STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator LAMBIE (Tasmania) (13:08): Every time big corporations get a sniff of any regulation, they threaten to leave the country. Now big tech is jumping on the bandwagon. Open AI—that's ChatGPT, by the way—has issued an ultimatum to our government, telling the Prime Minister that, if he doesn't walk away from his promise to the Australian people to protect our copyright laws, it won't even consider investing in training in this country.
Basically, they said, 'Let AI suck up all the Aussie music, books, movies and art or we won't be investing in this country.' That's their ultimatum.' They tried this on in the UK, but the British government told them they weren't changing their copyright laws. They are trying it on here. Big tech is trying this on all over the world.
They're like dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. They're testing the fences. They tried it on in Europe, and Europe also said no.
Denmark have gone one further. They've been bigger. They are passing laws that give people control over their voices and their images.
With other Western countries standing up for their copyright laws, we are next. As OpenAI's senior vice-president told the Australian newspaper, we are 'a good target'. OpenAI are doing nothing but bullying the Australian government into letting AI steal Australian stories in exchange for AI training.
This is such rubbish. It's not hard to pay for copyright. Australia already has a copyright system that protects its artists and makes sure they are paid for the work that they do, and that is the way it should be.
Big tech just doesn't want to pay. They want it for free because they're greedy and have no moral compass. And it's not like they don't have the money, hey!
Some of these companies are valued in the trillions of dollars. Some of them have more money than nation-states. It's not that they can't pay; it's that they don't want to pay.
It's that simple. The government needs to stand its ground. The Prime Minister has said that no company should use Australian creative work to train artificial intelligence without permission, because that is simply theft.
The Labor government says it's bringing on laws to deal with AI and data centres in January. That's good, but we really need to get going on this stuff. The government says these new laws will make data centres limit their water use and pay for their energy.
That's all good, but we won't see these laws until January. We don't sit until February, and it is very unlikely that they will be in place and working before July 2027. Meanwhile, the data centres they have already approved won't be touched by these laws, because these laws won't be retrospective.
That's the first stupid move you've made. You know what the problem is here? AI data centres, copyright laws—big tech is moving at the speed of light, and our laws aren't keeping up.
So we are playing catch-up, as usual. And we didn't need to be. Former minister Mr Husic worked on an AI safety bill for three years—three years!
He put his heart and soul into it. Then the government moved him to the back bench and scrapped the bill. If you go back over comments from Labor ministers after that happened, all we heard was that Australia was a great place to invest.
And Australia is a great place to invest, but that doesn't mean we should give trillion-dollar companies free rein or a free ride.