The Commonwealth Attorney General, Philip Ruddock has indicated he will launch an inquiry into whether or not a national ID card will be introduced.

Speaking to ABC radio he said

"the question is whether or not, in terms of people being able to satisfactorily identify themselves, and people being satisfactorily identified for a range of other purposes, a form of national identifier would in cost benefit terms be useful…

The major concern I’ve always had… is with the information the government does hold about individuals and the question you have to look at always is, whether information that is held should be pooled and with a national identifier you don’t have to do that.

At the moment we have legislation that deals with data matching and allows matching of information for certain purposes, but not for others. And when it relates to information of a health character, for instance, or matters of people’s financial affairs, tax details, people want to be assured that their privacy in relation to those matters won’t be breached.

A universal system of identification shouldn’t necessarily do that and the protections that we have now ought to be able to be maintained even if you do introduce such a system."

UPDATE : OFFBEAT…if we are going to have an identity card, let’s think about how we can use technology and design to protect our privacy and be useful: look at the IDEO Identity Card Concept Project