AI leaders want a slower pace car. Australia is still building the track.
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ESSENTIALS
— Labor looks for border control in the wrong numbers
— Albanese turns Hanson’s housing attack into a fight over nastiness
— Australia’s AI plan has a 30-data center loophole
DRIVING THE DAY
ARE WE FINALLY GETTING MIGRATION POLICY REFORM?
Maybe it’s sixth time lucky at Cabinet for Immigration Minister Tony Burke.
Political challenge: The government needs to be in control of its borders, and to look like it’s in control. Governments who can’t do that lose elections. Yet creating that impression won’t lead to Labor outranking One Nation among voters when it comes to who they think is best equipped to handle immigration. These reforms are instead a play to stop the bleeding.
Reality checks:
— Fiddling with NOM numbers won’t demonstrate border control, in part because they’re nearly impossible to predict.
— The Labor figure who comes across strongest on migration is SA Premier Peter Malinauskas, who advocates for a maximalist migration program. But that’s a non-starter for federal Cabinet.
— If Australia’s professions were run less like quasi-cartels, then the qualification and accreditation process for skilled migrants to practice their professions would be a lot simpler, and would generate more tax income sooner.
— Labor has both left and right flanks to manage.
Seeing around corners: Home Affairs is seeking to please its political masters without having plans to mop up the knock-on effects of whatever clampdown on migration is chosen by Burke and Cabinet.
Those side effects could be South Australia’s talent pipeline drying up because its international student numbers get cut, or infuriating India as a strategic partner, or aged care homes or farms not being able to function to necessary levels.
One bright spot: The new team of data scientists at Home Affairs is getting positive reviews from the experts dealing with them for their efforts to measure which categories of migrants deliver the broadest economic benefits.
Look out for immigration experts such as Martin Parkinson (who proposed reforms to points testing of visa applicants) to be wheeled out in a new capacity, perhaps as a skills ombudsman, helping the government better target its visa invites.
MOVE FAST AND PAUSE THINGS — THE AI FRONTIER WANTS A PACE CAR
Are they the bros who cried wolf? Or the geniuses with an essential warning?
Anthropic wants to slow the race to super intelligence, per a new essay from founder and CEO Dario Amodei. We now have the two leading model makers and the world’s richest person, also a model maker, arguing we need to slow down.
“Not building the technology deprives humanity of benefits or simply places AI in the hands of authoritarian powers, while building it too fast is reckless,” Amodei said. Canadian scientist and Turing Award-winner Yoshua Bengio has explained the origin of the risks and how new models could be monitored and licensed.
Assistant Technology Minister Andrew Charlton described multiple breaches from OpenAI’s rogue AI agents as “unquestionably dangerous” after being briefed by Buck Shlegeris, CEO of U.S. AI safety group Redwood Research. Read Charlton’s comments.
Yes, but: It’s easy to tell the world it needs to slow down while you personally keep racing ahead and amassing massive capital to ensure you stay ahead. Calls for a six-month pause on development went nowhere in 2023 because they lacked credibility.
What role can governments play in AI safety?
What’s next: If the world’s leading AI company wants a “middle way,” that’s an interesting mirror to the Albanese government’s approach, though Australia’s approach is limited to a lower part of the AI food chain: data centers.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is holding its Sydney Dialogue intelligence masterclass in Canberra all day today. Ryan is interviewing Anthropic’s international special envoy, former U.S. Ambassador to Australia Jeff Bleich, live on stage today at ASPI’s AI masterclass. More in Tuesday’s Playbook.
The first Parliamentary AI Industry Showcase is Thursday, Great Hall at Parliament House, 9:30 a.m. to noon. Elastic is the founding partner, MP speakers include Charlton, Victor Dominello, Melissa Price and Sally Sitou. APS chief AI officers will also speak. Register.
IF THE FRONTIER SLOWS, CAN AUSTRALIA CATCH-UP? AT WHAT PRICE?
THERE’S A LOOPHOLE IN AUSTRALIA’S DATA CENTER PLAN for “bring your own power” facilities. If the project is already green-lit, the new standards won’t apply, so that means 30 big new data centers could still be competing with households for energy, and/or using fossil fuels, report Cam Wilson and Cath McAloon.
A HUMAN RIGHTS ACT TO PROTECT AGAINST ALGORITHMIC DECISIONS? Julianne Schulz argues, yes. And as Playbook reader Chris Wallace points out, the government’s post-robodebt approach to these issues “falls short of the robodebt royal commission recommendations. It does not require companies and departments to reveal how the process works, the business rules and algorithms, or provide a right to human review of automated decisions.”
LOTS TO SEE HERE!
The ABC will air its second National Forum episode tonight at 8:30 p.m., hosted by David Speers and focused on immigration and multiculturalism. Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie and One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce will face off, and Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly will represent Labor.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE!
ALBO LOSES HIS KEATING SCRIPT — NO MEMO ON CHINA TO SHARE: There are “no relevant documents” in the government’s possession regarding former Prime Minister Paul Keating providing advice to Anthony Albanese ahead of a 2025 meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping. That’s the reply to Sen. James Paterson’s request for documents regarding Keating’s roughly three-hour meeting with Albanese, first reported by POLITICO Aug. 17, at which he said he provided printed talking points to the PM.
Paterson’s response to the lack of documents: “It was very careless for Anthony Albanese to lose this memo, contrary to Mr. Keating’s advice to keep the letter,” he told Playbook. “Keating’s memo should have been retained in accordance with the National Archives Act so that we could all one day be privileged to see his very up-to-date and well-informed advice.”
QUESTIONS TO RICHARD MARLES: Latika Bourke’s questions on defense spending went missing from a Richard Marles transcript during his recent trip to London, so she helpfully reproduced them. We’re sharing them with you in case you’re also confused about how military pensions came to be included in Australia’s spending figures.
WHAT PORK-BARRELING EVIDENCE? This senatorial showdown between David Pocock and Katy Gallagher from last Wednesday is now in the million-plus views and roughly 100,000 engagements viral zone. The lesson for non-government MPs and senators is to keep raising the issue in Parliament (see Question Time below).
For the government: What’s the strategy here, around not allowing a senator to table a publicly available document?
THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW
NSW Greens Sen. David Shoebridge has long been viewed as one of his party’s savviest operators. Now he’s spearheading the party’s approach to AI, as polls show Australians anxious about the technology.
Playbook co-author Finn McHugh sat down with Shoebridge in his Parliament office.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve said you wanted Australian-owned and controlled AI. What does that look like?
What France is doing with Mistral is looking at having a European alternative. What South Korea is doing is looking at sovereign alternatives and that’s what we should be looking at. It’s about developing resilience, but with a mixture of public and private ownership.
A senior Anthropic employee recently claimed there’s more than a 10% chance AI will “kill all humans” within a decade. Do you take that kind of warning seriously?
When well-informed insiders are telling us that unrestrained AI development could lead to our species’ extinction, politicians should listen. You may not agree with the percentage likelihood. You may, after a review, think that actually the risk isn’t there. But you should sure as hell bloody listen.
AI is going to seep into every facet of society. You’re calling for an AI minister. How does that work?
The current arrangement at a Commonwealth level is for the regulation of AI to be scattered across at least seven different ministers and agencies and without any kind of overall policy setting in place. A minister would have a focused obligation to look at AI.
You want a one-year moratorium on data centers. What do you need to learn, or what needs to happen, in that interim before you’re happy for data centers to be built here?
We need to get clear, universal, binding requirements on energy and water. The unexamined task is the sovereign risk and protections for our culture, for our economy and for the basic control of our nation. The big missing part of the public conversation, the big missing part of the regulatory model, is requiring diversity in sources and rapidly bringing forward public-private investment in a sovereign AI industry.
Penny Wong said you “want to cut ties with most of the world and most of your policy would ensure we don’t have a functioning defense force.” As a middle power, don’t we need to be allied with a major power?
I want Australia to engage with the world, engage with the world through our values, through our national interests, and not engage with the world only when Washington gives us permission and as some kind of shadow agent for the United States.
QUESTION TIME
WHAT PLAYBOOK WOULD BE ASKING
PETROL PRICES: The Guardian reports that petrol prices are expected to jump between 20 and 30 cents per liter in coming weeks. The world’s largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, was forced to shut a key pipeline over the weekend after it was struck by a drone attack. A rapid advance by the Iran-backed Houthi militia has also threatened the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which 12% of the world’s oil flows.
Will the government reintroduce a fuel excise cut? What else is it doing to reduce cost-of-living pressures?
Fuel supply: Brent crude prices — the global oil benchmark — jumped above $100 a barrel, mirroring the price range of the second half of March when Albanese halved the excise. Labor always insisted the excise cut was temporary and talks up efforts to increase its petrol storage supplies, now 41 days’ of petrol.
Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson tells Playbook: “Temporary measures can provide short-term relief, but after four years of falling living standards, wages and now wealth, Australians need an economic plan that actually gets the cost of living under control.”
Budget bottom line: Cost-of-living relief is popular, but expensive — it cost over $2.5 billion to halve the excise for just three months. A rolling payment will quickly limit the government’s ability to spend elsewhere.
ABOUT THOSE COMMUNITY GRANTS: Playbook has been hearing from all sides, all weekend. There’s no consensus, but our sample group of public servants, ministerial advisers and MPs leans to a view that previous eras, governments and systems have been worse.
But if Pocock is getting a million views on Instagram for prodding the government to do better, you can bet we haven’t heard the end of this issue.
The Question Time issue becomes: Is the government’s position that a project becomes legitimate because it was promised before an election? And what are the limits to the notion?
QT risk factor: Just talking about this every day makes both major parties look bad, over a relatively small amount of money. When roughly 50% of Australians are parking their vote outside of the government and opposition, fighting in Question Time over who’s worse isn’t the smartest way to meet election commitments.
Reminder of what Liberals were promising: Labor has pointed out the Coalition would likely have been funding similar projects of similar benefit to its MPs had it won the election, including:
— Nearly $5 million for Gerringong Golf Club in the Gilmore electorate, which Liberals thought was in play.
— A $400,000 upgrade to the Malvern Cricket Ground in Kooyong, an affluent area the party was looking to wrest back off independent Monique Ryan.
— A $1 million outlay on the Moore Park Golf Course Youth Recreation Zone in Wentworth, another teal-held Liberal target seat.
BY THE NUMBERS
The latest Resolve Political Monitor finds that 59% of surveyed voters backed cheaper housing even as they marked the government down for breaking promises, while just 9% oppose lower house prices.
STATE OF THE NATION
GINA RINEHART’S ROLE IN THE CAMPAIGN TO OUST HASTIE: When Rinehart invited Henry Pike, the MP for Bowman, to her Noosa home in January, he wasn’t expecting to be pressured into calling Hastie a traitor. Or to find One Nation’s Pauline Hanson, Joyce and James Ashby using the house for media stand-ups, report Rob Harris and Paul Sakkal.
“I’M PROUD TO BE A HOUSO”: The PM is targeting Hanson’s association with Australia’s richest person, Rinehart. He’s doing it by flipping Hanson’s criticism of his mother’s long-term public housing tenancy. “I’m proud to be a houso, and I’m proud of the community in which I grew up. I’m also proud about my mother,” the PM said yesterday.
“She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and was crippled up. She was unable for a long while to be able to use a knife and fork, to be able to — she used to come down the stairs at our house on her bum because she couldn’t stand up fully in the morning. She had a tough life, but you know what?
“She never complained. She never denigrated anyone. She respected everyone.”
Hanson had told Karl Stefanovic’s podcast that it was “not on” for Albanese’s mother, who died at 65, to live in public housing for decades.
New attack line: The PM successfully framed himself as empathetic compared with Peter Dutton in the 2025 election campaign by arguing “kindness is not weakness.” Now he says: “I tell you what’s weakness — it’s nastiness. Nastiness and spitefulness.”
“Fundamental lack of decency: How Albanese’s 2022 campaign rival, Scott Morrison, leaped to his defence over Hanson’s comment.
Helping hand: Albanese’s assistant minister, Patrick Possum Gorman (yes, Possum is his middle name), saved his boss from a mid-press conference fright, removing a spider from his jacket. “I’ll just get this off your back, eight-legged friend,” Gorman said.
KPMG BAN EXTENDED BY ONE MONTH: Department of Finance has extended the firm’s Commonwealth work freeze to the end of October.
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING
SWEDISH ELECTION RESULTS
Sweden went to the polls on Sunday with the left and right blocs of parties tied in opinion polls. How to watch Sweden’s election results like a pro
Here are the three possible courses of action, including that the far-right Swedish democrats enter government for the first time.
Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats are polling in first place; the far-right Sweden Democrats are second, ahead of the ruling center-right Moderates. Sound familiar?
Responsibility is kryptonite for many extreme parties: As Europe shows, you don’t need to be in power to call the shots. The Swedish Democrats positioned themselves as the “motor” of the center-right government since 2022.
UK — REFORM’S EYE-WATERING $68M DONATION: It’s the biggest single donation in British politics history, and it comes from crypto billionaire Ben Delo, who is the co-founder of BitMex, a cryptocurrency trading platform. He was convicted of money laundering in the U.S. in 2022 and was pardoned by President Trump in 2025.
Get ready for a rapid donation arms race: Billionaires and right-wing activists watch each other’s moves closely, including in Australia. Those wealthy individuals and foundations have until January to make a mega donation, before donation limits agreed in 2025 come into force. These limit individual donors to $1.6 million a year for federal political donations.
Playbook Feedback
Reader Jill Scanlon has an idea to replace One Nation’s “thought bubble” on superannuation, which she says will “do absolutely nothing” to alleviate cost-of-living pressures. “Better to offer free financial counseling to people who were never taught how to do a proper household budget and then find the financial counselors to deliver it.”
AGENDA ASSISTANT
ELECTRICITY IN THE AIR: Energy Minister Chris Bowen will help to launch the Electrify Australia campaign at Parliament’s Queen’s Terrace cafe at 6.30 p.m. today. The group is linked to the global Electrify Now campaign, launched in June and backed by the EU and eight other governments — including Australia.
AFTER HOURS
HANSON REENTERS THE DRAG CONVERSATION: Three decades after Pauline Pantsdown topped the charts and triggered a defamation suit from Hanson for her portrayal in “Backdoor Man,” Hanson’s back on stage. This time the alter ego is Faux Née Phish, whom lucky locals were able to catch at Blackbird in Civic on Saturday.
COMMUNITY CORNER
MAGPIE ALERT: It’s rough out there. First, press gallery veteran Jason Koutsoukis loses his teeth in a scooter-based attack, then Danish Ambassador Ingrid Dahl-Madsen gets pecked while trying to cut down carbon emissions cycling around Yarralumla. Now Playbook is commiserating with an industry department official attacked live on Teams (they joined the call remotely). The bird took off with one of the official’s earbuds, which was later retrieved via “Find My.” Back-to-office policies do have their magpie-free perks!
OVERHEARD IN KINGSTON: “I’ll just check ChatGPT. I can’t wait to never think again.”
MOVES AND APPOINTMENTS
Journalist and TV presenter Melissa Doyle is the new chair of the National Australia Day Council.
National Disability Insurance Agency has appointed two deputy CEOs: Leigh Sanderson, overseeing legal, actuaries, governance and reviews, and Janine Mohamed, First Nations deputy.
Former Sen. Natasha Stott Despoja is now a deputy commissioner leading an inquiry into military sexual violence at the Defence and Veterans’ Service Commission.
Engineer and former Fortescue Asia Pacific President Eva Hanly has joined the board of the High Speed Rail Authority.
Resources Minister Madeleine King is after a communications and engagement director.
VALE
Australia’s first female High Court justice, Mary Gaudron, died Sunday at age 83.
BIRTHDAYS
WA Agriculture Minister Jackie Jarvis; Australian and UK Hornsey and Friern Barnet MP Catherine West turns 60; former Russian President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
And happy belated birthday for Sunday to MPs Darren Chester, Andrew Gee, Tania Lawrence and Marion Scrymgour; and Clean Energy Council’s (and former Albo strategist) Katie Connelly.
Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and former Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern lit the candles on Saturday.
