Anthony Albanese’s new AI plan arrives with two big promises: tougher rules, and a smoother path for tens of billions in tech investment. It’s being sold as a “world‑leading framework” that will protect “growth, jobs and investment” while Australia builds out data centres and AI infrastructure.
But when you talk to the people representing workers and creatives, you get a much more complicated picture.
What the Albanese AI plan actually says
In his “AI in Australia’s Interests” speech at the University of Sydney, Albanese set out a national AI framework, new Australian Standards, and an Office of AI in his own department. He was clear that “no government can turn back the clock or press pause on all of this, nor would we want to”, and claimes “it is not a question of ‘if’ or ‘when’ AI will transform our economy, we are past that. The question that matters, the choice that we have — is how.”
It seems like the Office of AI is meant to be a coordinating brain rather than a big new stand‑alone regulator. Albanese said it will sit in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and “co‑ordinate the design of our new Australian Standards” while pulling together work already happening across government — on copyright and artist protections, energy and data centres, workplace rights, education, communications, defence and national security.
The idea is that AI decisions aren’t made piecemeal by separate ministers, but run through a single national framework after consultation with states and territories at National Cabinet and further consultation with industry and trading partners.
On the ground, the plan is supposed to do three big things: write rules for where large AI data centres can go and how they use power and water, set standards for how AI touches jobs, education and productivity and spell out that creators should control how their work is used to train AI, including what it’s worth.
It seems like the unions are into it
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) both welcome the fact there is finally a plan. When PEDESTRIAN.TV asked ACTU secretary Sally McManus what she made of it, she told me the shift away from a hands‑off approach is “very good and it’s something that unions have been calling for for a long time”.
McManus likes that there will be ground rules so that data centres are “not draining our electricity and our water and ensuring that jobs that are created are are good, secure jobs”.
“We’ve got to understand that we’re going to be servants to the tech lords in the US if we don’t have our own coordinated plan in terms of protecting Australian jobs and also protecting our environment,” she told P.TV.
On the creative side, MEAA federal president Michael Balk told P.TV “MEAA particularly is quite encouraged by the commitment the Prime Minister’s made”.
“[The plan] acknowledges the three core principles that we’ve been fighting for. The first is that media and creative workers are able to retain ownership of their work, so that’s incredibly important. It also acknowledges and speaks to the point around how the control is implemented. And then the final piece is that the workers will have a right to determine the price and the value of the work.”
Where it gets fuzzy for existing jobs
The harder part is what this means for the jobs people already have. McManus draws a line between new roles around data centres and the impact of AI inside existing workplaces. She says “in Australia, we’ve got laws that mean that employers must consult workers if they’re introducing AI and they must talk to them about how they’re going to mitigate changes that are negative or positive”.
If there are possible job losses, employers “have to consult with workers and their representatives about what they’re going to do to minimise that or avoid it and also about skilling up workers. That’s the current law, right? And in unionised workplaces, that’s what happens”.
She also makes it clear that cutting hours or automating roles without that consultation is unlawful: “If they did that and they didn’t properly consult their workers, they can take them to the Fair Work Commission, can take them to the Federal Court, can get orders against them, damages — there’s remedies for all of this…. It’s one thing to have rights, but you’ve got to be able to exercise and enforce them.”
In 2024, ACTU put out a media release quoting Social Policy Group research that found “one in three Australian workers are at risk of job loss by 2030 from the introduction of AI by big corporate employers” and warned “without immediate intervention, Australians in both knowledge‑based and manual work are more vulnerable to mass job losses through AI than workers in other comparable OECD countries”.
When I asked her about that, McManus told P.TV “it’s actually pretty unknown as to what the impacts will be and how big they are”, and described “two totally opposing views” about AI. In her words, “the jury’s out”, and for now unions are focused on enforcing the rights that exist, than pushing for much stronger intervention “if the worst did happen”.
She’s not wrong. The government’s “AI and Employment in Australia” report, released this month, says AI is not yet driving mass lay‑offs. It finds “artificial intelligence (AI) is not causing broad disruption to Australia’s labour market” and that “the report’s evidence does not show that AI is causing large scale job loss in Australia”, with unemployment at 4.4 per cent and strong participation. Jobs in highly exposed clerical and administrative roles have grown more slowly than others since late 2022, but not collapsed, while software development roles and youth employment have grown faster than average.
Now the question becomes how long do we wait before we push for stronger legislation?
What MEAA wants workers to do now
MEAA is watching the same tension from a creative angle. Balk told me that without clear rules “what we’ll see is tech platforms and businesses profiting from workers’ work, basically”.
For journalists, he said that could mean “reporting and investigative journalism being used to train AI systems and learning models, that then ends up generating commercial products that don’t return value”. He also points out the risk of those models creating misinformation or disinformation.
“It’s not just journalists who are impacted by that, it’s the community. That would impact social cohesion and and democracy, essentially,” he said.
For performers, he described “voices, images, likeness of a of a performer” being reused, synthesised or generated and “used in a way that a performer had never initially agreed to”.
For other creative workers, he said “AI has become an accepted mechanism —we don’t accept it, but the the population at large have accepted that AI can be used to transfer creative work away from the people who have made it”, affecting “a photographer, or a writer, or a musician, or any person who works in the creative space”.
His advice is straightforward: “Join your union, because if you get into a disagreement, you need to have someone to support you.”
He also said it is “completely acceptable for an individual worker to request clear information about what the plan is. So what tech is going to be used, how it’s going to work, what data is going to be collected, and what impact will it have on your role and on the workflow inside your business”, and that it is stronger if colleagues ask those questions together.
Longer term, he pointed to equitable remuneration as “a process whereby there’s an inalienable right attached to anyone’s creative work”.
“You can’t sell it, you can’t give it away, it can’t be taken away from you, and it exists in law as a piece of equitable remuneration, rather than being something that you need to negotiate.”
Some change is clearly coming. As Albanese said, “No government can turn back the clock or press pause on all of this”, and having rules is better than pretending AI doesn’t exist. But it’s hard to ignore how much of this is being treated as forced inevitability, and how long workers and creatives are being asked to “wait and see” before we find out whether the safeguards will arrive in time.
Lead image: Getty
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