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Further implications
The coronavirus epidemic has prompted a recess of parliament and a focus on emergency provisions to deal with the health and economic exigencies it has caused. In this context it will be some significant time before the Morrison government amends and resubmits to the parliament its Identity-matching Services Bill and the Passports Amendment Bill.
When these Bills are resubmitted, it is difficult to predict the reception they will receive. They would allow a more extended use of facial recognition technology which is already being used in other parts of the world to help regulate the movement of people and so control the coronavirus. This might lead to their meeting a more favourable reception from the parliament than they have up to this point.
It is also possible that the community may be less sensitive about limitations being placed upon its freedoms for the common good. These have been a feature of the manner in which the federal and state governments have attempted to restrict population movement and so contain the spread of the disease. The result has, however, been severe restrictions on commonly accepted civil liberties.
These have generally been accepted with minimal complaint. As Michelle Grattan wrote in an article published in The Conversation on April 2, 2020, 'In the main the clamps are working without creating outrage.'
Grattan has also noted that the crisis also seems to have generated an unusually high level of trust in the actions governments have taken so far. An Essential poll registered 56 percent trust in the federal government. Though this may in part come from early favourable signs in the battle to control the virus and popular support for the large level of financial assistance the government has made available, it also indicates that the population has largely accepted the restrictions imposed on its liberties.
It os almost impossible to predict the future of this proposed legislation in the post-coronavirus world. If the government is not ultimately judged to have handled the virus well, then it will not survive politically. If it is seen as having dealt with the crisis as well as could be expected, then it will have a huge amount of political capital to spend and its proposed legislation is likely to be accepted by both the parliament and the Australian people.
Either way, the advance of this technology is likely to continue even without formal regulation. Government and privately controlled databases are growing exponentially. Already drivers' licence photographs and other data have been added to the federal governments vast biometric databases after an agreement was reached with the state and territory governments in January 2018 giving federal authorities access to this data.
Much of the proposed legislation does little more than formalise arrangements that already exist. Michelle Grattan has argued that 'When this is over, there must be a clear end to...incursions into civil liberties.'
With regard to facial recognition technologies and the way in which they are used, much of the populace may not even be aware that its civil liberties have been infringed.