AUSSIES SMART OVER CARD

Sydney, April 28 NZPA - Name, age and serial number please. Australia is about to adopt an identity card -- of sorts.

Details of the card will emerge in next month's budget, but Prime Minister John Howard said this week it would not be a national ID card.

The government had considered one such card in the wake of the London bombings last year, but decided "it was not predisposed to adopt a national ID card".

But it sounds like the Claytons card -- the ID card you have when you're not having an ID card, for Mr Howard admitted in almost the same breath that if people wanted access to government health and welfare programmes from 2010 they would need one.

"It will not be compulsory to have the card, but by the same token it will not be possible to access many services unless one is in possession of the card," Mr Howard told a news conference.

Treasurer Peter Costello tripped up this week, calling it an ID card, only to quickly correct himself. The "smart card" will contain name, photo, signature and card number. On a microchip will be embedded a digital photo, address, date of birth and details of children or other dependants.

The card will replace 17 current cards for health benefits, family tax, childcare and unemployment payments, education benefits, pharmaceutical and transport concessions and pensions.

The government estimates it will cost $A1 billion ($NZ1.20 billion) over four years to adopt, but thinks it will save $A3 billion over a decade.

Authorities will be able to use the card to check for immigration and security breaches and welfare fraud.

Information on the card will be subject to strict protection and only be accessible by authorised people, Mr Howard said.

It was revealed this week that intelligence agencies would have access to the large database of biometric photos on the cards, while state police would have restricted access for general crime investigations.

The card was subject to a number of cabinet debates before a final decision was made, Mr Howard said.

He claimed the decision showed a balance struck between ease of access to government payments and enhanced security measures on the one hand and legitimate concerns about storing personal information on the other.

Civil libertarians and privacy agencies did not see it that way.

The vice-chairman of the Australian Privacy Foundation, David Vaile, was not convinced the card was not an ID card.

"It looks like an ID card, it smells like an ID card," he told the ABC.

"If you find that there's state government uses added to it, that all of those 17 cards and whatever else gets bunged onto it later are required in the federal sphere, you may very well find it difficult to go out without it.

"It's very hard to see what the limitations would be on it."

There has been cynicism among the letters to the editor columns.

"It is coercion by stealth," wrote Ken Dobson to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Others said it smacked of Big Brother, while there was concern that welfare recipients were being used as guinea pigs for a national ID card.

"If the government is sincerely interested in saving money, it could do worse than dish out smart cards to the affluent," wrote David Pritchard to The Australian.

"The Australian Tax Office would surely welcome the move, although my fellows and I at lower levels of the social heap cannot expect an ultra-right-wing government to do anything so egalitarian."

But the overall reaction has not been on the scale when Bob Hawke pushed for a national ID card in 1987 when he was leading the country, perhaps signalling acceptance that so much personal information is already accessible these days.

When the Senate twice rejected legislation for his proposal, Mr Hawke used that to trigger a double dissolution, of the House of Parliament and the Senate.

Mr Hawke defeated Mr Howard in the ensuing election, but his card proposal met such opposition that he eventually dropped it.

Mr Howard was one of the card's most vocal opponents.

New Zealand has so far resisted having an identity card, while in Britain a proposal is still being debated after the House of Lords overturned a government plan in March for anyone applying for or renewing a passport to also pay for an identity card.

The Australian smart card will be phased in over two years, starting in 2008.