Simon Kennedy (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The AI Safety Institute is a good idea. Do you know how we know it's a good idea? It was first announced on 18 June in 2021. The member of the government said that the coalition did not have an AI plan. That's actually incorrect. On 18 June 2021, the Australian government, then led by Prime Minister Morrison, published Australia's AIaction plan. That was one of the first action plans anywhere in the world. We had to wait years for the Albanese government to come out with something, and, when it came out with its plan, it was pretty much a carbon copy of what we had published only three years earlier. Yes, we suggested establishing a national AI institute. Yes, we looked at strategies for digital skills. Yes, we looked at AI ethics.

Australia has three massive problems. We have chronically low productivity, high inflation and low economic growth. Yet we have a solution staring us straight in the face: artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is perhaps the biggest lever in the world right now for productivity, yet Australia is not doing enough. Artificial intelligence is a race, and, sadly, it's a race Australia is losing. Right now, the US, China and many other middle powers are powering ahead. They're actually securing chips, securing energy and securing data supplies for their countries while Australia idly does next to nothing. We've empowered unions to promote AI. If you look around the world at any of these leading countries—be it Korea, the US or China—they do not have industrial unions driving their AI policy. That's what we have here at home. What could the government be better focused on? Reliable, cheap energy that will power this nation and power an AI world.

The truth is, Minister Bowen drew up our energy grid plan before the AI world and before blockchain was using an enormous amount of power. How do we know this? The energy market simply does not function any more. Energy prices are up 40 per cent in a retail sense. Many commercial areas in my area—manufacturers in Cook, Caringbah and Taren Point—have energy prices that are up almost 100 per cent. And what are they having to do to accommodate these energy prices? They're firing workers. FJP Manufacturing in Caringbah used to have seven apprentices. It's down to one. Energy costs are spiking, revenues are declining and there is no way to claw back these increased costs.

In AI, data centres and big tech, we are facing the same energy crunch. We have global companies looking for where they are going to invest tens of billions of dollars. What do they want to see? They want to see the Australian government help secure chips, provide security of energy supply, provide low-cost energy and fast-track permitting for data centres and the infrastructure that will build the knowledge revolution of this country. But instead we have crickets.

Yes, we have an AI institute, and I commend the government on that. That is smart and clever policy. But this isn't just about putting up an AI safety institute; this is about winning the race. This is akin to COVID. We are competing against the US, China and the whole developed world for hundreds of billions of dollars of capital and for jobs, and they won't naturally choose Australia. We are a smaller middle power. If we do nothing, this investment will go to the US, to China and to Russia—to these large superpowers.

This government needs to lead. They need to lead with energy policy. They need to lead with securing chips. They need to lead with fast-tracking permitting for data centres. They need to lead with catalysing private capital to invest in Australia. They need to work out copyright solutions so we can not just rely on inference modelling but build frontier modelling right here in Australia, right now.

The coalition is willing to partner with the government on this. If they come to the table and show how we will catalyse lower-cost energy, cheaper chips, secure energy supply and fast-tracked permitting, we are willing to work with them. But right now we are not seeing that commitment from the Labor government, and, sadly, Australia's economic growth, Australia's next generation and the wealth of the Australian households will all be poorer for this.

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