ADJOURNMENT

Senator HODGINS-MAY (Victoria) (19:39): This week, people building the most powerful AI systems have warned that, within six to 12 months, they could become powerful enough to pose an existential threat to humanity. Yet the Albanese government is pressing ahead with a massive build out of AI data centres across the country. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI is advancing so quickly that it could soon become capable of sophisticated cyber attacks, manipulating people at scale, disrupting critical systems and causing enormous economic damage.

Others working at the frontier of AI have been issuing similarly stark warnings. I hope they're wrong. We all hope they are wrong.

But, if there is a serious possibility that we are developing technology that could become more powerful than our ability to control it, then we need to act, we need to heed these warnings and we need to slow down. AI is already changing how information is produced, who controls it and what people see online. It can generate convincing misinformation at enormous scale.

It can impersonate real people and manipulate what people see and believe. Bot farms are deploying mis- and disinformation, including about climate change and energy, here in Australia right now. This has profound implications for our democracy.

A healthy democracy depends on people having access to reliable information, and being able to challenge those in power and make informed decisions. We should be deeply, deeply uncomfortable with handing more and more of that information environment to a small number of immensely powerful technology companies that exist to make a profit. The question should not be simply about what AI can do.

It should be about what is AI allowed to do. Who sets the rules? Who's accountable when these systems cause harm?

The people building these systems are telling us that this technology is moving faster than our ability to make it safe. It's up to us legislators to put on the brakes until proper guardrails are in place. We must put democratic oversight, digital rights and human safety ahead of the commercial race to build powerful AI systems.

We must urgently slow down the development of frontier models and get those guardrails in place before those tech billionaires destroy us all. I've just come from the launch of the Red Lines Package here at Parliament House. It is a package of four bills built around a simple principle: Australia should never arm fund, invest in or profit from genocide, from war crimes, from crimes against humanity or from illegal occupation.

The package would put real guardrails around defence exports, require institutions to identify and prevent genocide risks, stop Australian money being invested in illegal settlements and prohibit trade in goods and services connected to illegal occupation. When it comes to war, weapons and foreign policy, decisions of enormous consequence continue to be made behind closed doors with too little transparency and accountability.

We cannot continue to be tied at the hip to the United States, outsourcing our judgement on matters of war and peace to an increasingly erratic and unstable administration. Australia must be capable of making independent, sovereign decisions about where our weapons go, where our public money is invested and what conduct we are prepared to support. Our opposition to genocide cannot depend on who is committing it, our opposition to war crimes cannot depend on who our allies are, and our foreign policy cannot simply be whatever Washington decides.

The Red Line Package draws a line. I want to acknowledge senators David Shoebridge and Mehreen Faruqi, and the many parliamentarians, legal experts and civil society organisations who have worked on this critical Red Lines Package. Today, Senator Shoebridge tabled a petition from Amnesty International, signed by around 125,000 Australians, calling for an end to Australia's involvement in the supply of weapons to Israel.

That's 125,000 Australians demanding action, demanding that Australian weapons and components do not contribute to the atrocities being inflicted on Palestinians and demanding that Australia not arm fund, invest in or profit from genocide. Some things must be beyond political discretion. They must be red lines.