and central banks will eventually regulate cryptocurrencies and then immediately replace them with central bank digital currencies (CBDC), which lack similar privacy and security. It has been suggested that regulation of digital currencies could allow government authorities to impose a social credit score system and decide how citizens can spend their money.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for digital ID systems similar to COVID-19 vaccine passports and for an international regulatory body for artificial intelligence (AI). She also proposed that the United Nations play a role in AI regulation and that the European Union’s COVID-19 digital certificate be used as a model for digital public infrastructures (DPI) including digital IDs. The European Union is also currently attempting to introduce a bloc-wide “digital identity” app.
Ms. von der Leyen stated that “the future is digital” and that “digital public infrastructures are an accelerator of growth. They must be trusted, interoperable and open to all.”
Interoperable
Don’t you just love the friendly, innocent jargon? Jargon and buzz words that cover up far darker intent. The Australia Project notes: “The EU’s Digital ID was modelled on WEF’s Digital ID 2020, and has been ‘sold’ to Europeans as ‘reducing red tape, safeguarding privacy and making life ‘easier’.”
Darpa and Microsoft have put together something called the “Coalition for Content Provenance and Authentication”, to be incorporated into Digital ID.
It prevents anyone from buying a home, renting anything, buying a car, travelling etc, without ‘authorisation’ by the government.
CAN YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING?
Posting online or accessing your financial/medical/welfare accounts will only be possible with a Digital ID and a biometric ‘authentication’ scan.
The ‘synchronicity’ and speed with which all this is being done is astonishing. Virtually every country in the world is singing from the same song-sheet on Digital ID.
The ID Bill will mean that government will know exactly where we are at any time, and what (online) we are doing. The Online Safety (Amendment) Bill will allow them more easily to identify trouble makers and thought criminals. And the CBDCs will allow them to stop us spending our money, on an ideological whim. Or to punish us in other, even worse, ultimately Chinesey ways. Senator Malcom Roberts calls the whole package a “licence to live”. With government at the centre of EVERY transaction anyone ever makes. The Vigilant Fox calls it “digital stalking”. The “papers please” governance of the Covid era is set to get a whole lot worse.
Australians should be disgusted at their major parties’ bipartisan support for such an unconstitutional, internationally co-ordinated, ‘top down’ global power grab.
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The whole of Covid was a trial run, for many things. Remember the oft-used phrase, “you will need to be vaccinated to participate in society”? Political leaders actually said that. Tim Hinchliffe calls the coming of Covid vaccine mandates “a turning point in human history”.
During Covid, Catherine Austin-Fitts talked about the three-fenced paddock (QR codes, CBDCs and vaccine passports) in which we will be corralled. The digital ID is the key fence, and if brought in, we will be trapped forever.
In combination with CBDC and vaccine passports, Catherine warns, humanity is on the verge of a dystopian future in which, ‘You either do exactly what you’re told, or your car won’t start, it won’t go to a certain distance, you won’t be able to access the internet, your bank account won’t work.’
Back to our key upcoming dates. 14 October? Forget it. Dastardly and dangerous, yes. Freedom killing? Not nearly as much as 10 October. Certainly not a turning point in human history. They say (illegally) in relation to the referendum on the voice, vote early and vote often. Well, when it comes to the Digital ID submission process, the same principle should apply. As Delingpole says, this is the battle of our lives.
