ASIC was a solution looking for a problem. Or rather a government bureaucracy looking for a role.
This year marks my 40th anniversary flying. In 40 years the number of incidents of aircraft theft / sabotage that I can recall can be counted on the fingers of one hand. There was never a justification in historical fact.
At the time, I read the risk analysis paper prepared by the Australian public service that was used to justify the introduction of ASIC's. And I read the equivalent US document. The Australian paper was about 2 pages and concluded we needed fences & ASIC cards. The US document went through each sector of GA individually and concluded that aside from screening student pilots so that terrorists can get training to conduct a 9/11 event and putting in some controls on agricultural spraying so it can't be used to spread biological agents, that there was little risk in GA and it didn't justify the cost & burden of additional measures.
An argument could be mounted for ASIC's if it was an integrated system that meant something. But try and use your ASIC as proof of identity anywhere outside of an airport.
Furthermore, the airport fences that we have paid millions of dollars for are a farce. Most (if not virtually all) can be circumvented by undoing bolts with pliers and a shifter; or getting the gate code which have become easily available; or just walking further down the fence where it turns back into 3 strand wire.
ASIC is an impediment to legitimately getting around and it raises costs. But there is not a shred of evidence that suggests that it is either required or delivered any positive results.
Recently I met a refueller at a significant regional airport that services a significant level of RPT whose ASIC had been out of date for a number of years. He continued to wear it without question. Exactly who are we kidding?
How many ASIC cards are on issue? Qantas has 33,000 employees. CASA say there are 60,000 pilots licences of various grades. Its not hard to imagine that there are 100,000 cards on issue x $200 each. That's a $20m impost on industry for no demonstrable benefit.