KIERAN GILBERT, HOST: The government today announced its National AI Plan. I want to bring in the industry minister and the Minister for [Industry and] Innovation, Tim Ayres. Thanks for your time. There are no hard guardrails for the AI plan. Some wanted an entire AI act. Are you going a bit more softly, softly because you don’t want to scare investment? Is that part of the mix here?
SENATOR TIM AYRES, MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION AND MINISTER FOR SCIENCE: No, the primary reason we’ve taken this approach to regulation is because it’s the right approach to keeping Australians safe. The legal framework applies to artificial intelligence now, and a part of this approach is putting this Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute at the heart of government so we’re supporting regulators, supporting portfolio agencies, working with the intelligence community, working with our policing agencies to make sure that we’re lifting government capability; that we’ve got an agile approach that’s right for 2025, and right for 2026 and 2027 as well.
This is a smart approach. It’s agile. I don’t rule out further regulation down the track if that’s in the interests of keeping Australians safe. That’s the approach we’ve taken, for example, in social media regulation, Kieran, where we’ve worked with the eSafety Commissioner, cracked down hard on issues like deepfakes, and we’ll continue to take the same approach across all these technology platforms.
GILBERT: I heard one academic describe it as – and she was critical of it, and I’ll get your response to it – essentially saying that what you’re trying to do with existing laws and frameworks to manage AI is like using current traffic laws to deal with drones – that things will slip through the cracks. What do you say to that?
AYRES: Well, I heard that criticism. It’s a bit of a tangled metaphor, but we’ve got existing regulators, for example, in areas like financial scams. We want to make sure that where those are social media and AI-enabled that agencies have got the capability to deal with that. The risk that you run with an omnibus giant piece of legislation, of course, is that you undermine the lines of accountability and the clarity that’s required. This is all about lifting the capability of government, lifting the capability of institutions right across the economy and supporting Australians to engage with the technology, capturing the economic opportunity here in this important moment as AI moves around the world and its applications spread, spreading the benefits in all of our suburbs and all of our regions, not just here in the heart of the big city, and making sure we keep Australians safe.
GILBERT: So, to explain it in simple terms, basically using the current regulators and laws essentially you’re going to have this AI safety commissioner. They will isolate issues and then say okay to the eSafety Commissioner or to APRA or to ASIC, “We’ve got this problem. It’s in your space. You deal with it.” Basically, is your thinking because AI is going to be a central part of every sector and every industry?
AYRES: Yeah, we want to see the accountabilities be really clear and we want to support agencies across government to do their job. That’s the heart of our approach. Because we’re focused, of course, on the opportunity. This is an enormous opportunity in economic and productivity terms for Australia, in terms of good new jobs. I was at the Western Sydney Tech Innovators today – WSTI – with Andrew Charlton, who’s the Assistant Minister here in his seat of Parramatta – 1,700 Western Sydney innovators who have come together over the last 12 months sharing approaches to the technology, building new businesses, building new education platforms. You know, there’s enormous opportunity for Australia here. I want to make sure we capture it, we spread it around the country, everybody shares. But where there’s issues of safety, this Safety Institute is there to make sure that we crack down hard and effectively to keep Australians safe.
GILBERT: One of the issues that comes with AI is the huge amount of data and energy required. I spoke to the head of Google and their offshore data centres. He said that they basically supply energy wherever they set up a new facility. Not every organisation does that. How do you ensure our energy system is up to it, and are you worried about the circumstance in terms of the increased amount of renewables in the system? Do we need to be more aware of the risks around that, like, if we have, say, a wind and solar drought where wind is low, sunshine low for an extended period of time which, as you know, is not common but does happen and it could be fatal if it did.
AYRES: Well, yeah, well, we’ll make the obvious point here – that if you don’t have a planned response, you do what the last government did and have all this generation capacity exit the system and nothing new being built then, of course, it would be bad for the energy system. We are developing a planned approach. We’ll have more to say about that in the first quarter of next year, working these issues through with the states. But this is an unparalleled opportunity for new data centre investment to underwrite, to pay for new generation and new transmission capability.
I’ll give you an example: the Walla Walla 300-megawatt development just north of Albury is being underwritten by a development that Microsoft are doing. So I want to see artificial intelligence digital infrastructure underwriting and securing our energy future using these investments to pay for enhanced capability, whether that’s in generation or storage or gas peaking or transmission, all of the things that we need, to build the electricity system that Australia requires – households, data centres, industry that is electrifying at pace. We need more and more electricity. The lowest cost approach is renewables, and people like Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan and Sussan Ley ought to get out of the way and support the national interest and back building new generation of transmission for Australia.
GILBERT: Yeah, it’s – the Australian Energy Market Operator, though, in its Integrated System Plan of 2024 did model the prospect of a drought in that space, you know, a long run – short run of wind and solar. And they underestimated their low-balling of that. And so, the risks here are significant. Are you cognisant of that as industry minister, that you don’t want the whole system basically to fall over if we have a long run, you know, renewable sort of drought? Because you can have all the transmission in the world, but if we don’t have the generation, what’s the point?
AYRES: Well, that’s why I say this is a challenge and an opportunity. If we do what the Liberals and Nationals are doing, which is sort of panic, fight with each other, do nothing, sit on our hands, then of course it’s a problem. But this is an opportunity because these kind of facilities, whether they are industrial facilities that use a lot of electricity, data centres – if we get the planning right they support, underwrite, pay for new electricity generation and new transmission. And alongside all of the other initiatives in our plan that is about low-cost renewables, storage, hydro, gas peaking, all operating together to provide growth in our electricity capability and deliver that future advantage, whether it’s data centres, critical minerals production, iron and steel production, aluminium. All of these sectors are going to require enormous amounts of clean, green electricity, and that’s Australia’s future competitive advantage. That’s what Future Made in Australia is all about. It’s either go forwards with that approach or go backwards, lose jobs, lose investment, most of them blue-collar jobs. When the Liberals wreck in this area, it’s blue-collar workers who pay the price.
GILBERT: Yeah, no, I get the point and the government saying, you know, you maintain the argument around renewables and so on. But do you also recognise, you know, we talk about gas peaking, but there can be moments where gas will have to carry – I’m not saying it’s going to be weekly, monthly, even, but on the odd occasion you do get one of those solar wind droughts that AEMO talks about, you’ve got to have something that’s going to carry the can, that’s going to provide the power. That’s crucial, isn’t it?
AYRES: Yeah, well, the more generation and the more storage we build, the stronger our system is going to be. And the reason I pointed to that Walla Walla power station that is being underwritten by Microsoft’s offtake agreements is because it’s the kind of example of industry – in this case digital infrastructure – securing investment in our generation capability. If you don’t have a planned approach and we don’t support these investments to come with their own energy solutions, then of course you go backwards. That’s what’s happened under the last government. That’s why it’s such a giant national effort to modernise our electricity system after a decade of doing nothing.
GILBERT: Thanks for making the time on a busy day for you. Industry and innovation minister Tim Ayres, we’ll talk to you soon.
AYRES: Thanks, Kieran.
ENDS.
