Albanese to give major AI speech as his own base pushes for tougher rules
Labor’s own membership is driving the loudest push to regulate AI as the prime minister prepares a major speech on the technology.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will deliver a major speech on artificial intelligence next week, at a moment when the loudest pressure to regulate the technology is coming from inside his own party.
The speech is expected to paint a broad picture rather than announce detailed policy, according to political columnist Michelle Grattan.
It is being billed as a show of prime ministerial engagement with an issue the government is trying to thread carefully — between AI’s economic promise and its risks.
So far, the government has leaned towards the promise.
Its National AI Plan, released in December, was read as light-touch regulation reflecting the position of Treasurer Jim Chalmers.
It was light on detail, though it did establish an AI Safety Institute and set out expectations for data centres.
That posture is now running into resistance from Labor’s own membership.
A push to force AI-generated music and art to be labelled has been written into the party’s draft national policy platform, due to be adopted at Labor’s national conference in Adelaide from July 23.
It is a demand for transparency — a rule telling people when what they are seeing or hearing was made by a machine — and it is being driven from the base, not the front bench.
Behind it sits the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, which wants a comprehensive, economy-wide AI Act.
The friction is sharpest over copyright.
Creatives across music and the arts fear their work is being used to train AI systems without permission or payment.
Arts Minister Tony Burke has been dubbed the “shop steward” for the musicians, and Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, who oversees copyright, is said to be troubled by the agitation.
The government’s position is that existing copyright law is robust enough, but that it is ready to act if specific problems emerge.
In October it ruled out a copyright exemption that would have let tech companies train AI on Australian creative work without consent or payment.
Grattan argues AI cannot be a set-and-forget policy — that it has to be constantly updated as the technology moves and as new problems surface.
The economic backdrop gives the speech its edge.
The government is banking on AI-driven productivity to lift a sluggish economy: the International Monetary Fund projects growth of just 1.9 per cent this year and 1.7 per cent next, and on a per capita basis gross domestic product has gone backwards in two of the past five quarters.
There is no evidence yet of broad AI-driven upheaval in the jobs market.
But between November 2022 and February 2026, employment in the most AI-exposed occupations grew 5.6 per cent, against 9.5 per cent in the least-exposed — a gap that is only likely to widen.
Whether Mr Albanese’s speech leans towards unleashing AI for growth or reining it in for safety will signal which way the government intends to jump.
His party has already made its preference clear.
Based on reporting by Michelle Grattan in The Conversation, and the Australian Financial Review.