Australia’s national face matching system expands with NSW participation

New South Wales (NSW) is joining Australia’s national face matching network, allowing driver licence and photo card images to be shared through the National Driver Licence Facial Recognition Solution (NDLFRS) to combat identity fraud and organized crime.

Per the release, “if a person’s driver licence, Medicare details or other identity information are exposed in a data breach and obtained by organized criminals, the Face Matching Service can help prevent those documents being used to create fraudulent identities.”

Western Australia and South Australia are already connected to NDLFRS, which launched in October 2025 after years of discussion and development. The national system has been in development since at least 2019, when Victoria and Queensland first announced plans to contribute driver licence images.

Biometrics provider Cognitec was involved in the initial stages of the contract, and Fujitsu was contracted to manage the system until mid-2026.

Tasmania was also connected to the biometrics database – but requested its images be pulled from the database, saying they were uploaded without the consent of license holders and that Tasmania had not entered into a participation agreement with the Australian government.

NSW’s participation comes as part of a larger state package to address organized crime. The bill in Parliament also introduces new rules allowing police to compel an individual to supply access information for digital devices suspected to be associated with organized crime, and gives police access to unredacted images captured by toll cameras on public toll roads.

Identity theft remains a significant concern in Australia. In April, the government announced plans to contract a biometric liveness detection capability to support the country’s national digital ID and protect it against advanced spoof attacks and emerging fraud threats.

Article Topics

biometric database  |  biometric matching  |  driver's license  |  facial recognition  |  identity document  |  New South Wales (NSW)