Leon Rebello (McPherson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

When I started as the federal member for McPherson, in my first speech I made reference to the fact that government needs to have a vision that looks to the year 2100. We need to have a vision that looks beyond each electoral cycle, considers what Australia will look like in the future and, in doing so, considers the needs of Australians in the future and how we're evolving as a society. I think about my electorate when I look at this motion because I have Burleigh Heads in my electorate, which I'm very, very proud of, and—

An opposition member: A lovely place!

Burleigh Heads, in addition to being a lovely place, is an absolutely booming area for tech and for the tech startup industry in particular.

I recently had the opportunity to host Senator Andrew Bragg in my electorate, and we had a roundtable with a lot of the leaders of tech groups and new startup companies in my electorate. One of the things that came out of that really good discussion was that people felt government was behind the ball when it came to emerging technologies, including things such as AI.

AI is becoming a lot more familiar to Australians, and we're seeing it in our daily lives. But there is a part of it that also raises certain concerns. I hear from people, especially across small businesses, who are starting to see the implications of AI. Sometimes they're good and they enable us to be more efficient and more productive, but sometimes AI can also provide a level of concern in terms of job security. That's why one of the things that this motion touches on is the fact that the government has not developed an AI transition plan for Australian workers. I would have thought that, for a government that typically talks itself up about what it does for the Australian worker, it would have had some experience in putting something like that together—partly because we want to make sure that the government's got a strategy but also partly to provide a level of assurance to small-business owners in my electorate and across the country as well.

The scale of AI change is quite rapid, and we are starting to see routine tasks being automated. I think that as a parliament we should welcome that. We want to make sure that we're upskilling a new generation. I go into a lot of schools and universities in McPherson and see firsthand that the next generation is being upskilled in emerging technologies such as AI. We can use it productively, but we just need to get that balance right, and that's ultimately where I think this conversation needs to go. It's all about balance and about getting the balance right between embracing new technologies as a country, which we haven't always been very good at, and making sure that we are taking the Australian community and the business community with us on the journey.

The only way that Australians will benefit from AI is if this transition is managed effectively. The fact that there is no current plan for workers that would be displaced by AI is problematic, and I think it's incumbent on the government and the relevant minister to come into this place and tell us what their plans are, what their strategies are, for those individuals. We need to have a complex approach to that because we need to be targeting education. We need to make sure that those people are educated in alternative streams of employment. We need to make sure that they're able to use AI.

But we also need to make sure that new industries have the support they require, and we all know, especially those of us on this side of the chamber, that, when it comes to making sure that those industries are set up and act effectively, it's not typically government that has the best track record of doing so. It is the private sector that does that. So government should, in coming up with these strategies, work with the private sector. They should take lessons from, for example, the people that Senator Bragg and I met with—people who are at the forefront of this technology revolution. They're the ones government needs to be listening to.

Instead we've got a government that doesn't really know what it's doing when it comes to AI. They've had different messages coming from different ministers. We've had one saying we need to have a light-touch approach. Another one said, 'There are no plans to change it.' Then there's another one who has publicly called for a dedicated AI act. I think the people of my electorate and the people in the tech space across this country deserve better. They deserve a government that is prepared to lead so that we as a country can make the most of this transition for the benefit of Australians.

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