QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator WATERS (Queensland—Leader of the Australian Greens) (15:22): I move: That the Senate take notice of the answer given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Wong) to a question without notice asked by the Greens today. Palantir CEO Alex Karp published a manifesto earlier this year declaring that 'some cultures are dysfunctional' and that Western tech firms have a 'moral debt' to US military dominance.

This is cartoon-level villainy. So why is Labor rolling out the red carpet to this Trump-aligned fantasist? Palantir identified Australia as a lucrative market for its surveillance software, and the Albanese government said, 'Here are the keys'—$60 million in government contracts with favourable terms and little public scrutiny.

Palantir staff are embedded inside Defence. The company holds top secret clearance. Australian Signals Directorate, AUSTRAC, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission—'Have at it,' the government says.

Those contracts are in addition to the $100 million that Labor has invested in Palantir through Australia's Future Fund. Palantir's AI has been linked to lethal targeting in Gaza, contributing to tens of thousands of innocent civilians' deaths. That fact alone should have triggered an immediate review of every Australian contract, but, no, this government doesn't take that approach to genocide.

Palantir also has deep ties to Westpac, Rio Tinto and Coles—Coles, where, every week, millions of us are scanning our groceries, tapping our cards and, as it turns out, handing our data to Palantir, a Trump-linked surveillance corporation owned by a far-right billionaire whose core business is building AI data and surveillance tech for actors like ICE and the US military.

Whether it's war, surveillance, data centres or workers protections, Labor have shown they don't have the guts to stand up to big AI corporations any more than they have for the gas corporations or the big banks or the supermarkets. AI policy in this country shouldn't be a tech bro free-for-all, where big tech just gets wealthier at our expense, but Labor can't help themselves.

At every turn, they choose big business and their billionaire mates over people. There's only one party in here putting people before corporate profits, and that's the Greens.