Have your say on Artificial Intelligence in Australia

The Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence is calling for submissions to a broad parliamentary inquiry about the opportunities, impacts and regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Australia.

The National Association of Visual Arts (NAVA) says the ‘“inquiry is an important opportunity for artists to provide direct evidence about the use of creative work in AI training, consent and transparency, attribution and remuneration, the impact of generative AI on artists’ work and practice, and the protections needed for Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP).”

Submissions are due by Monday 14 September 2026 via the Parliament of Australia website.

They recommend that submissions:

• clearly address some or all of the terms of reference (below). You don’t need to address each one.
• are relevant and highlight your own perspective, including beginning with a short introduction about yourself or the organisation you represent.
• are concise, generally no longer than four to five pages.
• emphasise the key points so that they are clear.
• outline not only what the issues are but how problems can be addressed, if possible.

And you can contact 02 6277 7799 with any questions.

You are also welcome to copy, paste and edit anything you find useful from my own draft response (below).

Terms of Reference

(1) A Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence be appointed to inquire into and report on:

• (a) the opportunities presented by artificial intelligence (AI) to lift Australia’s resilience, productivity growth, economic competitiveness, and living standards;
• (b) the opportunities for the benefits of AI to be spread across Australia’s suburbs and regions;
• (c) the opportunities of AI and robotics to drive research and innovation, new industries and business, and export opportunities, including in sectors of Australian comparative advantage such as agriculture, resources, health and medical research, advanced manufacturing, financial services and defence industry;
• (d) the rate and extent of AI adoption across the Australian economy, and the barriers to adoption, faced by small and medium businesses and family businesses;
• (e) the opportunities for Australian sovereign AI capability, including the measures required to build, retain and commercialise domestic capability, grow research and development, and attract and retain investment and talent;
• (f) the importance of data sovereignty, and the opportunities presented by narrow, domain-specific AI models trained on Australian data in areas of Australian sectoral expertise;
• (g) the workforce and skills implications of AI, including the adequacy of Australia’s education system, job creation and displacement, and the effects on the quality and security of jobs;
• (h) the adoption of AI by Commonwealth departments and agencies to improve services for Australians, and the transparency and accountability measures that apply to AI use;
• (i) the adequacy of Australia’s existing laws and regulatory frameworks as they apply to AI and whether there are any gaps that warrant reform;
• (j) the interaction of AI with existing intellectual property and copyright laws, including the use of Australian creative, cultural and media content in the training of AI models;
• (k) the risks and harms arising from AI, including fraud and scams, deepfakes and risks to the safety and wellbeing of children and vulnerable Australians;
• (l) the national security and cyber security opportunities to protect Australians, as well as the foreign interference risks, associated with AI, including the security and resilience of supply chains and of systems supporting critical infrastructure;
• (m) the implications of emerging AI capability for Australia’s national security and strategic resilience, including the ability of regulators, the Australian AI Safety Institute and the intelligence and security community to identify and respond to emerging risks; and
• (n) any other related matters.

Draft submission

I welcome the opportunity to provide feedback to the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence.

Response to Terms of Reference 1(a): the opportunities presented by artificial intelligence (AI) to lift Australia’s resilience, productivity growth, economic competitiveness, and living standards.

Despite industry rhetoric, recent reports indicate that AI technologies do not reduce work, but intensify it. The AI industry is already embedding significant and systemic risks for the Australian economy and broader society, including risks to resilience, productivity growth, economic competitiveness, and living standards. These include:

• The use of AI-generated data increasing the risk of Australian businesses acting on incorrect information, given AI search engines currently report a 60-96% error rate due to incorrect and/or unverified source material and ‘hallucinations’ (false information created through the Generative AI process itself). This error rate is increasing, not improving, over time, as AI platforms absorb and regurgitate their own incorrect source material. This also means any time saved in using these platforms is offset by the loss of productivity required to verify their findings, and/or to remedy the harm that acting on those findings has caused.
• The impact on organisations’ ability to meet their legal and fiduciary duties and duty of care, given they have no recourse against AI programs that give them bad advice, or information gained in illegal or unethical ways.
• Business that upload their work or board papers to third-party AI generators have no control over those platforms’ data security (and no recourse when they inevitably leak). Nor do they have any way of ensuring the data they upload is only used to answer the questions they ask of it. Organisations that use AI to analyse member or customer data or operational performance also risk privacy concerns and loss of control of confidential information – which is particularly problematic in terms of cultural safety, Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property and Indigenous Data Sovereignty (ICIP).
• The impact on organisational credibility and viability from endorsing AI business models that are based on theft, fuel human rights abuses, and have a disproportionate and devastating environmental impact (including energy and water use, emissions and e-waste), as more stakeholders divest from organisations that no longer live up to their values.

Response to Terms of Reference 1(g): the workforce and skills implications of AI, including the adequacy of Australia’s education system, job creation and displacement, and the effects on the quality and security of jobs.

AI technologies are already having a devastating impact on Australia’s education systems and workforce. These include:

• Reduction of human capital and capabilities, with research reporting AI’s negative effects on de-skilling Australia’s workforce, as well as on creativity, critical thinking, learning and cognitive ability more broadly – without which, it becomes even more likely that we’ll consume incorrect or biased information produced by AI platforms as fact.
• Australia’s leading AI education experts already warning about the significant implications of AI technologies on the future of education – which are both making it easier to cheat, harder to assess, and less likely that students will retain the information they learn. This is not only diminishing the value of Australian education providers, but keeping users reliant on AI technology rather than building individual knowledge, capacity and resilience.
• Well-documented AI biases creating additional barriers for disabled people, people of colour and other under-represented groups to enter or progress through the workforce, creating risks around increasing unemployment, organisational performance and economic productivity – given extensive academic and industry evidence that shows more diverse organisations lead to better performance.
• Creating significant barriers for Australia’s creative industries and the ability of individual artists to earn a liveable wage and sustain a creative practice or career – at a time when we are already experiencing a national cultural workforce crisis, and the average income of Australian creators is barely minimum wage. Not only is our work being stolen by AI platforms, but it’s also being put in competition with AI-generated ‘art’ (and even the first AI actors). Given our already-low earnings and precarious working conditions, even small disruptions to income or wellbeing may see the permanent loss of even more artists, and the contraction of Australian stories and perspectives.
• AI technologies are also having a negative impact on the workforce through automation and redundancies, and through the health impacts workers training AI on abusive content.

Response to Terms of Reference 1(i): the adequacy of Australia’s existing laws and regulatory frameworks as they apply to AI and whether there are any gaps that warrant reform.

Australia cannot continue to prioritise the productivity of multi-national tech companies over the Australian economy. Mandatory guardrails are necessary for effective and ethical AI development.

• With foundational AI models built off the back of creators’ intellectual property, without consent or remuneration, the transparency provided by mandatory guardrails is a necessary first step for future expansion. As such, the Australian Government’s announcement to establish national AI standards and legislate to ensure Australian artists retain ownership and control of their work was welcomed by artists and creative organisations earlier this year.
• There is, however, already concern that these commitments will not be realised – as we’ve already in the reversal of requirements for states to power new AI datacenters entirely using renewable energy.
• Nearly every government and organisation has some sort of strategic priority on reducing their environmental footprint, but few have considered how AI makes meeting those ambitions harder (if not impossible) – when a single AI query can use 10-50 times more energy than a standard internet search, and require a full bottle of water to cool its massive, wasteful and polluting server-farms.
• In the wake of the Nepalese avalanche disaster, for which Australia’s contribution to greenhouse gases are partly responsible, our government’s current expansion of fossil fuel production and AI datacenters is not only shortsighted but criminal, and must be immediately reversed.

Response to Terms of Reference 1(h): the adoption of AI by Commonwealth departments and agencies to improve services for Australians, and the transparency and accountability measures that apply to AI use.

The adoption of AI by Commonwealth departments and agencies is one of its most terrifying prospects, particularly so soon after the findings of the ‘Robodebt’ Royal Commission and the devastating cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) announced this year, including its planned use complex automated decision-making (ADM).

• As the Disability Advocacy Research Unit (DARU) write: “It’s hard to overstate the potential dangers of replacing discretion with algorithms in a system as consequential as the national disability insurance scheme. Never again. That was the resounding message delivered via the robodebt royal commission from the thousands of Australians whose lives and livelihoods were upended by the cruelest experiment in bureaucratic automation the country has ever seen. Now, with plans under way to automate the calculation of individual NDIS support plans, it appears we’ve reached new heights of institutional amnesia. Once again, vital lifelines to support will be placed at the mercy of automated systems. Only this time, the mechanisms for review and redress will be vanishingly thin.”
• While assurances have been made that NDIS reforms will not be ‘Robodebt 2.0’, many disabled Australians fear that changes will leave them worse off, particularly due to the inaccessibility and error rates inherent to AI technologies.
• This will not only have an impact on disabled Australians and their families, but will deprive Australian society of their vital contributions, and the economy of a significant and valuable workforce – while doing further harm to Australia’s already poor human rights record.
• Australian public sector union members have demanded the government halt the use of ADM in Commonwealth agencies until mandatory sector-wide safeguards are implemented.

Response to Terms of Reference 1(j): the interaction of AI with existing intellectual property and copyright laws, including the use of Australian creative, cultural and media content in the training of AI models.

As we saw with Meta’s theft of millions of Australian books and artworks, AI datasets are primarily based on unlicensed, uncredited and uncompensated source material. Meta’s legal defense that LLMs ‘transform’ source material into new work and so should count as ‘fair use’ not only weakens our copyright laws but sends the message to other multinational corporations that theft of Australian intellectual property is not only okay, but good business.

• Additional protections are required to ensure the principles of consent, credit and compensation underwrite the use of copyright works in the training of LLMs and other AI technologies, in any other process related to text and data mining, or in the production of Generative AI.
• Again, this is particularly problematic in terms of ICIP, given current AI technologies are based on innately extractive models that deepen the ongoing impacts of colonisation and causing significant harm to First Nations communities, as well as to Australia’s reputation and human rights record.
• As always, the impact of unfair and unethical AI falls heaviest on those who were already strategically under-valued, under-represented and marginalised – including First Nations creators, whose ICIP rights have been dismissed without consideration of specific permissions or cultural protocols.
• With technology moving faster than legal precedent, the AI industry also creates concerns in terms of output, given it’s still unclear who is the legal author, owner or copyright holder of generated text, images or code. Which is ironic given some AI platforms have announced plans to charge and require attribution for generated content they used our stolen work to create.

Response to Terms of Reference 1(k): the risks and harms arising from AI, including fraud and scams, deepfakes and risks to the safety and wellbeing of children and vulnerable Australians.

The Australian Government has a duty of care to the Australian people, which means it cannot prioritise unproven claims of productivity and economic growth over the well-documented risks and harms arising from AI technologies. These include:

• Health experts already documenting an AI-induced health crisis characterised by poor mental health, psychosis and suicidality (along with inducements of criminality and harm) – with children and vulnerable Australians particularly at risk.
• AI’s role in deepening existing misogynies during Australia’s appalling femicide crisis, increased harm against women’s rights and bodies, and widening gender gaps.
• AI’s role in making Australians less safe, from mental health and interpersonal relationships to deepfakes, nudification apps and other forms of cyberviolence.
• Again, these impacts are exacerbated for people with intersecting identities (such as people of colour, disabled people, those from lower socio-economic communities or with less digital access or literacy).

I do not oppose ethical, transparent and fair AI in principle. I recognise its extraordinary potential in improving disability access, supporting literacy, and reducing inequalities, for example. However, the application of existing platforms has and continues to fail in terms of productivity, workforce development, economic competitiveness, wellbeing, ethics and environmental impact thus far.

This is not just another tech disruption that will begrudgingly-but-inevitably be adopted. Just as it’s not just a tool or raw material for us to innocently experiment with – without those experiments causing harm. Nor is it a future we can imagine without putting that future at risk – especially for those more vulnerable than ourselves, and those not in the room where these conversations are held.

Instead, it is a capitalist technological product built to the lowest possible logistical and ethical standards, which uses colonising, culturally violent and extractive business models that only work to entrench existing wealth, while creating deep collateral damage.

It is imperative that the development and use of AI is carefully regulated, and the interests of the AI industry not prioritised or safeguarded over the rights of Australians, businesses or copyright holders, or the environment of this place we call home.

This submission is 100% human made without the use of AI.

AI policy

I am a concerned and conscientious objector to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. You can read more about my many objections in my recent piece on raining on the parade of generative AI in the arts (and everywhere else).

If you consume or use my work or writing, you can be sure that the creativity, labour and language that goes into it are my own and that I do not deliberately use Al to research, generate or edit in any part of my writing or publishing processes.

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