The federal government's proposed smartcards will help protect the public purse from welfare cheats, Treasurer Peter Costello says.
The cards, due to be considered by cabinet this week, would prevent welfare cheats receiving multiple benefits under different names, according to Costello.
Welfare fraud had cost taxpayers billions of dollars, he said.
The smartcards will contain personal details, including income required for welfare means testing.
"This is something that is being looked at by the government, and I said yesterday that a card which could contain that information has great merits," Costello told Southern Cross Broadcasting.
"I think people would want it and ... it would give a big benefit to the public because we come across people who receive multiple pensions under different names.
"There are people all the time who are going up before the courts that have registered, they fill in these forms in one name, they go to another place and they fill them in in another name."
Costello downplayed fears about the security of smartcards, saying institutions including banks and the military had shown that with the right technology, digitally stored information could be protected from potential hackers.
He also rejected suggestions smartcards were an invasion of privacy, saying the data they would store was already used in hard copy format.
"All of this information is required at the moment. It is just provided in paper form, and that enables you to give different pieces of paper to different government departments and that opens the way for welfare fraud and that is why I think this would be an advantage," he said.
"You would have to have absolute assurances of privacy.
"The government has your tax affairs at the ATO (Australian Tax Office), it has your health records at the Health Insurance Commission, it has got your child care records down at the child care centre, it has got your family assistance down at the Family Assistance Office.
"It has got all of these things but because they don't talk to each other, if you are smart enough, you can register in different names at each one of them and milk the system."
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Of course, all you really need now is more than one smart card.