{"slug": "ai-in-australia-s-interests", "title": "AI in Australia's Interests", "summary": "Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese delivered a speech at Sydney University framing AI as a national opportunity, drawing parallels to past Australian innovations like Medicare and the social media ban for under-16s. He urged the nation to apply its values to shape AI development, warning that delaying action could repeat the mistakes made with social media platforms.", "body_md": "I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and I pay my respect to elders past, present and emerging.\n\nIt’s great to be back at Sydney University, a place that holds so many fond memories.\n\nWhen I was studying economics here in the 1980s, the world was being taught the meaning of economic rationalism.\n\nThatcherism in Britain, Reaganomics in the United States.\n\nYet here in Australia we were making a different choice and moving in a different direction.\n\nBecause while other nations were being remade by a philosophy which held there is *‘no such thing as society’*.\n\nAustralia was building what has become one of the truest expressions of our society, and the duty we owe to each other as members of it, I speak of course of Medicare.\n\nThat was an act of economic reform, of social justice – and a statement of national ambition.\n\nIn creating Medicare, Australia didn’t beg or borrow from elsewhere.\n\nWe built for the best, by building for ourselves.\n\nThat thread runs through our national story.\n\nAs innovators and inventors, in science and research, in agriculture and energy.\n\nAnd in democracy, progress and fairness too.\n\nBack when the industrial revolution was fundamentally altering the shape of the economy and the nature of work the minimum wage and eight-hour day were radical experiments.\n\nToday, those Australian ideas are rights that workers have fought for and won around the globe.\n\nWe were the first country in the world where women could stand for Parliament and vote in elections.\n\nAnd these were free and fair elections, conducted by secret ballot - something other democracies called ‘the Australian ballot’.\n\nIn the 1990s, universal superannuation was controversial.\n\nToday, in nearly every meeting I have with foreign leaders and international investors alike, they raise our super system as world-leading.\n\nIn September 2024, when I announced that our Government would be implementing a Social Media Ban for Australians under the age of 16 that too was seen as radical.\n\nWe were told it was too late to act and too hard to implement.\n\nThat its opponents were too powerful to listen, or change.\n\nWe understood the difficulties we were up against.\n\nBut we also knew that our action would send a signal and set a standard.\n\nIt would start conversations within families and friendship groups.\n\nIt would help parents and teachers talk to young people about the harmful impacts of social media, with government and the law as back-up.\n\nAustralia’s social media ban started these same conversations right around the world.\n\nBy the time I was at the United Nations in September last year, countries were seeking us out to learn about the approach that we were taking.\n\nToday, more than 20 nations have implemented or are implementing social media age restrictions of their own.\n\nAnd many more are having the discussion.\n\nThat is a credit to the courage of Australian parents, people who channelled unimaginable grief into a selfless call for action.\n\nAnd it is proof of what Australia can do, when we back ourselves.\n\nWhen we apply our enduring values to the challenges that are presented by new technologies.\n\nWe can set a standard that changes the way the world looks at an issue and deals with it.\n\nAnd to take that example of social media one step further, imagine if the world had acted a decade ago.\n\nImagine the difference it would have made if these limits had been put in place when the world first grasped the risks of these platforms.\n\nWhen we first understood their reach and indeed their power.\n\nThat is the opportunity – and the choice - we have now with Artificial Intelligence.\n\nFrom smartphones to rooftop solar, Australians have always been enthusiastic adopters of new technology.\n\nAnd AI is of course already part of our daily lives.\n\nNot as a novelty, or a search tool.\n\nIt’s changing the way our universities teach and the way students learn.\n\nIt’s helping small business owners cut the time they spend on paperwork.\n\nIt’s driving productivity and it's driving discovery.\n\nIt’s building new screening tools for cancer and disease.\n\nIt is a critical – and urgent - innovation priority for our defence force and security agencies.\n\nNo Government can turn back the clock, or press pause on all of this.\n\nNor would we want to.\n\nThat would only mean cutting ourselves off from the opportunities which are there to be seized and leaving ourselves open to risks created elsewhere.\n\nThe fact that we cannot stop change, does not render us powerless, far from it.\n\nOur power, our agency, our choice lies in embracing change and shaping it.\n\nNot just adopting or accommodating AI.\n\nDesigning it, making it, building the capability right here.\n\nAnd building our sovereignty – and our economic resilience as a result.\n\nThat’s why we are serious about attracting frontier AI investment to Australia.\n\nBecause we want AI to support and create good jobs, not replace them.\n\nAll of this is a bigger challenge - and a bigger opportunity - than social media, no question about that.\n\nBut not only are we coming to the issue earlier, we have more than time on our side.\n\nWe have the advantage of geography.\n\nThe expansion of AI requires a physical, material footprint.\n\nIt needs our land and energy and computing power to operate.\n\nThat means we can set the terms, we can determine AI’s social licence.\n\nBut we have to do it now.\n\nWe cannot revisit this issue after companies have built whatever they want, wherever they want, and try and then re-open negotiations.\n\nThis is our time to decide what AI looks like here in Australia.\n\nIt is not a question of ‘if’ or ‘when’ AI will transform our economy, we are past that.\n\nThe question that matters, the choice that we have - is how.\n\nHow we apply our enduring values of fairness and opportunity to make this technology work for us.\n\nFor workers and communities, for our economy and our environment, for our creative industries and media.\n\nThis is about Australia shaping the future, rather than letting the future shape us.\n\nOur nation is home to global leaders in AI - and I am pleased so many are here with us today.\n\nBut you do not need to be an expert in AI to have a say or a stake in it.\n\nWe are all involved.\n\nBecause the real issues AI presents are not technical ones - they are economic ones, legal ones, social ones, and as Pope Leo has made clear in his superb first Papal Encyclical, *Magnifica Humanitas*, there is also moral and spiritual ones.\n\nThey are tests of our national values and our national interests.\n\nAnd tests of our national resolve, co-operation and ambition.\n\nIf we act now, if we mobilise our resources and co-ordinate our efforts.\n\nIf we move with the urgency that the speed of this change demands.\n\nIf we build to match the scale of the opportunity that this moment presents.\n\nAnd if we do it the Australian way, true to our values and our standards.\n\nWe can make AI work in Australia’s National Interests.\n\nLast week, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations published real-time, data-driven analysis of AI’s impact on the labour market.\n\nThe first research of this kind by any government anywhere in the world.\n\nIt found that while some roles are changing, graduate employment is high.\n\nSoftware and tech jobs are growing.\n\nNationwide, unemployment remains of course near historic lows.\n\nAnd participation is at record highs.\n\nOur skilled and diverse workforce is just one of the reasons that the world is queuing up to invest in Australia.\n\nConsider what international investors look for – and then think about what we have:\n\nWorld class universities, producing skilled graduates and high-quality research.\n\nThe traditional resources, critical minerals and rare earths that are essential.\n\nThe space to build.\n\nThe sunlight to power affordable, renewable, reliable energy.\n\nStrong bonds with the fastest growing region of the world in human history.\n\nA legal and financial system at the top of the global ladder for integrity, the security of transactions, timeliness of payments and smart use of technology.\n\nAnd – underpinning it all - a stable democracy.\n\nTruly, there is nowhere else you’d rather be than Australia.\n\nJust as our Government’s *Future Made in Australia* agenda is about making the most of these national strengths making more things here, to make ourselves more resilient and more sovereign we must bring this same ambition to the opportunities of AI.\n\nWe cannot settle for a short-term boom in capital expenditure and construction.\n\nWe must create a new generation of good, secure jobs for our economy.\n\nAnd while the world is looking to us, we know it won't wait for us.\n\nIf we hang back, or stand still, this will run right over the top of us.\n\nAnd if we descend into self-doubt, or wander out into the global market as a disparate collection of states and councils and companies and firms, rather than one country, then others will write the rules and - maybe - they will play by them.\n\nThat would not only risk the integrity of Australian artists and journalists.\n\nIt would mean subcontracting our sovereignty and security to the control of foreign monopolies.\n\nAnd relegating our workers and our economy to the last link of the digital supply chain.\n\nWe cannot - and we will not - accept that for Australia.\n\nThe inescapable lesson of the global instability of the 2020s, is that if we are always dependent on someone else, somewhere else, we will always be vulnerable.\n\nThis is true for resources and technology alike.\n\nIt is why we legislated to keep the NBN in public hands.\n\nSo that even as communications technology is increasingly distributed amongst different networks and overseas interests, Australians retain sovereignty over our high-speed internet.\n\nOur great country can be much more than a data warehouse for AI products made overseas.\n\nWe can do much more than manage investment in ideas from elsewhere.\n\nWe can lead in everything from cybersecurity and biotechnology to advanced manufacturing.\n\nThis is why we want Australia to have more of a stake in where AI is made – and how it is made.\n\nWe want great universities like this one, leading the way.\n\nAnd we want more Australian companies and global firms developing AI here.\n\nTo boost our sovereign capability.\n\nTo strengthen our national security.\n\nAnd build our economic resilience.\n\nToday I announce that to seize and shape and share the generational opportunity that AI represents our Government will establish a set of Australian Standards for AI.\n\nIn March this year, we announced a set of expectations for large AI data centres.\n\nThis will bring them into one regulatory framework.\n\nClear, consistent and mandatory.\n\nI will seek agreement on this approach from Premiers and Chief Ministers at National Cabinet I'm convening next month.\n\nWe will aim to bring the legislation to Parliament early next year.\n\nWe will consult closely with industry and our trading partners to design a framework for faster decision-making, better supporting infrastructure and genuine community engagement.\n\nIt is not our goal to try and legislate for every possible eventuality or risk.\n\nThat only creates the risk of Australia missing out on investment altogether.\n\nThis is about having the flexibility to keep pace with change – and get out in front of it.\n\nSo Australia can draw on and learn from what other countries are doing.\n\nAnd deal with issues in real time, without the bureaucracy having to contemplate every modification.\n\nThis is about building Australians’ confidence and trust in AI and our nation’s capacity to manage it.\n\nEnsuring that our national interests and our national security are protected.\n\nAnd providing the certainty for growth, for jobs and for investment.\n\nSetting the terms means we can put in place the strongest possible protection for Australian artists and Australian media.\n\nAs a Government, we make a wide range of important, factual information available online.\n\nWhether it is disaster warnings or travel advisories, we want it to reach the widest possible audience.\n\nSo that even if Australians aren’t going directly to Disaster Assist or Smart Traveller, they are still getting up to date, accurate information.\n\nWe will continue to do this - as will many other businesses and organisations.\n\nBut let me make this crystal clear: not everything produced in Australia is up for grabs.\n\nNot at all.\n\nAustralian writers, musicians, artists and journalists must retain ownership and control of their work.\n\nOur laws will spell that out, plain as day.\n\nAn artist’s creative endeavour is their work and their property.\n\nNo company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist’s control.\n\nThat includes the artist’s control of the price and value of their work.\n\nAnything less, is theft.\n\nNo country has got this right yet.\n\nNowhere do artists or rights holders have sufficient control of their work, when it comes to AI training.\n\nThat is why the best way to secure the strongest copyright protections for Australian artists is for Australia to be active and involved.\n\nTo build the best possible solution for ourselves.\n\nAnd to preserve the creativity that is fundamental to who we are to our national identity and the journalism that is essential to our democratic society.\n\nOur Australian standards will also set clear rules for large data centres: where they are built – and the power and water they use.\n\nWe have a continent to ourselves, one of our big advantages.\n\nWe have more than enough room for new data centres, without them competing with new housing.\n\nAnd we will work with every level of government to see common sense prevail.\n\nWe know that companies will need to invest in skills and training to be successful.\n\nAnd we know they will need energy too.\n\nWe will create a legal obligation for the next generation of large-scale data centres to underwrite new power supply.\n\nTo pay their full share of grid connection, so no costs are passed on to homes or businesses.\n\nAnd to put at least as much energy into our grid as they take out of it.\n\nTo be net-generators, not net-users.\n\nTo build new renewable generation – and firming – to strengthen our national energy resilience.\n\nAnd ensure data centres do not increase power prices for Australians.\n\nAustralia is the sunniest continent on earth but we're also the driest.\n\nWhich is why our rules will require data centres to minimise their water use, maximise their energy efficiency, and pay for any additional water infrastructure required.\n\nThese location, energy and water obligations take in every level of government and their overlapping powers.\n\nWhich is precisely why we need national standards.\n\nSo every level of government is on the same page and driving to the same outcome.\n\nEvery country on earth is grappling with these challenges right now.\n\nAustralia will be the first country in the world to bring these issues into a single, national framework.\n\nAnd getting this right will enhance our appeal to international investors.\n\nBy delivering greater clarity and speed for approvals.\n\nAnd a streamlined process for verifying compliance.\n\nIt also imposes a really important discipline on Government.\n\nAI touches on the work of every Minister and Department, so it is only natural that, up until now, our response has been issue-by-issue, sector by sector.\n\nBut just as Government developed co-ordinated approaches for other significant technologies: from civil aviation in the 1920s to genetics in the 1990s we must do this with AI as well.\n\nEffective today, I am establishing The Office of AI in my own Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.\n\nIt will work closely with the Minister for Industry and Innovation, Tim Ayres.\n\nAnd the Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy, Andrew Charlton.\n\nTo co-ordinate the design of our new Australian Standards.\n\nAnd to bring together the work that Ministers across Government are undertaking.\n\nThe Minister for Climate Change and Energy is working with his state and territory counterparts and energy market bodies.\n\nThe Attorney-General, who is with us today, has been facilitating consultation on copyright and artist protections where AI training is involved.\n\nThe Treasurer will have responsibility for the pivotal role of AI in our productivity agenda.\n\nThe Minister for Employment is engaging with employers, workers and unions on AI’s role in the workplace.\n\nAnd the Education Minister is meeting with his counterparts literally today, to discuss the impact of AI in schools.\n\nThis is in addition to ongoing work in everything from the design of our digital duty of care, by the Communications Minister, to the risks that chatbots pose to children to the intersection of AI and skills and manufacturing.\n\nAnd – importantly – AI in defence and national security.\n\nThis year’s National Defence Strategy identified AI and machine learning as holding, to quote the strategy; *‘the most significant potential for technological disruption’* in the years ahead.\n\nWe know that both extremists and state actors already use AI to create propaganda aimed at young people - and to spread disinformation that targets democracies.\n\nThe Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs are working closely with their agencies – and with our Five Eyes Partners – on these matters of national security.\n\nAnd the fact that we're one of these five eyes nations gives advantages for what's ahead.\n\nI was the first member of my family to go to university.\n\nAnd like most of the people I went to school with, I sat my last HSC exam on the Thursday and went into full-time work the following Monday.\n\nWhen I started at the Commonwealth Bank Branch in Holme Building, about 100 metres from here, my first task was to try and convince customers who were coming in with their passbooks and to convince them of the need to use this new contraption called an ATM, a hole in the wall.\n\nOur target, our KPI, was if I could convince 20 per cent of people to abandon the old paper passbooks and to trust this key card, as it was then, put it into the wall and get money to pop out, that was the target.\n\nI'm old but not that old.\n\nNone of us could have imagined a world where most people did their banking from a phone you've got in your pocket.\n\nNow, when I was working at the bank, I remember people telling me, *“Oh, that’s a good job you’ve got”, *and one of the reasons why my mum encouraged me, because it was publicly owned, of course, so you were getting a job that was secure for the next 30 years.\n\nThis was still the expectation back then, that you’d have one job, one career, work your way up.\n\nOne day I might get to be manager of a local branch or something like that. You'd have one employer.\n\nNow, that world is long gone.\n\nWave after wave of technology and economic change have re-defined it.\n\nAustralians studying here or starting in the workforce today don't expect – or want – one job for life.\n\nBut what has not changed – what will never change - is the value and importance of secure and fulfilling work.\n\nA job that gives you a stake in the economy, the stability to plan for your future and the opportunity to better yourself.\n\nNow, we should not treat AI as a threat to good jobs - we must use it as an instrument to help create them.\n\nThat is the responsibility, the challenge and the opportunity facing our country.\n\nAnd if we move with purpose now, if we back ourselves.\n\nIf we trust in our values and invest in our people, if we set our national standards high then I have every confidence that Australia can seize this moment and make it our own.\n\nWe can make AI stand for Australia’s interests and I hope to do so.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-in-australia-s-interests", "canonical_source": "https://www.pm.gov.au/media/ai-australias-interests-0", "published_at": "2026-07-15 09:46:12+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-15 10:18:31.868480+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Anthony Albanese", "Sydney University", "Australia", "Medicare"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-in-australia-s-interests", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-in-australia-s-interests.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-in-australia-s-interests.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-in-australia-s-interests.jsonld"}}