Well said, Justin.

Thanks for that yobbo. You rendered me speechless. Something which is rather difficult to achieve.

Almost without exception, these states require their subjects to have an identity card, and it is then a short step to requiring that it be carried, or that police be able to stop a person and demand to see the card as a precondition of personal freedom.

The idea that Australia has some kind of natural or god-given freedom from this kind of excess and abuse is hubris. The reason we have such freedom as we have is precisely because the part of our culture’s liberal heritage that was not extinguished by socialism in the past century has prevented governments from having the power to do this sort of shit. There is not some kind of innate goodness to the Australian character that prevents Australian police from abusing their powers of arrest and detention. The people they abuse are and will be those who are most powerless to do something it: the classic socialist ‘victims’ such as poor people, illiterates or people with low literacy, Aborigines, immigrants, people with disabilities and so on.

I think these cards are evil, and the people who advocate them, no matter how well-intentioned they are, are advocating evil.

Remember Mises motto: ‘Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more strongly against it’.

If the best that can be said for this latest attempt by the state to register and license and control the population like dogs is that it helps in the administration of the welfare state, that is an argument against the welfare state, not against personal liberty.

The medicare levy should be increased to 8% with the regular levels of income tax cuts by 6.5% to compensate. Then anybody that does not want to be covered by medicare should be free to opt out of the service and get the medicare levy removed from their tax liability. And of course if you opt out of medicare you should be free to opt out of any associated identity card. As an interum measure I would tolerate the requirement that people take up a compulsory alternative form of medical insurance if they opt out of medicare.

I don’t thnk we’re thinking straight here. If we’re running a welfare state the idea of an information card isn’t all that bad. In fact it helps with efficiencies.

We already allow the banks to hold a lot of information with our debit and credit cards.

One’s medical history can be at a doctor’s finger tips with such a card.

Dismantle the welfare state and the reason for such a card becomes obsolete.

Just for you, Miss Politics.