CANBERRA, Saturday – The Australian Government has committed $654.3 million over four years to expand the Digital ID system, in a measure announced in this week’s 2026-27 Federal Budget. The investment will enable a “tell-us-once” approach to government service access for an estimated 25 million Australians.
The Government’s tell-us-once approach to remote Aboriginal housing has been operating since 2008 and has not yet concluded.
The Digital ID expansion will fund the Australian Taxation Office (the myID platform) biometric liveness detection technology and the onboarding of private-sector accredited entities by 30 November 2026. By contrast, the National Partnership for Remote Housing has now passed its third extension.
“Digital ID is critical infrastructure for the modern Australian economy” a senior departmental spokesperson said. “Verification underpins trust. Trust underpins productivity. Productivity underpins prosperity.”
Asked whether housing also underpinned prosperity, the spokesperson confirmed it did but in a different funding line.
The Digital ID system has more than 15 million myID registrations and processes 80 million verifications annually. The system can verify a person in under 90 seconds. The system cannot (at this stage) verify whether they have running water.
The Government has separately committed $144.1 million over two years to Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services infrastructure – a sum equal to roughly one fifth of the Digital ID expansion. The figure has been described by Indigenous health peak bodies as a step forward.
The Digital ID Act 2024 was passed within 12 months of its first parliamentary reading. The Uluru Statement from the Heart was first delivered in 2017 and remains under consideration.
Officials noted that the priority of any given measure could be inferred from its allocation. Inferred priority remains the most precisely measured outcome in Australian public policy.
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