Greenleaf, Graham --- "Privacy in Australia" [2008] ELECD 401; in Rule, B. James (ed), "Global Privacy Protection" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: Global Privacy Protection

Editor(s): Rule, B. James

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848440630

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Privacy in Australia

Author(s): Greenleaf, Graham

Number of pages: 33

Extract:

5. Privacy in Australia
Graham Greenleaf

INTRODUCTION
The defining events in the history of privacy protection in Australia have had
a great deal to do with politics, little to do with an orderly process of law
reform, and nothing to do with the Courts.


FORMATIVE EPISODES, 1987­1992
The Australia Card

In June 1987 a Federal Labor Government was triumphantly returned to office
after an unprecedented dissolution of both houses of Parliament. That dissolu-
tion had been triggered by Opposition rejection of a Bill to introduce a national
identity card, the Australia Card. Since the idea of an ID card to combat tax
and welfare fraud was first floated in mid-1985, public support had stayed at
around 68 per cent. But three months later it was down to 39 per cent and
falling, and the intensity of the mounting opposition to the Card astonished
everyone. Though it had rarely been a newsworthy item before or during the
election, by September the media were preoccupied with the Card. Sydney
talk-back radio journalist John Tingle claimed that for some weeks it was
impossible to get callers to talk about anything else. The Australian newspa-
per editorialised (15/9/1987), when letters to the editor were running twenty to
one against the Card:

There has never been a debate like it in the letters page; there has never been such
a cry of opposition from the nation over one topic . . . It has dominated the mailbag
to the point where today, for ...