AI in Australia's interests | Prime Minister of Australia

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AI in Australia's interests

Speech

Wednesday 15 July 2026

The University of Sydney, Sydney

The Hon Anthony Albanese MP

Prime Minister of Australia

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I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and I pay my respect to elders past, present and emerging.<br>It’s great to be back at Sydney University, a place that holds so many fond memories.<br>When I was studying economics here in the 1980s, the world was being taught the meaning of economic rationalism.<br>Thatcherism in Britain, Reaganomics in the United States.<br>Yet here in Australia we were making a different choice and moving in a different direction.<br>Because while other nations were being remade by a philosophy which held there is ‘no such thing as society’.<br>Australia was building what has become one of the truest expressions of our society, and the duty we owe to each other as members of it, I speak of course of Medicare.<br>That was an act of economic reform, of social justice – and a statement of national ambition.<br>In creating Medicare, Australia didn’t beg or borrow from elsewhere.<br>We built for the best, by building for ourselves.<br>That thread runs through our national story.<br>As innovators and inventors, in science and research, in agriculture and energy.<br>And in democracy, progress and fairness too.<br>Back when the industrial revolution was fundamentally altering the shape of the economy and the nature of work the minimum wage and eight-hour day were radical experiments.<br>Today, those Australian ideas are rights that workers have fought for and won around the globe.<br>We were the first country in the world where women could stand for Parliament and vote in elections.<br>And these were free and fair elections, conducted by secret ballot - something other democracies called ‘the Australian ballot’.<br>In the 1990s, universal superannuation was controversial.<br>Today, in nearly every meeting I have with foreign leaders and international investors alike, they raise our super system as world-leading.<br>In September 2024, when I announced that our Government would be implementing a Social Media Ban for Australians under the age of 16 that too was seen as radical.<br>We were told it was too late to act and too hard to implement.<br>That its opponents were too powerful to listen, or change.<br>We understood the difficulties we were up against.<br>But we also knew that our action would send a signal and set a standard.<br>It would start conversations within families and friendship groups.<br>It would help parents and teachers talk to young people about the harmful impacts of social media, with government and the law as back-up.<br>Australia’s social media ban started these same conversations right around the world.<br>By the time I was at the United Nations in September last year, countries were seeking us out to learn about the approach that we were taking.<br>Today, more than 20 nations have implemented or are implementing social media age restrictions of their own.<br>And many more are having the discussion.<br>That is a credit to the courage of Australian parents, people who channelled unimaginable grief into a selfless call for action.<br>And it is proof of what Australia can do, when we back ourselves.<br>When we apply our enduring values to the challenges that are presented by new technologies.<br>We can set a standard that changes the way the world looks at an issue and deals with it.<br>And to take that example of social media one step further, imagine if the world had acted a decade ago.<br>Imagine the difference it would have made if these limits had been put in place when the world first grasped the risks of these platforms.<br>When we first understood their reach and indeed their power.<br>That is the opportunity – and the choice - we have now with Artificial Intelligence.<br>From smartphones to rooftop solar, Australians have always been enthusiastic adopters of new technology.<br>And AI is of course already part of our daily lives.<br>Not as a novelty, or a search tool.<br>It’s changing the way our universities teach and the way students learn.<br>It’s helping small business owners cut the time they spend on paperwork.<br>It’s driving productivity and it's driving discovery.<br>It’s building new screening tools for cancer and disease.<br>It is a critical – and urgent - innovation priority for our defence force and security agencies.<br>No Government can turn back the clock, or press pause on all of this.<br>Nor would we want to.<br>That would only mean cutting ourselves off from the opportunities which are there to be seized and leaving ourselves open to risks created elsewhere.<br>The fact that we cannot stop change, does not render us powerless, far from it.<br>Our power, our agency, our choice lies in embracing change and shaping it.<br>Not just adopting or accommodating AI.<br>Designing it, making it, building the capability right here.<br>And building our sovereignty – and our economic resilience as a result.<br>That’s why we are serious about...