It’s really good to see you all and I’m sorry that I couldn’t see more of the last session. I might have a to be a bit short in case I have to run back down and manage a couple of questions down there. 

The ACTU and the union movement are making two kinds of contributions here. One is the one that you saw Sally, Michele, Joseph and colleagues here lead at the Roundtable. That is, presenting workers’ voices in a strategic way as the country shapes its approach to this new wave of technology. 

But also, that really fundamental democratic job of getting groups of workers together to talk about those questions. That is a really important democratic role for the trade union movement that’s often not well enough understood. 

When there’s a wave of new technology, that creates pressures for workers, for businesses, for copyright holders, for tech companies, for all of the interests that will be engaged in this area. That democratic role, this really important democratic institution, is really important and foundational for Australian democracy at an era when democracy is going backwards in parts of the world. 

I thought I’d just try and say a few things as we’re moving towards the government’s setting out Australia’s artificial intelligence capability strategy towards the end of the year, and as we’re working through these questions – including with individual affiliate unions but also with the ACTU Secretariat. 

The first thing to say is – what is up for grabs for Australia here? I want us to understand why we as a government are engaged in a strategy around artificial intelligence. Of course, there’s a set of economic and productivity questions that are taking shape but are not necessarily well understood. As we’re dealing with the productivity challenge, led by Jim and the PM, but right across government, it’s the truth that there’s been a productivity slump in Australia. The last decade was the lowest ever decade. There’s a whole set of reasons for that, which I won’t bore you with. (It’s not boring, it’s actually deeply fascinating.) 

But the challenge is lifting national productivity, not just in terms of our own economy but relative to our competitors and to our partners. That is the thing that, just as much as everything else we do, will determine future living standards and the kind of jobs that we’re going to have in the economy in the future. Technology and artificial intelligence is a really important question here. 

There’s also a set of national sovereignty questions about the extent to which Australia is just a taker of technology and products from overseas that are adopted in our economy. That’s important – but also how much we are a maker, shaping the landscape, both in technological terms in the way the technology is used, but also in the norms and rules and regulations as countries around the world and multinational firms start to cooperate and work out what the rules of engagement are. 

There’s a long way to go on all of those questions. What Australia does ourselves, and how we cooperate and collaborate with our neighbours and partners and competitors on these questions, is up for grabs. 

And of course, as I said before, in an era of intensified geopolitical competition, it is not for Australia to be sitting back on these questions. The Prime Minister means what he says - we are a government that wants Australians and Australian institutions to cooperate over the big national interest questions. 

I would have thought that for most Australians, that’s uncontroversial. I did indicate, five minutes after I was appointed, in an early speech about artificial intelligence, that I wanted unions at the top table. Not a controversial point, I’d have thought. Business organisations agree. That’s what the sensible people in the business community say. 

Some of my opponents lost their minds. In the Australian Financial Review the following day, there was a headline that said ‘Tim Ayres is wrong’. Which is just dynamite. I couldn’t be happier. I went home though, my wife had a copy of the AFR open at that page on the dining table; my son, who’s never picked up a copy of the AFR in his life, was in his bedroom flicking through the pages of it with a big grin on his face. I suspect that it’s going to have some currency in my family life for some time. 

But I don’t step back from that view. We want national cooperation over the opportunities and challenges. If we’re fair dinkum about it, there are challenges. Do I have to head out? I was about to be hilarious! If I can, I’ll come back in a tick, but I’ve run out of time. 

[Brief interruption].

That’s the challenge with a reform-rich agenda – we’ve got a lot of legislation pumping its way through the parliament. I’ll try and just capture a couple of things. 

That cooperation, dealing with those challenges, having the ACTU play the role that it has traditionally played, representing workers but with an eye on the national prize. What is the national interest question here? There’s a pretty good history of that here. I think it was Liam who’s written some recent history about Australia Reconstructed. That kind of thinking through big national challenges has been pretty foundational for Australia. 

We will deliver a National AI Capability Plan by the end of the year. But I just want to say a couple of things about the labour market questions, the jobs and the firm questions. 

Jobs and Skills Australia released an important report a few weeks ago, which went to what the impact is likely to be for most jobs. For most jobs, it is that the kind of work that we do will change, and that these will be additional tools that will reshape the way that we equip workers. 

So, there’s a set of skills questions there. I suspect that we’re going to be feeling our way through these issues for years and decades to come. What I want to see is fast adoption and lifting. 

But if we look at the history of digital adoption in Australia, we’re still talking about digital adoption thirty years afterwards. Our job is to work together to lift, in my view, and to deal with the challenges as they emerge. 

My background as a trade union official in the manufacturing sector is that I saw wave after wave of technological change – robotics, automation and the digital economy. The truth is, for manufacturing workers and metal workers with trades and technical backgrounds, they are not just passively acted upon. They actually have good ideas; they actually have views. 

That will be the same for actors, for writers, for administrative workers, for people in the service sector, for people in aged care. They will have views and ideas about how we shape this technology in the interests not just of their work, but also the people who they are – if it’s aged care – the people who they are looking after. They will have that set of interests in mind as well. 

The one thing that would have a more disruptive and negative effect in terms of jobs and the labour market is if we step back. Either allowing others to shape this, or investment happening somewhere else. There is a competitive question here. My orientation is leaning in – let’s shape this together across the Australian community. 

It is different to robotics or automation. The set of technologies that are engaged here do have a different quality. Excel spreadsheets knocked over the jobs of hundreds of thousands of bookkeepers all around the world. It’s a narrow tool with a narrow set of purposes. AI is a general-purpose technology that will reshape the way that we think about and use technology. 

Think about the shape and impact of these technologies in terms of our democracy, in terms of the way people engage socially and in terms of the world of work, the geopolitical and security issues and productivity questions. There’s a lot of stuff we need to work with. 

The final thing I wanted to say about this, with half an eye on the bells, is that, as our institutions learn and as firms learn, as government learns – I think about this partly informed by my previous roles, thinking about the impact of technology for manufacturing workers, for blue collar workers, for tech workers – the role of government here is to foster innovation and investment and deployment of this technology through the economy. 

It’s also to attend to the regulatory questions. As you would all know from your work, that requires precision. That requires a lot of hard work. It’s not just about what the legal framework is. That matters, but also where are our laws fit for purpose – as we work through those questions of regulation, it’s as much about providing certainty for the investment community. 

It’s also about the capability of government itself to meet challenges. And it’s about the capability and institutions of Australians themselves to lift and engage with these technologies. 

One of the ironies for Australia is that, while the BCA report (which is quite a useful report) says that there’s a high level of scepticism amongst Australians about artificial intelligence technology and other technologies – it’s not just one thing, there’s a bunch of technologies here – but also, we’re enormous adopters. There are many people adopting this technology at work and not telling their boss that they’re engaged in the technology. We’re using it in our families. People are planning their holidays with artificial intelligence technology. They are enthusiastic adopters, and there is also scepticism. 

Some of that scepticism reflects a healthy Australian scepticism about these issues – it’s not overwhelmingly negative, but it’s shaped by people’s experiences with technology, particularly with social media. We’ve seen the impact that social media has had on kids, and all that sort of stuff. But there’s a residual concern here. 

It’s our job to [inaudible] these, not just in 2025 but in 2026 and 2027. There is not a final answer on all of these questions. My message really is that we’ve got to do this together, we’ve got to do it carefully, we’ve got to do it with precision. You will be doing it, of course, with the interests of workers and workplaces in mind. We will have those issues front and centre. But we will both be focussed on the national interest. 

So, I am very confident that, while there’s going to be some tough questions to work through, the kind of example that was set in the roundtable of identifying issues for cooperation between the business sector, the tech sector and the ACTU, I found that inspiring and I was really happy with that. That provides us with a really positive foundation for future cooperation. 

And with that, with the sense that there’s about to be a division downstairs, I’ll stop there. I hope that was helpful, but it’s just the start of our cooperation.