Report - Guardian

The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005 83At the end of 1985, the opposition-controlled Senate forced the appointment of a JointSelect Committee to investigate the proposal. The Committee raised a wide spectrum ofconcerns. The majority of the Committee, including one government member, opposedthe scheme, warning that it would change the nature of the relationship between citizenand state and create major privacy and civil liberties problems. The Committee furthercommented that the cost benefit basis for such a scheme was speculative and rubbery,and that all common law countries had rejected such proposals. 206 The fact that nocommon law country has accepted an ID card was crucial to the whole debate over theAustralia Card.The Committee’s report formed the basis of the parliamentary opposition’s rejection ofthe scheme. On two occasions the Government presented the legislation to the Senate,where it does not have a majority, only to see the bill rejected. After the secondrejection by the Senate, the Government used the issue as the trigger to employ itsconstitutional right to call an election on the ID card legislation, and to call a jointsitting of Parliament, where it would have a majority.In fact, the election campaign of July 1987 contained almost no reference to the ID cardissue. In the opinion of the media, the ID card was simply not on the agenda. 207 Thegovernment was re-elected, and promptly re-submitted the ID card legislation.Within weeks, a huge and well-organised movement was underway. Rallies wereorganised on an almost daily basis, and although these were described as “educationnights”, the reality was that most were hotbeds of hostility rather than well-orderedinformation sessions.On the night of September 14th, 4,000 angry people packed the AMOCO hall in thecentral New South Wales town of Orange. One in seven of the city’s populationattended the meeting. Other towns responded in similar fashion.The massive wave of public outrage was generated by scores of ad-hoc local andregional committees across the country. Rallies formed on a daily basis, culminating ina gathering of 30,000 outside Western Australia’s Parliament House. The AustralianPrivacy Foundation, which had organised the campaign, had planned rallies in Sydneyand Melbourne that were likely to block the Central Business District.A major national opinion poll conducted in the closing days of the campaign by theChannel Nine television network resulted in a 90% opposition to the card. The normallystaid Australian Financial Review produced a scathing editorial which concluded:“It is simply obscene to use revenue arguments (“We can make moremoney out of the Australia Card”) as support for authoritarian206 Report of the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card, AGPS, Canberra, 1986207 Neither the Government nor the Opposition raised the ID card as a key issue during the electioncampaign.