Ed Husic tells Labor to get tougher on AI companies as letting them self-regulate ‘doomed to fail’

Labor MP says ‘a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ was a founding principle of the ALP as media union calls for tougher new rules on AI use of creative work

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The Labor MP Ed Husic says any moves to water down copyright law to benefit AI companies would be “going against the ethos” of the party and undermining the principle of “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”.

Husic also urged his colleagues to place stricter rules on the big tech firms or be “doomed to failure”.

Ahead of Anthony Albanese’s major speech on artificial intelligence on Wednesday, the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance – the union for journalists, artists and creatives – called on the government to enact tougher new copyright rules to prevent creative works being taken to train AI models.

Husic, who has long advocated for a more interventionist approach on AI policy, said big firms like OpenAI and Anthropic should not be left to self-regulate, and that the federal government should be setting strong rules.

“If we were to wait for social licence with industry, we wouldn’t get emissions reduction. Governments sometimes have to step in,” Husic told Sky News on Tuesday.

“We’ve tried this. Going down the path of social licence with tech is a path that’s sadly doomed to failure, because we tried self-regulation for a couple of decades and found out that it didn’t work.”

The prime minister will deliver a highly anticipated speech in Sydney on Wednesday to address growing concerns around social licence and the necessary policy guardrails for AI, datacentres and Australian intellectual property. While the details of the speech and several expected announcements have been tightly held, Albanese is not expected to detail progress on long-awaited copyright reforms to protect creative industries.

Labor has long ruled out giving a text and data mining exemption for AI firms to train their large language models on Australian content without compensation to creators, but cabinet discussions on copyright reforms are continuing. Guardian Australia understands there is a diversity of views among senior ministers following lobbying from big tech and an industry proposal to grant AI companies special copyright exemptions.

Documents released under freedom of information laws reveal Treasury officials warned Jim Chalmers that Anthropic would complain copyright rules were “impeding the development of datacentres” in Australia, ahead of a meeting with the company’s chief executive, Dario Amodei.

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Husic – the former minister for industry – strongly opposed making any such copyright changes.

“I’m from the Labor side of politics. We’ve grown up with the notion of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work – that people should be remunerated fairly for the labour, the effort that they provide. If you’re a Labor person arguing to water down the Copyright Act, you’re actually going against the ethos of your own party,” he said.

Asked whether he thought his colleagues were doing that, Husic replied: “Obviously, there’s a debate that’s going on behind the scenes. Clearly, there’s elements of this being teased out. Otherwise we wouldn’t be getting this type of media speculation about what might happen.”

“These companies – Anthropic, OpenAI – these are going to be the biggest or are already the biggest firms on the planet. Their executives get paid for their work, and if they’re expecting others to hand over their work without being paid, that is just a no-go zone and should be resisted,” he said.

Albanese’s speech comes amid growing scrutiny on AI and datacentres, particularly the energy-intensive nature and the land, capital and workforce requirements to build the facilities. Illustrating the tightrope Labor is walking on responding to AI, Labor minister Sam Rae and backbencher Alice Jordan-Baird released a statement last week raising concerns about a massive new development at Plumpton, in Melbourne’s outer west, and backing community worries about impact on local energy, water, traffic and noise issues.

“Our community deserves clear answers, genuine consultation and transparent planning processes … The west cannot simply become the destination for infrastructure that places additional strain on resources while delivering little in return,” they said.

The MEAA said the government needed to outline its plans on copyright, and announce “long-term solutions” to protect creative workers from exploitation by AI companies.

“The benefits of AI cannot be captured by the same global entertainment and tech giants that already profit from our members’ work – it must be the workers who benefit,” a MEAA spokesperson said.

The union urged the government to consider rules for equitable remuneration, to guarantee workers like authors and musicians would have “a guaranteed, inalienable right to be paid” when their work is used or reproduced by AI systems, and to explicitly bar AI firms from training their models on creative works without consent and payment to the original creator.