I seek leave to move a motion relating to the regulation of AI and threats of extinction, as circulated.

Leave not granted.

Pursuant to contingent notice standing in the name of Senator Waters, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion relating to the regulation of AI.

I can already almost hear the interjections from the chair here: 'You need to talk to urgency. You need to say why this motion is more urgent than the other business that the Albanese Labor government has before us.' So let's look at the great agenda that the Albanese Labor government has today: the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill—that's what they say is urgent to get to—or the Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Amendment Bill 2026. That's what's up for us this morning—not talking about how this parliament, this government and this country should be moving to address an extinction-level threat to us as a species coming from AI.

I'll tell you what the Greens think we should be talking about. It's not the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill, but the fact that major players from the AI industry across the world are saying we need to slow down the development of frontier models because it may make us extinct. This isn't some kind of far-right conspiracy theory on the internet. Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic, one of the more ethical players in the space—if you can call them ethical. He accused Anthropic and AI of 'racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives'. Then he said:

The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.

That's what the Greens want this parliament and the Senate to be dealing with, not what Labor's got on the books, which is the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill.

It's not just Jacob. We could look at what Evan Hubinger, who's still at Anthropic, said. He came out just this week about the unlimited development of frontier AI models—which, to be clear is Donald Trump's plan. They're the models that will run on the AI data centres that Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, wants to put across our country like mushrooms. Evan Hubinger said that he personally believes there is a chance, in the order of 10 per cent, that AI could cause human extinction within the next decade. The Greens are listening to this. A 10 per cent chance of human extinction is a reason for urgent action. That is why we've brought this motion before the parliament. That is why we're saying act on this now. Our motion notes that major global AI corporations, multiple whistleblowers from big tech, are telling us that unregulated AI is a near-term extinction risk and that urgent guardrails are needed.

We're calling on the Albanese government to legislate mandatory safety testing and transparency obligations for frontier AI systems, rather than relying on industry self-regulation. We're calling on the government to urgently reach out to middle powers—starting with Canada, Singapore, Japan and South Korea—and push for a global treaty on AI regulation.

We don't pretend that Australia can do this by itself, but I'll tell you what we think we should do. We could lead the global debate here. We could bring forward legislation to put mandatory guardrails around AI. We could set out the rules for an ethical AI industry that constrains the frontier models, puts them back in the box and makes sure the checks are done before they're rolled out and sent into the wild. We need to urgently work with other middle powers to push back against the likes of Donald Trump. Other countries are calling out to us to join them in global leadership in this space. Canada is calling out, and, in our region, South Korea, Japan and Singapore are calling out. We should join with these other middle powers to do what is essential now for the future of our species and for the future of our jobs—to actually put in some global guardrails.

I'll deal with a couple of other comments. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, has said that there is a warning of an AI-agent swarm that would become capable of taking over the entire internet within a year. That's what Anthropic is telling us—an AI-agent swarm taking control of the entire internet within a year. Even Sam Altman and Elon Musk—the crazy far-right end of the industry—are saying it.

I can't believe anyone would vote against this motion. I can't believe Labor would say: 'No, we don't want to deal with an extinction risk. We want to deal with the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill 2026.' But— (Time expired)

Let me make a few observations about this particular proposition and then about the government's approach to this set of questions. The first is that we heard a lot from the Greens political party last week about the sacrosanct nature of Thursday afternoon debates. You don't do the Senate any favours with 10 minutes notice of a—

I don't want to contradict the smartest senator in the room.

Order, Senator Shoebridge!

I don't want to contradict galaxy-brain over there.

Through the chair, mate! Through the chair, buddy!

Minister, it probably would help if you directed your comments through me.

I should, Deputy Chair, and I will.

Thank you.

If there were any political seriousness at all from the Greens political party and not a desperate attempt to cover over their catastrophic last couple of days, then there would not be 10 minutes notice of something that they claim is a species risk. These two propositions cannot sit alongside each other. This is just about political convenience. It is not about the substance of these questions; their approach on these issues never has been.

Senator Shoebridge, on a point of order?

The minister is clearly not speaking to urgency. That's the debate.

Minister, I will bring you back to the debate before the chair, which is the question of urgency.

I would say, on the point of order, that, obviously, credibility goes to urgency. What I'm indicating is it is not a credible position—

Minister, I'll rule on the point of order. I will remind you that we are debating the suspension motion. It's important that we do relate our comments to the suspension motion; however, you have the call.

It is in no way a proper use of the Senate's time now to deal with this question. It is a crude and base political stunt. It is.

Order! Senator Shoebridge, you were heard in silence!

Senator Shoebridge has just given the game away. What he was talking about was the clip. What is this about? It is about the video clip that poor old Senator Shoebridge is desperately hoping that the cover up of the woes of the Greens political party is a social media clip. Senator Shoebridge and others—and I largely agree with them—carry on about the corrosive impact of social media in our political discourse. I agree, but you're part of the problem. This Senate institution—

We are getting a long way from the motion.

The motion goes to urgency.

Yes, thank you for bringing us back there.

 Senator Shoebridge says this is about video clips. He has—

Senator Waters, a point of order?

A point of order on reflecting adversely on a senator. Reel it in, and come to the topic at hand. You're entirely unprepared on this issue, and it shows.

Senator Waters, resume your seat. Minister, you have the call. Direct your comments through the chair.

I agree with some of Senator Waters's observation there too. Senator Shoebridge gave 80 per cent of the game away, and Senator Waters gave the last 20 per cent of the game away. It's about clips, and it's what was called, in that great COVID era show—

Senator Shoebridge, on a point of order?

This minister could, at some point, address the substance of the issue. Either talk about the extinction risk, which he's refusing to do, or talk about urgency and why the Regulatory Reform Omnibus Bill is more important.

Senator Shoebridge, resume your seat. Minister, you have the call.

In that great COVID era show Kim's Convenience, it's what the owner of the convenience shop called the sneak attack. From Senator Waters it's, 'We'll bowl up five minutes before with a brand new proposition.' It is all about the most facile politics. What the Albanese government is—

Minister, resume your seat. Senator Allman-Payne?

On a point of order, the senator is making imputations about the motivations of senators. He needs to speak to the urgency, or his argument is not urgent.

Senator Shoebridge, don't interject when I'm making a ruling. Senator Allman-Payne, there was no imputation. I will bring the minister back to the question at hand.

The approach from the Albanese government is very straightforward. It is to make sure, not just for economic reasons but for strategic reasons and for the safety and long-term agency and resilience of the Australian people, that we capture the right artificial intelligence capacity in Australia for our agency and for our capacity for Australia as a nation, not just now but into the future; that we make sure that we spread the benefits of this technology right through our community; and that we are completely focused on safety.

The Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute is doing its work. It's engaging with many of the countries that Senator Shoebridge's resolution touches on to get under the bonnet of these frontier models and to engage with our intelligence communities and others to make sure that artificial intelligence in Australia is in the national interest and that our AI standards are— (Time expired)

This matter is urgent. An Anthropic researcher has just quit, warning that AI could bring catastrophic harm to humanity. A tiny club of depraved tech oligarchs, billionaires and corporations accountable to absolutely no-one are racing to build technology they themselves warn could destroy millions of jobs, upend democracy and even threaten humanity itself. This is insanity, and we are letting it happen.

These threats are not hypothetical. These threats and risks are urgent. AI is already being weaponised for warfare, surveillance, deepfakes and sexual abuse, while its sprawling data centres swallow staggering amounts of water, energy and land. This machine is already chewing through the planet and giving powerful people terrifying new tools to exploit and control us. Nobody voted for this. Nobody wants billionaires gambling with humanity's future. Nobody wants data centres sucking up water and energy while the planet burns and floods. Nobody wants every click, every conversation, every photograph and every detail of their life harvested for profit. Nobody wants a handful of self-interested men deciding what our future looks like, yet governments are rolling out the red carpet.

Labor will regulate ordinary people and punish protesters, but when they're confronted with corporations and billionaires wielding the most unimaginable wealth and power, with technology capable of unimaginable destruction, suddenly they turn to water, suddenly their courage disappears. We should be afraid and we should be angry. But, most of all, as Naomi Klein says, we should build a wealth and tech disarmament movement. That's what the Greens are doing, because we cannot let oligarchs own our future. Humanity is not a billionaire's experiment.

I will remind senators we do need to be relevant to the suspension motion.

I thank Senator Shoebridge for bringing forward this motion. This is something that should have been a concern for the government and the parliament well before this latest warning from current and former Anthropic employees. We've been warned for some time now about the risks of artificial intelligence, the rate of progress and the AI arms race that is currently underway. Even if, as some people in the government have suggested, this is just AI companies trying to pump up their valuation before a potential IPO, there are many who aren't in these companies who've been warning about similar things for much longer.

If any of us here today were offered a ride in a car and, before we jumped in, the driver said, 'Listen, I don't know, but there's maybe a 10 per cent chance that you'll die getting to your destination,' I don't think any of us would be getting in that car. So what are we doing here? How is this not a matter of urgency for the government? How do we have an AI safety institute that's simply in a department rather than being a statutory authority, like they have in other countries, that's well resourced, like they have in other countries, and that can be looking at what is unfolding and providing independent, robust advice to the government and to the parliament.

I'm concerned that we are faced with a challenge that our government doesn't seem capable of responding to in the time that is required. We've seen nothing from the government other than meetings and photo opportunities with CEOs of AI companies and US government officials. These AI companies are saying: 'Please regulate us. We're in this position where our motive is profit, yet we're obviously humans and we can see the potential risk to ourselves and the planet. Please regulate us.' But we've got a president of the US, our closest ally, who says: 'No. We want to win. We want to win this.' It's very unclear what he wants to win, but he just wants to win.

I think there is a huge, huge problem for us, as a country that seems to just do whatever the US wants rather than actually standing up, as we've seen Mark Carney and other world leaders doing, and forging our own path. I think that is why it is so urgent that we debate this motion today: to send a very clear message to the government that, as a parliament, as a Senate, we expect them to be working with the Canadians and to be working with other middle powers to rein in frontier AI model development in the US and in China.

We can't just be saying: 'Well, it's too hard. It's too hard. We're a middle power. The best we can do is allow these big hyperscalers to come here, use our land, use our energy, use our water, train their models and not ask the question: for what?' For what? Why are we rushing into this? It seems like there's no clear explanation from the government apart from, 'We don't want to be left behind.' Yet we haven't clearly defined what we want from this technology.

As Geoffrey Hinton, who's been talking about this for many years now, was saying, and as I read this morning, there is huge potential for this technology. We're already seeing it transform the way we do medical research, plant research. There's a massive upside. But if there is the downside that we're being warned of—and, sure, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between genuine warnings and tech bro CEOs just trying to pump up their companies' valuations—we should be listening to experts. We should be taking a precautionary approach, which is, sadly, something that Australian governments haven't seemed to have understood for a very long time.

It seems like we're going to have to wait until we're in another awful crisis to get a government to act. Hopefully, Australians will look back and say: 'You had the crossbench urging you. You had experts urging you.' Now is the time to get on the front foot with this, and I welcome this urgency motion today.

The government hasn't supported the suspension motion this morning, and I'll come to the reasons why. I would also say that, obviously, this is an attempt to waste time—as usual—in government business time. We never, ever do these on a Wednesday or Thursday morning. Why is that? Because it's private senators' time—but Monday morning's fair game. Fair enough. That's point No. 1.

Point No. 2: I would almost accept the remarks from the crossbench this morning if it wasn't the case that there's been no nomination for the crossbench position on the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, which has submissions closing on 14 September, which happens to be tomorrow. There isn't a nomination in. So, the vehicle that this Senate voted for, to actually have—

Minister, please resume your seat. Senator David Pocock.

A point of order: that's misleading the Senate. I've actually put my name forward. I know other senators have as well.

That's a debating point, Senator Pocock. I cannot make a judgement on that. The minister has the call.

It's taken a while! Presumably we will have a vote on that, because usually we have that pretty quickly. For some reason, we weren't able to have that last week.

Because there's lot of interest in it, because it's important.

Right. Everyone is a participating senator, as you know, Senator Allman-Payne. So get involved. Finalise the nominations so we have an appointed crossbench member—

Minister, resume your seat. Senator Shoebridge, on a point of order?

The minister has now misled the Senate twice. You can't participate in a joint committee. How long has she been in the place?

Senator Shoebridge, that is not a point of order. Minister, you have the call. I will remind you of the motion in front of the chair.

Order! Senator Faruqi and Senator Pocock were heard in silence. The minister deserves the same right.

The latest advice I have is that no nominations have been received for that select committee. If I have to correct the record on that, I will. But the advice that's been provided to me, as of earlier this morning, is that there's no nomination for that committee from the crossbench to appoint to that position which goes to—if you look at the terms of reference—examine some of the issues that have been raised by this urgency motion. So the lecture that people have been giving—that it's the crossbench that's driving this kind of attention on the need to deal with frontier AI and other issues—is just simply not correct.

I look after AI in government. I haven't had one elected person in this parliament come to discuss AI in government with me. Honestly, I would welcome it. I would welcome the engagement, but there's been none. This was all announced. We had a big measure in the MYEFO at the end of last year. We've got a new team in Finance. We've got work happening across government—across the Department of Finance and the Public Service Commission. All of that is happening, but there's not been a peep about any concerns people have. I would, again, welcome the interest that people might have.

In relation to work the government has been doing on this, the Prime Minister made a speech in July that set out high-level principles that the committee, using the expertise from across the parliament, is now examining and will come up with recommendations. If it's the will of the Senate to deal with that this side of Christmas, then we will be up for that. Absolutely. It's not really the pace that the Senate works at, but maybe on this issue it will, considering the urgency that Senator Shoebridge feels this morning. But this should be a whole-of-parliament exercise. That's why we have this joint select committee—so that we can engage all representatives across the parliament on the significant and substantive issues that have been raised on artificial intelligence not just from a media report from some tech bros—although that carries weight; I have no doubt about that. It's also because of national security implications, individual safety implications, copyright law and other issues that are engaged through that and the way that our community operates at the moment. It's all of those issues. If you look at the terms of reference, they're all covered there to make sure that, as a whole of parliament, we respond to this. It's not just the government's responsibility to respond to this, although we feel the weight of that responsibility. Minister Ayres took us through a lot of the work that he and Assistant Minister Charlton have been doing over the last 18 months or so. But there is a parliamentary responsibility to get this right, and the vehicle that has been supported by this chamber to get that right is the joint select committee. That will inform decisions that the government takes post that report. But get on and become a member of it, for goodness sake. It would be more worthy that you nominate rather than move an urgency motion. (Time expired)

I rise to speak in support of the urgency of this motion, and I want to associate myself with the comments made by Senator Faruqi, Senator Shoebridge and Senator Pocock, who've spoken before me.

It is laughable that the government's response to the highlighting of a possible extinction crisis is a select committee. I note that the crossbench actually proposed that more crossbenchers be allowed to participate in that select committee and have come back with a negative response. So, noting that the minister made comments that they welcome the crossbench wanting to be involved on this issue, I suggest to the minister and the government that they expand the committee, as the crossbench has requested, to have more crossbench senators on it. The question has to be asked: Why won't you? Are you concerned about the issues that the crossbench is here in the chamber raising?

We saw again, in the last week, people being very concerned and put in very stressful positions because we had an outage with Optus on our triple zero number. We've had that happen three times recently, and people have been hugely stressed and concerned by it. People's health has been put in jeopardy. We've got the people who work on frontier AI models telling us that we are at risk of even more events like that that are way more serious—AI frontier models creating agents that can cut off our water supply, cut off our electricity supply and cut off our telecommunications in one fell swoop, together. The banking system going down—how on earth would we function as a community if those systems were taken out at once tomorrow? We are being told by the people who were working on these models—people who have left the companies which are working on these models so that they can speak freely—that that is a very real and near-term risk.

You can have a select committee that's going to talk about how the government is going to use AI, whether we are going to let people use people's intellectual property or whether we are going to have AI in our education systems. Those are use-case questions. What we are talking about here is putting guardrails on frontier AI development to avoid an extinction crisis risk. It is a material risk, and it is a near-term risk. Imagine—they're talking about that happening in this decade. We know that Australians are concerned about this, and we seem to have a government that is either being wilfully ignorant or sleepwalking its way into a potential crisis.

The time for the debate has expired.