ID issues are causing real and active harm, right now. The authoritarian creep has led in part to the current homeless crisis. Vulnerable people have been burnt by KYC requirements (what happens when you don't even have a birth certificate anymore?), and burnt again with the inevitable data breaches when poorly implemented (Optus), and then burnt again due to the country's financial class differences.
ID helps to lock a certain class of people out of government services. That group is generally the disenfranchised, the mentally unwell, the disabled, and the kind of people that always get screwed over. The people those services were set up to help - because helping them is actually cheaper than just letting them cause chaos and then die. Unfortunately, post-setup, that cost is ignored for brownie points with various audiences.
You can't reissue IDs for people when you cancel the only ones that they have.
You can't save a generation, when their entire childhood is spent being attacked on the street because their parents dared to create them.
ID helps to lock a certain class of people out of government services. That group is generally the disenfranchised, the mentally unwell, the disabled, and the kind of people that always get screwed over. The people those services were set up to help - because helping them is actually cheaper than just letting them cause chaos and then die. Unfortunately, post-setup, that cost is ignored for brownie points with various audiences.
You can't reissue IDs for people when you cancel the only ones that they have.
You can't save a generation, when their entire childhood is spent being attacked on the street because their parents dared to create them.