ADJOURNMENT

Ms AMBIHAIPAHAR (Barton) (19:35): Pope Leo XIV released a document called 'Magnificent Humanity', a pastoral letter to the world on artificial intelligence and humanity. I want to speak about it tonight not simply because it addresses technology but because of what it actually reveals about the kind of society we're choosing to become. Pope Leo writes with urgency.

He warns that we are living through a moment when 'the human person risks being reduced to data', to a machine output and to a commodity stripped of dignity, stripped of meaning and stripped of relationships that make life worth living. He warns of the dangers to truth, to democracy and to the institutions that sustain civic life when powerful technologies are left ungoverned and concentrated in too few hands.

But he does not stop at warning; he calls on those with power—political, economic and technological—to exercise it in service of the common good. He calls on us to become, in his words, instruments of growth, justice and fraternity. I'm a proud Catholic and I'm a proud Labor member of parliament, and I do not think those things are in tension.

Last year, the Albanese Labor government released Australia's National AI Plan, a responsible road map for governing AI in the public interest. It is grounded in the principles that Pope Leo articulates: transparency, human oversight, the protection of people's rights and the insistence that technology must serve humanity, not the reverse. When Pope Leo warns against systems that reduce the person to an algorithm, this Labor government answers, 'Not here—not on our watch.' This letter speaks of the value of work not merely as economic activity but as an expression of human dignity.

Catholic social teaching has always held that a fair day's work demands a fair day's pay. From 1 July, more than three million Australian workers will receive a pay rise, and every worker is getting another tax cut. That means families are breathing much more easily.

That is the dignity of Labor, recognised in law. Pope Leo speaks of families and young people and of a world that must not abandon them. From today, paid parental leave extends to six months—and this accrues super—because we believe that, when a child enters this world, both parents deserve time to be present.

Care is not yielding; care is valued work, and we are building a system that treats it that way. He speaks of the social conditions for hope. For too many Australians, homeownership has become a source of despair, rather than aspiration.

First home buyers can access a five per cent deposit. We are building new homes for first home buyers, not property investors. We are levelling a playing field that has been tilting against Australians for way too long.

A fair playing field is not a gift; it's justice. He speaks of truth, justice and curbing the distortion of power. From 1 July, our price-gouging provisions come into place.

When corporations extract excessive profit from people's grocery bills, that is not the market working; that is power being exercised against people, and governments that believe in the common good must act. Pope Leo also wrote that technology must serve human people, not shape them. Labor's reform, Australia's social media ban for under-16-year-olds, says the same thing in the language of legislation—that no algorithm should be permitted to interrupt a child's becoming.

I look forward to introducing the digital duty of care so that all of us are not left at the behest of the social media giants. This letter asks a fundamental question: what do we owe each other? Catholic social teaching answers this: everything that affirms the dignity of the person.

Tonight, I am proud to say that this Albanese Labor government is answering that call in policy, in law and in real change for Australians that they will feel in their lives. The direction is justice, the direction is dignity, and the direction is peace and solidarity.