ByPaul SakkalAugust 11, 2025 — 4.53amSaveLog in,registerorsubscribeto save articles for later.Save articles for laterAdd articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.Got itNormal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text sizeLabor is about to dump proposed new laws to regulate artificial intelligence as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s caucus splits on whether to clamp down on the sprawling technology.Underlining a growing appetite in the cabinet to seize what the Productivity Commission says could bea $200 billion boon, assistant minister Andrew Charlton will lead a delegation to the US this week to meet executives from powerhouse firms OpenAI, Nvidia and Amazon Web Services.Michelle Ananda-Rajah and Ed Husic reflect the diverging views on artificial intelligence in Anthony Albanese’s team.Credit:Aresna VillanuevaBut Labor is confronting union calls to protect workers from replacement as it tries to deal Australia into the AI race. Backbencher Ed Husic is also urging Labor to push ahead with a new AI regulatory act he first proposed when he was a minister in Labor’s first term in office.According to four government sources, including two ministers, none of whom could speak publicly about internal discussions, Labor is veering away from new laws that would deal with AI’s potential downsides.Instead, Minister for Industry and Innovation Tim Ayres is working on a lighter touch model that will mostly adopt existing regulations in areas including privacy and copyright, avoiding new red tape that might undermineTreasurer Jim Chalmers’ second-term focus on productivity.Husic told this masthead it was “exceptionally confident logic that can argue we don’t need an economy-wide approach to a technology that will likely touch every corner of the economy”.“After consulting on this extensively for nearly two years, I formed a view that it’s better to get a solid framework up front … to help deal with high AI risks,” he said.Husic, who sparred with Chalmers in cabinet when he served as industry and science ministerbefore being axedon factional grounds, claimed a “Whac-A-Mole regulatory approach” would lead to course corrections in future.A spokesman for Ayres was contacted for comment.AdvertisementLabor senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah, a leading researcher on using AI to diagnose disease before she entered parliament, has been lobbying colleagues to embrace the new technology. She said she was “trenchantly opposed” to Husic’s model, which she claimed would stymie a local AI industry and deprive the nation of wealth.LoadingThe Australian Council of Trade Unions, which holds sway with dozens of MPs in the Labor caucus, is demanding legislation tobar AI in businessesthat cannot reach agreements with workers. Pushing in the other direction are the Coalition, business groups and the Productivity Commission,which urged the governmentto spurn calls for binding regulation on AI because it could be the best fix for declining living standards in a generation.The contest over AI policy has sharpened ahead ofLabor’s economic roundtable later this month, where the tech revolution will be a flashpoint between business groups and some economists on one side and unions and more pro-regulation voices on the other.Chalmers last week said he wanted to find a “sensible middle path which recognises the big economic upside of artificial intelligence without forgetting our primary responsibility is to people and workers”.The EU’s move to take a world-leading role in regulating AI has attracted the ire of the Trump administration, which has close links to tech billionaires and Silicon Valley. Britain has also put on the backburner its plans to guard against the potentially harmful elements of AI, which could include job losses, uncontrollable bots, deepfakes and privacy violations.LoadingOpponents of an AI act believe local laws would do little to curb any possible harm given Australia has no major AI firms in its jurisdiction. Specific pitfalls, such assexually explicit deepfake images, were better dealt with by new criminal laws, they say.Debate began last week on whether large-language models such as ChatGPT should be exempted from copyright laws so they can be trained on news and music content. Executives from News Corp and Nine Entertainment, owner of this masthead,argued such a movewould amount to theft.The media bosses were self-serving and prioritising faltering business models ahead of the national interest, Ananda-Rajah said.“It is not theft,” she said, but rather a move that would hand Australian alternatives to ChatGPT, such as the one being developed by local firm Maincode, access to content that would allow them to build a domestic AI sector.“It’s not necessarily going to stop people from buying that book or reading that newspaper article in the format that they have.“Why would we, even before we get to create [an AI industry], regulate with a specific act?“If we ring-fence our own data, then we are cutting ourselves off at the knees from the very beginning. I have seen the depth of the talent we have in Australia, and it would be an absolute travesty if we let this innovation wave pass us by.”However, Maincode boss Dave Lemphers, who is building what could be Australia’s answer to OpenAI, toldThe Australian FinancialReviewon Thursdaythat the copyright change proposed by the Productivity Commission was wrong and that firms were already scraping content without proper compensation.Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis.Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.SaveLog in,registerorsubscribeto save articles for later.License this articleAIEd HusicAnthony AlbaneseStuart AyresJim ChalmersFor subscribersPaul Sakkalis Chief Political Correspondent. He previously covered Victorian politics and has won Walkley and Quill awards. Reach him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14Connect viaTwitter.Loading