WorkChoice Identity Card
A little-known aspect of WorkChoices is that everyone who works is assumed to be guilty of crimes against Immigration law until they can prove themselves innocent. The assumption is that even if you're born here and have worked all your life, that you don't have a work visa, so you are illegally trying to work. You slacker!
I started two new casual part-time jobs recently (with the approval of Centrelink and my doctor), and they both were required under the WorkChoices legislation to provide the Immigration Department proof that I wasn't guilty of NOT having the legal right to work in Australia. One required a passport, the other settled for a birth certificate, although they had to check why they weren't allowed to accept a driver's license.
So we now live in a country where everyone has to provide papers on demand to prove that they aren't committing an Immigration crime. If only we all had wallet sized photographic Government validated documents, perhaps with electronic keys to all our documentation so that it was easier to start a new job, both for employees and employers? The Howard Government created the fake need in WorkChoices, and next year it will introduce the fraudulent solution to identity policing in the form of the Access Card.
The Family Benefits Tax Rebate will be paid from Centrelink next year instead of the Tax department. This means that you will need an Access Card to police your identity even if you're a stay at home mother, not even covered by WorkChoices. Everyone who deals with Centrelink will need the Access Card, and anyone who works but doesn't have a biometric passport will need one as well.
That leaves only employers free of having their identity policed and completely accessible.
Not that we have a class system in Australia, its just that employers are more equal than others and don't need police identity papers.