Answering reader questions about life in Australia under 'non-mandatory' (for now) government-legislated digital ID.
Testimonies on tyrannical times.
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Rationale
I am publishing this article because there is a lot of current interest about digital ID. Australia has had government-legislated digital ID since May 2024 (unofficially for longer than that). People overseas are interested in hearing from those who actually live in this situation and thus speak with experience. A few Substack ‘Notes’ I have published are gathering lots of engagement, but email subscribers are missing out. This article threads all the information in one place. Thank you for reading and subscribing to ExcessDeathsAU.
Background
Australia passed government-legislated ‘digital ID’ in May 2024. However, even before digital ID was legislated, according to this Dystopian Down Under article:
…more than 10.5 million Australians have already created an account with the Federal Government’s Digital ID system, myGovID, to access more than 130 government services.
In 2024 the population of Australia was approximately 27.15 M people. Even before digital ID was legislated, nearly 39% of Australians had a digital ID.
I 100% believe this.
The 2024 federal budget slated huge amounts of money to ‘digitally transforming Australia’ into a ‘digital economy’:1
· $288.1 million to support the further delivery and expansion of Australia’s Digital ID System so more Australians can ‘realise the economic, security and privacy benefits of Digital ID.’
· Digital Trade Accelerator Program
· Digital mental health service
· $1.2 billion invested into critical digital systems to support the introduction of the new Aged Care Act
· First Nations Digital Support Hub and a network of digital mentors.
· Digital health infrastructure.
Please look at this language above – they are setting up the nation for what happened during covid with a “vaccinated and unvaccinated” economy and that is exactly what is happening in Australia now (below). Not to the same degree as the lockouts (yet) but we are well on our way. People are feeling the pinch.
I do not have a myGov digital ID, but make no mistake, the digital panopticon is everywhere, and not just in Australia. However, just because something is not called ‘digital ID’ does not mean individuals do not have a unique digital footprint, or there isn’t a digital mesh entrapping individuals.
Please see this website (Digital Public Infrastructure Map) to review DPI-like digital ID system, digital payment system, and data exchange system status in your country. Please do not believe politicians when they tell you that ‘you have your freedoms.’
When those peddling ‘freedom’ pull back the curtain on the grand reveal, for some, there will be a hell of a shock.
In the below section I will show the conversations I have been having on Substack Notes (the Substack ‘social media’). International readers are interested in what life is like in a country with non-mandatory (for now) government-legislated digital ID, and Australians have shared their stories.
The thing about living under tyranny is that everyone has a different experience by design which is what makes tyranny so insidious. It is constant circular gaslighting, with victims even gaslighting each other. This is just my experience living under digital ID, and again, others likely have a different experience.
In general, life with digital ID in Australia has appeared to continue as normal for the vast majority of people because we are boiling frogs. For the people without digital ID, so far, some are totally unaffected, some are slightly inconvenienced, and some have been catastrophically impacted to the point they were forced onto digital ID. Some of these people who were forced onto digital ID are unjabbed freedom fighters. This is painful.
The deployment of digital ID is different to the vaccine mandates because ID deployment has been quiet, insidious, staggered, and many people make the decision to sign up in a moment of extreme vulnerability, having been backed into a corner. The corporate-military thinktanks learned from the covid deployment and have stepped up their game.
For the people with digital ID, their lives have been easier and more convenient by design. The digital ID people can quickly access services and rapidly file paperwork in ways that those without digital ID cannot. Unlike the vaccines, no one is falling over dead from the digital ID, so it has been nearly impossible to warn people of the dangers who do not already understand what is happening.
Again, the system has been designed to disadvantage those without digital ID into becoming second class citizens. We are being picked off person-by-person and group-by-group which makes it very difficult to protest. They do not want a repeat of the critical industry stop-work action we performed during the 2021 fluoro-lay down.
Please see this article I wrote in June 2024 explaining Australia’s digital ID platform system and how it is all inter-connected. The article was current at the time it was written. I have not updated the situation for electricians since, but it gives a specific example of the approach the government takes with digital ID and workers in one state.
One of the reasons why I am sending out this dispatch is due to Australia’s internet ‘age assurance’ legislation due to be deployed in December. Regular readers know that I am in the process of demonetising my Substack in the event that Substack falls under this legislation and 1) introduces biometrics (etc.) to access the platform or 2) Substack decides that potential fines (up to 45 M AUD) for breaches are not worth it and pulls the plug on the Australian market entirely.
According to this article published October 2, 2025 by Substack founder Hamish McKenzie, Substack is, indeed social media and “Let’s just all agree on this.”2 In addition to being the co-founder of Substack, Mr. McKenzie, a New Zealander who lives in San Francisco, has been the lead writer for Elon Musk’s Tesla company among other activities.
I will never comply with biometrics demands to access Substack and will simply shut everything down and stop accessing my account. If you are reading this article and only ‘follow’ me on Mr McKenzie’s Substack platform and have not signed up via email, you will no longer be able to receive my articles when I (hopefully) am able to set up shop on a different platform.
After being banned and shadow banned from social media, Substack was my last port o’ call. However, now that we “all agree” that Substack is social media, the writing is on the wall if the Australian government agrees that Substack is social media and needs to be regulated.
If the ‘age assurance’ legislation extends to the entire internet in Australia I will cross that bridge when I come to it.
More here: Archived article (no paywall). Please click to read.
Conversations on Substack Notes with readers (not in chronological order)
Thank you to all readers for your excellent questions and comments. My original Note on September 29, 2025 has had over 1,000 clicks so people are definitely interested in this topic. Aware of the vision-impaired and those on different devices, I have embedded the original Notes where possible and ‘blocked’ the text below the embedded Note.
Original post EDAU September 29, 2025
Australia has had government-legislated digital ID since May 2024. I do not have it and my life is not easy. I estimate that 70-75% of Australians already have digital ID. Likely more. In this June 2024 article, I talk about licensing for electrical workers and trades.
So...yeah. Australia already has government digital ID and we have had it for a long time. There was a lot of fanfare, hooplah, internet seething, a few protests and petitions but they were all ignored. In the end no one really resisted personally and it was deployed anyway.
The choice was - wait one day to get license approved or 3-4 months for physical paperwork and lose your business and 10-15 families go under.
Either 10 million people quit work together or this will not work, and unlike the jabs, people do not see the digital IDs as an immediate threat to their lives.
I am very sorry to report to the keyboard warriors out there but my life is WORSE without digital ID and I am more isolated and my life is more inconvenient.
Not having social media, I already feel like I have no idea what is happening around me even in my local community which means I have few social connections. When age verification for the internet comes in I will be a ghost.
This is not something that we can sell, especially to young people who value connection and convenience, and are already struggling with the idea of never owning a home.
Illuminating. As you stated in your post, it’s evident that they’re implementing this in increments, targeting specific groups/professions, and not all at once. I’ve wondered how they might punish people who resist but taking away someone’s license sure is an effective way to breed compliance.
Glad there are people here who are actually impacted on-the-ground who can share their experience (too many commentators who don’t have the wisdom of experience).
EDAU response to above
Thank you very much for your kind words.
>too many commentators who don’t have the wisdom of experience
Yes indeed, and they sure get salty when hearing from people who do. Thanks again for your kind note. All the best.
The only time I have been personally impacted for my lack of digital ID in Australia was my very recent attempt to manage my late wife’s tax affairs (her last business tax return).
In order to administrate her business and complete her last tax return, I [edit] was supposed to log in to MyGov using a digital ID. I removed the black sticker over my laptop’s camera, gave it the finger with some choice words, and that’ll be the last time I interact with any digital ID request from the Australian government.
I’m also in Australia, but not so far using Digital ID. Moved to paper forms dealing with govt departments, which is difficult as most are 20-40 pages and complex to fill in.
The 2025 tax return, which I just completed, required me to phone the Australian Taxation Office for a form needed that could not be downloaded (all the rest were easy to download). This form took 2 months to arrive in the mail and required two follow up calls (each time waiting half an hour or more after navigating the labyrinthine automated answering system which ditched me out a couple of times when pressing wrong options). The extra form came with over 100 pages of instructions and added 3 pages to the standard income tax return. I only needed to fill numbers in 3 boxes on the additional pages.
There will be other social media that are not affected by the Australian government. A lot of westerners have migrated to the Russian vk.com and I have been following developments with Panquake (panquake.com), which is apparently soon to go public - I’m guessing neither will be falling inline with the Australian government rules. Messaging to watch is Session messenger (getsession.org).
EDAU response to above
This testimony is killer. I wish I could say it is unusual but it is now normal for us non-digital ID havers.
Thank you for your comment. I will feature it in my upcoming article.
Keep going m8 don’t give up.
My father was a skipper of a PT Boat based out of the Solomon Islands. He used to drop Australian coast watchers off onto Japanese occupied islands where they would outwit their Japanese enemies for as long as they could in order to broadcast positioning on Japanese naval fleets. Needless to say, my father thought them the most courageous and unheralded heroes of WWII.
Thanks for reporting on how the invisible WEF or World Enslavement Forum and their penetrated cabinets put the great Aussies in Digital Chains; but not you.
Strikes are the way to go in the UK and US starting with a one day strike to warn Herr Starmer…
Hang in there like WWII other allies will be engaging in this global euthanizing of individual liberties.
God Bless!
EDAU response to above
You’re welcome.
Strikes are the only thing that will break the back of this - it is called decentralised leaderless resistance. I write about this a lot and will have an article about this soon.
People will only act when their lives are immediately at risk though. Likely the next action will occur in relation to a draft or compulsory asset acquistion. We are in an echo chamber and most people do not see that digital ID is a problem, and many of those who see it is a problem have signed up for it anyway due to overwhelming pressure.
I won’t tell anyone what to do or how to live their lives, but not having a digital ID is anything from a mild inconvenience to very, very hard. Poverty and isolation is a hard sell, especially when the people with digital ID are able to live their lives as normal and see many benefits, and not having a digital ID may come with a lot of suffering.
Can you tell us more about the ID? Is your vaccine status on it? Can you access your money? Who can and cannot work without it? You can’t access the Internet? This is all, I find, scary as hell. Very discouraged, but proud of your courage. We’re all screwed.
EDAU response to above
Hello. First please read the attached article in the original post which will show you the ‘myGov’ ID. This is Australia’s digital ID.
The Australian digital ID is not the internet ‘age assurance’ legislation which is set to be deployed in December. I will try to answer your questions.
As of now, the digital ID is not mandatory for citizens but in certain circumstances it makes one’s life extremely difficult if one does not have it. Sometimes impossible. Often one does not even know how important it is until one runs into the road blocks which are immediate and sudden.
Unfortunately, it also makes life very convenient which is why many people signed up for it in the first place.
For example, you will see a comment in this thread by another Australian who could not settle his late wife’s estate without one. Many business owners/trades need one for licensing. I do not know the full list of who can and cannot work with/without a digital ID.
It’s usually a case of “you can work, but in order to get all your paperwork you need the digital ID, and you cannot work without the paperwork, and if you wait for the paper copy you and all your employees on a razor-thin margin will go bankrupt.”
I do not know if our vaccine status is ‘on the digital ID’, but all our vaccines are uploaded into the central digital database (Medicare) which is hooked into myGov (the central digital platform).
In 2018 Australians had the option of opting out of digital health records which I did, so none of my detailed health record notes are kept by the government - they are only at my GP’s office. However, vaccinations were exempt from the digital health records opt out. The government knows who is vaccinated and who is not. Again, this is on the myGov database which hosts the digital ID.
And even though I have opted out of digital health records, Medicare still retains records of where I have visited via their financial system.
Yes we can access our money and mortgages without digital ID right now.
The internet legislation you are referring to (‘access to the internet’) was passed under the guise of ‘oh won’t someone think of the children.’ I will post the Guardian article below. It will be deployed in December and I am anticipating that eventually Substack will abandon the Australian market if they are included in the list of companies that fall under the legislation. The fines include up to 45M per breach and we are not an important part of Substack’s revenue so it would make sense for them to just pull the plug on us.
Personally, I will never comply with what the Australian government is outlining to access Substack (if it comes to pass) which is why I am demonetising my Substack in anticipation of this.
No one can escape the digital panopticon in any nation. It is just a matter of waking up and seeing what is already there. Some people will kick and scream until they are shown. People who think they are free are not. It is already everywhere.
Please see this map dpimap.org
As for the rest of your comment - I am not afraid at all. I moved past fear a long, long time ago.
Let them come.
God Bless and thank you for your interest.
Final thoughts
That’s pretty much our situation in Australia as of October 2025. As a non-digital ID haver, I have been lucky so far in that I have not been backed into a corner where workarounds are impossible, but things have been difficult. Essentially, this type of tyranny is meant to wear us down. The government has been offering all sorts of bribes including cash incentives to struggling families to sign up for digital ID via the ServicesWA app3 which is totally obscene.
As they crash the economy and make life hard for the average Australian (with many succumbing to despair) they are funnelling us into the digital gulag.
It’s not like they haven’t been telling us exactly what they are doing for years. Now it’s mainstream on the ‘news.’
However, the time of carrots has gone the way of 2024 and they have well and truly moved on to the sticks.
Time will tell what the future holds but to the people sending me messages, DMs, and emails from overseas who are absolutely terrified – be not afraid. We will remember the words of Our Lord, the faith of the saints, and cross those bridges when they appear.
God Bless you readers, wherever you are.
#
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When the wicked came against me
To eat up my flesh,
My enemies and foes,
They stumbled and fell.
3 Though an army may encamp against me,
My heart shall not fear;
Though war may rise against me,
In this I will be confident.
Psalm 27 1-3. NKJV.
