# Australia's AI opportunity starts with data > Source: > Published: 2026-09-17 01:00:00+00:00 # Australia's AI opportunity starts with data Today, Elastic had the privilege of joining Australia's first [Parliamentary AI Industry Showcase](https://aiindustryshowcase.netlify.app/#top). As a Founding Partner of the event, we exhibited alongside and had conversations with  technology companies, federal parliamentarians, senior officials, and industry leaders in Canberra about what it is going to take for Australia to move from AI ambition to AI adoption. All Federal Members of Parliament and Senators were invited. The event opened in the Great Hall of Parliament House, which signalled that Australia's political leadership is ready to engage with this question at scale. I was glad Elastic could be a part of it. ## Why we were there Even if you don't know the name Elastic, you've likely used us. We are the tech behind the tech that powers some of the world's most essential digital experiences. If you've searched for a movie or show on Netflix, booked a ride on Uber, or interacted with a digital service from one of Australia's major banks or retailers, Elasticsearch was likely working quietly in the background. In the public sector, we work with agencies and departments across the Five Eyes regions on some of the most demanding data problems there are: finding patterns in enormous volumes of information, securing critical infrastructure, and helping agencies make sense of complex amounts of data in real time. Australia is a particularly important market for us, not just because of its strong appetite for technology, but because of its willingness to put it to work to deliver better citizen services. That's what makes this moment significant. The question for Australia right now isn't whether to adopt AI; that conversation is over. The question is whether departments and agencies can deploy AI that is genuinely effective and genuinely safe, and those are harder problems than they might appear. ## Data is the missing pillar of Australia's National AI Plan I had the opportunity to speak at the Future of AI in Australia panel, facilitated by the Hon. Victor Dominello, the former New South Wales Minister for Digital and current adviser to the Albanese Government on AI and digital policy. The message I kept coming back to for both technical teams and policymakers: The biggest constraint on AI performance isn't the model. It's the data underneath it. This isn't a theoretical point. Elastic's [own research](https://www.elastic.co/blog/fix-your-data-foundation) found that when AI underperforms in Australian organisations, they are twice as likely to blame their data as the AI model itself. We are paying to compute on poor foundations. The path to better AI isn't simply a bigger model. It's cleaner, more connected, and more trusted data. AI needs context to produce useful results. Government agencies hold enormous volumes of valuable information: legislation, policy documents, operational data, citizen records, security logs. But much of it is unstructured, fragmented across systems, and difficult to search and connect. Unlocking that information is where the real productivity gains are. It's why we think of data not as a byproduct of operations, but as strategic infrastructure in its own right. If the National AI Plan is serious about deployment at scale, that infrastructure deserves its own pillar. ## Safety requires visibility A second dimension to the data argument that is just as important for the public sector is the relationship between data and AI safety. As governments deploy AI across critical services, whether in benefits assessment, healthcare, border management, or national security, they need visibility into what their systems are doing. They need to know what happens when something goes wrong, why it happened, and whether the decision an AI system reached can be explained when challenged. This is where visibility through logging becomes essential. You cannot secure what you cannot see. Comprehensive, searchable logs provide the foundation for detecting threats, investigating incidents, and understanding activity across increasingly complex digital environments. Think of logging like the black box on an aircraft: It contains critical information that keeps operations running safely and lets you understand exactly what happened when it matters most. Access to logs is essential, not just for investigating incidents, but for maintaining visibility, ensuring accountability, and enabling faster, smarter decisions. Across the Five Eyes regions, we're seeing similar thinking emerge in policy. The US Office of Management and Budget recently [directed federal agencies to strengthen cybersecurity logging](https://www.elastic.co/blog/m-26-14-memorandum) to better detect and respond to AI-fueled threats. In the US, Elastic [works closely with CISA](https://www.elastic.co/blog/siem-as-a-service) to strengthen cybersecurity logging capabilities and rapidly respond to AI-fueled threats. This collaborative effort serves as an effective model for Australia as it develops its own AI governance frameworks. ## What good AI governance looks like The Australian Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence was established just weeks ago and is due to report by 30 November. The government's national AI agenda is taking shape. These are genuinely open questions about what Australia's regulatory posture will look like, and industry has a responsibility to engage constructively. Elastic's view is that good AI governance has to be grounded in data visibility and traceability. It starts with knowing what data your AI systems are using, where it comes from, who can access it, how it is being applied, and what models it is being used with to deliver decisions. Governance frameworks built on that foundation, rather than on checkbox compliance, are frameworks that can actually keep pace with how fast the technology is moving. Australia doesn't need to win the AI race by building the most powerful model. The opportunity is to win the race to deploy AI exceptionally well. That means investing in the data foundations, the interoperability, and the trusted infrastructure that make AI worth deploying in the first place. *The release and timing of any features or functionality described in this post remain at Elastic's sole discretion. Any features or functionality not currently available may not be delivered on time or at all.*