Digital ID Trial Aims to End the Rental Paperwork Pile – Federal Budget adds $654 million

The Albanese Government is putting another $654.3 million into Digital ID over the next four years, with the cash earmarked to expand the system, cut down on how much of your personal data gets stored and shared, and make it easier to deal with government online with a plan to “tell-us-once” across Government.

The investment was confirmed in the 2026-27 Federal Budget handed down last night by Treasurer Jim Chalmers. It sits inside the Government’s productivity package, alongside the broader “tell us once” reform that is meant to stop Australians from having to enter the same information into government systems over and over again.

According to the Budget Overview, the money is being spent “to safely verify identity, reduce data storage and improve access to government services online”. Budget Paper No. 1 spells out the goal a bit more clearly, describing Digital ID as “a simple and secure way for Australians to verify their identity and access 255 government services online, delivering efficiencies and fraud reduction benefits across government and accredited private sector providers”.

The funding profile is fairly even across the forward estimates. There is nothing in 2025-26, then $157.9 million in 2026-27, $166.0 million in 2027-28, $163.9 million in 2028-29 and $166.6 million in 2029-30.

There is also a small but interesting side project flagged in Budget Paper No. 1. The Government will run a pilot with industry to see whether Digital ID and the Consumer Data Right, used together, can make rental applications easier while better protecting renters’ personal information. Anyone who has handed over a stack of payslips, bank statements and ID copies to a real estate agent will probably welcome that one – it’s actually a brilliant example of the “MyID” app, or Digital ID generally in use, as opposed to the tin-foil hat style use cases being spread online by nutjobs.

In his Budget Speech, the Treasurer kept his Digital ID reference brief, saying the Government was “making government simpler to deal with, through a ‘tell us once’ approach so Australians don’t have to keep submitting the same information, and expanding the Digital ID“.

Notably absent from the Budget papers are specific numbers on how many extra users, services or fraud savings the $654.3 million is expected to deliver. The headline outcomes the Government is willing to commit to are safer identity verification, less personal data sitting around in business and government systems, faster access to online services, and a Digital ID system that eventually plugs into accredited private sector providers as well as government.