Here's Why

The Access Card is not good enough

So the draft legislation was NOT tabled at parliament before the break, but just shown to journalists.

It's not designed to save any money lost to welfare fraud, so its no good for that.

They've removed the medical information option, so its no good for that.

Police and ASIO no longer require a warrant to access private information.

No technological protection of private information is required by the legislation. This makes the smart cards dumber than the magnetic stripe card it replaces.

The Access Card office and the Australian Government Information Management Office have been working closely to make sure that the face-recognition data on the card is compatible with the Closed-Circuit CCTV security camera system. This lets the government pick your face out of the crowd, without a warrant.

So the card doesn't achieve its stated purpose, yet it will costs several billions of dollars more than the old system. Legal and technological privacy protections are to be stripped away by the new legislation.

Perhaps the only thing the Access Card is good for is an Identity Card, however often the government protests otherwise.

References:
Access Card re-draft fails to meet critics' concerns
Access Card Debacle Continues
'Rushed' Access Card Bill raises suspicions
Govt toughens access card privacy protections
Access card could link to surveillance
Exposure Draft of the Bill
Access Card is not a national ID: Govt
Is Big Brother Stalking You?

About the author: Ian Woolf lives in Sydney, has a degree in Applied Science, worked as a solar astronomer, software engineer, systems programmer, webmaster, research assistant, Cisco CCNA tutor, Physics laboratory demonstrator, Computational Theory lecturer, and subject coordinator; while changing his career to freelance writing and broadcasting. Listen to Ian on the Diffusion radio science show on radio 2SER 107.3FM Monday at 6:30pm in Sydney or streaming audio on www.2ser.com, or listen to the Diffusion podcasts. You should follow me on twitter, here