STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator HANSON-YOUNG (South Australia—Manager of Australian Greens Business in the Senate) (12:53): Big AI companies are trying to blackmail the Australian government and this very parliament. They want to get the government to agree to sell out Australia's intellectual property rights. It is absolutely disgraceful that these companies, trillion-dollar companies, want a free cheque to come and scrape, steal and thieve on Australia's culture and on our intellectual property.

The Albanese government had promised to stand strong against this push from big AI to take whatever they want without consent and without payment from Australians. But what do we see? We see the Albanese government going weak at the knees.

Big AI is blackmailing the Albanese government and wanting to make sure this parliament follows suit. Frankly, Australians are sick and tired of being told that big tech can just get whatever it wants. Australians are rightly sceptical of AI and the enormous amount of power it has and the bullying that goes on.

Australians are right to be sceptical of what AI wants to do here on Australian soil. We know, of course, they want to build their big data-mining centres. They want carve-outs on rules and fast-tracking for buildings.

And now we hear that they're trying to push the government to give them a carve-out on copyright as well. Australians are looking at this and they're saying, 'Hang on a minute—how come these big American companies think they can just come to Australia, set up shop, take our water, take our energy, take our land and, now, take our culture and our intellectual property for free?' This option that the government is seemingly pushing around is for an opt-out—that is, that Australians are going to be expected to opt out of having their work stolen, opt out of having their rights protected and opt out of being paid for their creativity and their lifetime's work.

An opt-out is a cop-out, and it's about time that the Albanese government showed some muscle. The big tech companies and big AI are coming to Australia with their big dollar signs, dazzling state and federal governments and promising the world. Meanwhile, they're actually giving a dire warning of what this technology is capable of.

We saw the biggest AI CEOs only in the last week say that they don't even know how to control this technology, but they want Australians to roll over and give them carte blanche access here in Australia, and we'll worry about the consequences later. Australians are not patsies. We're not AI's patsy and we're not America's patsy.

We want a government who's willing to stand up for our rights, our culture and our intellectual property. If the Albanese government cannot do that, then they should fess up and tell Australians that they're too weak to run these negotiations and too weak to take on big AI and big tech. Pretending that you're cutting a good deal while you're being screwed is laughable at best but dangerous at worst.

Australians know that big AI has no right to a social licence unless it earns it, so the Albanese government must force AI to earn it. We need a moratorium on these big AI data-mining centres so that these laws can be put in place first, to protect Australians, to protect our culture, to protect our water, to protect our energy, to protect our rights and to protect Australia's sovereignty.

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