Kate Chaney
Curtin · Independent · Australia
“Digital platforms will have a legal responsibility to prevent harm, but the design of this commitment matters enormously, and I want to flag three things that the government must get right. First, there must be a single overarching duty.”
“The government gave stakeholders representing millions of Australians affected by gambling harm a single 45-minute consultation session on the exposure draft, with written submissions due the next day. Emeritus Professor Mike Daube, who took part in that session, described it afterwards as a charade.”
“A doctor who uses the phone, internet, fax, email or video conferencing to provide lawful VAD care risks prosecution and fines greater than $300,000. This means seriously ill patients must attend every consultation in person, travelling long distances while gravely unwell, often more than once, to make and confirm their request.”
“I rise to present a petition signed by more than 13,000 Australians. The petition has been considered by the Petitions Committee and found to be in order. It calls on this House to amend the Criminal Code Act so that it no longer applies to voluntary assisted dying, VAD.”
“She lived in one half of a single house divided into two separate dwellings. She got on well with the quiet single working man next door. This particular morning she was devastated and in shock. The man had hung himself in the shed where she found him, and left a note listing all the people he owed money to including the amounts.”
“No avenue to call up customer service at these companies and request this person be denied an account. Our nightmare never ends. There's nowhere to help us. The only option presented seems to dissolve the marriage and the family.”
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“The AMA, the Law Council, VAD regulatory bodies, 20 health organisations and state attorneys-general and health ministers all support this change. Refusing to fix this is a choice, leaving Australians like Terry to suffer needlessly. I commend this petition to the House.”
“VAD is lawful in every state, yet dying people like Terry cannot properly access it. Australia is the only country in the world that prohibits telehealth for voluntary assisted dying. The solution is simple and it's ready. I introduced a private member's bill in 2024 and relisted it on the Notice Paper this year to amend the Criminal Code so it no longer applies to accessing VAD through telehealth in line with state and territory law. The Attorney-General has described this as a complex issue. With respect, it really is not. All states and the ACT have done their part. Every one of them has legislated with safeguards. The only barrier that remains is a single provision of the Commonwealth Code, so the problem is one of will not complexity.”
“A doctor who uses the phone, internet, fax, email or video conferencing to provide lawful VAD care risks prosecution and fines greater than $300,000. This means seriously ill patients must attend every consultation in person, travelling long distances while gravely unwell, often more than once, to make and confirm their request. This particularly affects Australians in rural and remote areas. This petition was brought to the House by Emma Hargreaves on behalf of her father, Terry. In his final weeks just reaching the bathroom was a huge task, let alone getting into a car for a medical appointment. This outdated Commonwealth code provision meant telehealth was not an option for Terry. It should have been. Emma said it would have made an enormous difference and empowered her dad in his final moments. Terry deserved a better death.”
“I rise to present a petition signed by more than 13,000 Australians. The petition has been considered by the Petitions Committee and found to be in order. It calls on this House to amend the Criminal Code Act so that it no longer applies to voluntary assisted dying, VAD. Thirteen thousand people have delivered a simple message to the government: a dying person should not suffer because of an anomaly in Commonwealth law. The problem isn't complicated. VAD is now an established part of Australia's health system. Every state and the ACT have legislated for it with strict safeguards. The Northern Territory may follow this year. Yet a provision in the Commonwealth Criminal Code written in 2005, 12 years before any VAD law existed and aimed at pro-suicide websites, criminalises the use of telecommunications for VAD.”
“The commissioner needs powers to compel the production of documents and data from platforms to audit recommendation algorithms and to litigate appeals. It's great to see that the government has acted on this, passing laws this week to strengthen the commissioner's powers, but I remain concerned about the commissioner's budget and her ability to take on the tech giants. This will also be essential to an effective digital duty of care. Get these three things right and a digital duty of care can be genuinely transformative.”
“But serious harm means loss of life or severe physical injury, and that threshold risks leaving out harms that are less acute or immediate but still deeply damaging and widespread. This could include the erosion of a child's developmental capacity through unhealthy relationships with AI companions, with a slow degradation of mental health and a teenager who spends years in an algorithmic environment that continues to serve up distressing content. None of these may clearly meet a serious harm threshold, but all of them are deeply problematic, and the government must lower the bar to harm, not serious harm. Third, the eSafety Commissioner must be properly resourced and empowered. A well-designed duty of care on paper means nothing without a regulator capable of enforcing it.”
“Digital platforms will have a legal responsibility to prevent harm, but the design of this commitment matters enormously, and I want to flag three things that the government must get right. First, there must be a single overarching duty. This would mean platforms had a general obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm to users, rather than a list of named specific obligations. The difference is significant. A list of specific duties only captures what the drafters anticipated, not new and emerging harms. Specific duties for the highest risk categories can sit underneath an overarching obligation to give industry and regulators clarity, but the overarching duty must not be traded away. Second, the framework must capture the full range of harms. The government's current issues paper sets the threshold at serious harm.”
“Think about what the internet could have been: a place where children learn, create and connect safely, where people in crisis find support and where algorithms surface what's true and valuable. Instead, children are being exposed to violent, sexual and misogynistic content. They're forming unhealthy emotional attachments to AI companions designed to maximise engagement. Adults are being radicalised by recommendation systems engineered to serve increasingly extreme content. This is the predictable consequence of design choices made by platforms that seek to maximise engagement and profit. I commend the government for committing to a digital duty of care. This will require digital platforms, including social media sites and AI chatbots, to be safe by design.”
“If the government is confident that this bill reflects the Murphy report and the public interest, it should have nothing to fear from a committee process that tests that claim in the open. If it is not confident, that is precisely why this scrutiny is needed. I commend this motion to the House.”
“There is no version of events in which this bill passes both houses in the next five weeks, regardless of what this parliament does today. A referral to a committee does not delay reform by a single sitting day. It simply ensures that, when this bill does come back before the House, it's been tested against evidence rather than against a 45-minute Zoom call and a deadline of the choosing of vested interests. I understand that a committee may have been established in the other place, and I welcome this news and the work of the opposition, the Greens and Independents to get that done. But I hope, too, that the committee that prepared the original report, the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, can consider this package of reforms.”
“The gambling lobby, by contrast, has had ample access. That imbalance should trouble every member of this House, regardless of which side of politics they sit on. A short, structured inquiry by this committee after years of inaction could fix that. Five weeks is not a radical ask. It's the minimum required for a public process that actually deserves that name. It would allow submissions from the people the Murphy report was written for—those with lived experience, clinicians, researchers and community organisations who have been locked out of the conversation so far. Let us be honest about what this would actually cost the government in practical terms: nothing. This House is not scheduled to sit again until 11 August.”
“The government gave stakeholders representing millions of Australians affected by gambling harm a single 45-minute consultation session on the exposure draft, with written submissions due the next day. Emeritus Professor Mike Daube, who took part in that session, described it afterwards as a charade. When he asked what evidence supported allowing unlimited advertising after 8.30 pm, he was told that it was a political decision, not an evidence based one. That's a remarkable admission for a bill that follows the most rigorous evidence-based inquiry this parliament has conducted into gambling harm in a generation. People with lived experience of gambling harm, researchers and public health experts have had almost no opportunity to be heard on legislation that will shape how this country deals with a predatory industry for years to come.”
“SBS has run an opt-out model, and, based on publicly available figures, less than 0.1 per cent of subscribers have used it, even though three in four Australians say they wanted gambling ads banned altogether. The government knew this when they designed this measure. An opt-out nobody uses is not a protection. It is a fig leaf. The evidence on partial bans is already in. When advertising restrictions were tightened in 2017, gambling ads on television increased. Half measures do not reduce harm. They reroute it. This bill, as drafted, repeats that mistake at a moment when we finally have the chance not to. That's the case for proper scrutiny on the substance. The case is even stronger on process.”
“So, when the government finally produced a response, Australians had every right to expect it would match the scale of the problem. It does not. On my count, this bill fully addresses only a handful of the Murphy report's 31 recommendations. There is no national regulator. There is no restriction on inducements. And the flagship measure, the advertising restriction, is not the comprehensive phase-out the report called for. It is three ads an hour on television with no cap at all after 8.30 pm—the time at which the government has apparently decided every Australian child is asleep. The so-called safeguard for online ads is an opt-out function. We already know how that performs in practice.”
“Our report made 31 unanimous recommendations. Its central finding was unambiguous: Australia needs a comprehensive ban on gambling advertising, phased in over time. It took this government nearly three years to respond. In that time, nothing changed for the roughly 550,000 high-risk gamblers in this country. Sixteen per cent of them have experienced suicidal thoughts. Two-thirds have faced serious financial hardship, including going without meals. Almost one in five people whose partner gambles weekly or more experiences intimate partner violence. This is a public health crisis. It's been playing out in lounge rooms across Australia, and it's been allowed to fester for years and years while gambling companies spend millions perfecting the art of keeping people hooked. Gambling is Australia's blind spot.”
“She lived in one half of a single house divided into two separate dwellings. She got on well with the quiet single working man next door. This particular morning she was devastated and in shock. The man had hung himself in the shed where she found him, and left a note listing all the people he owed money to including the amounts. She was one of them of course. He stated his reason for suicide was because he just couldn't stop gambling and knew he would never be able to repay all these people. There were stories like this one: My town is suffering, the people here are suffering. Gambling addiction means there's no food on the table and no money to pay bills. I see here in Alice Springs, exactly who is hardest hit by the gambling culture and it isn't whitefellas and it isn't anyone who can afford to lose money.”
“No avenue to call up customer service at these companies and request this person be denied an account. Our nightmare never ends. There's nowhere to help us. The only option presented seems to dissolve the marriage and the family. Gambling only brings misery and destruction to the lives of vulnerable people, their families, friends, colleagues and further afield in communities where their contributions can be far more impactful if they didn't have the temptation of gambling. The once long-held dream of mine to find a partner to do life with, buy a house, build a home, have children, go on holidays, build long-term wealth and prosperity, are now replaced with anxiety, financial insecurity, spousal abuse and depression. We also heard stories like this one: Many years ago I went to pick up a friend for an outing.”
“I started out empathetic and compassionate to help my husband overcome this mental health condition that is gambling addiction, but my help and compassion was preyed upon and made harder by the relentless onslaught of gambling available in Australia. We would get on top of going to pokies in venues, and then online pokies became available, sportsbetting became easier through apps. There really is no escape from this nightmare now. My husband's pay can go into his account in the middle of the night and by the morning it is all gone from the comfort of his phone. The addiction is flamed harder because it is now so readily available and solitary in nature. It fuels secrecies and betrayal in marriages. There is no avenue for spouses to step in and restrict gambling harm by placing blocks on apps.”
“Under standing order 143, I move: That the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 be referred to the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs for consideration and an advisory report by 11 August 2026. Three years ago, this parliament received the Murphy report You win some, you lose more , the product of a meticulous, evidence based inquiry into online gambling. I sat on that committee. We heard from people whose lives had been torn apart by an industry that is addictive by design, marketed aggressively and disproportionately harms young people and vulnerable communities. We heard stories like this one from a woman struggling to make her marriage work: Gambling harm has already completely eroded and killed my relationship with my husband.”
“These are improvements, but they don't answer the core question for the veteran living fortnight to fortnight: 'What happens when the money runs out, and how hard will I have to fight for additional funding?' So my position is this: I support this bill for what it does, but the cap that sits beside it must not be allowed to hollow out the very wellbeing this bill is meant to protect. Being forced to choose between treatment and food is not an acceptable outcome of any policy passed or administered in this country.”
“But nobody has explained how a veteran applies, how DVA will assess the request or how quickly a decision will be made. DVA's own data show that around one in 10 cardholders use more than $5,000 a year. Those are not people rorting the system; they're veterans with the most serious and most complex needs—the very people this entire royal commission was about. If the exemption process is slow, opaque or adversarial, then for those veterans the cap is not a saving; it's a barrier between them and their treatment, dressed up as administrative efficiency. There are some genuinely good things in the detail, and I'll acknowledge them. Psychology through Open Arms doesn't count towards the cap. The old rule forcing a new referral every 12 sessions is being scrapped, which removes a real and ongoing burden for anyone in regular treatment.”
“He lives on incapacity payments, on a fraction of his former income, much of it going to rent. He's done the maths. Under this cap, his funding would run out in about five months. After that, he faces the prospect of fighting DVA for an exemption or paying out of pocket, and if he pays, in his words, he doesn't eat. He asked me a simple question: he asked whether it's fair that a veteran with accepted conditions should be pushed below the poverty line to continue receiving the treatment that keeps him out of hospital and out of a very dark place. I don't think it is, and I don't think anyone in this chamber, if asked that question directly, would say that it is either. Here's what makes this so frustrating. The government says DVA will fund care above the cap where there is a genuine clinical need—good.”
“I want to be clear that the cap is not in this bill. It didn't come through this parliament for a vote. It's a budget measure that the government can implement administratively through DVA. The appropriation that funds DVA passed without a formal division, so there was no moment at which any members voted yes or no to this cap specifically. Veterans deserve to understand exactly where the decision sits: it sits with the minister, who has the power to get the design right without coming back to this place. The detail to inform that design simply doesn't exist yet. Let me tell you about a constituent of mine, a veteran I won't name. He attends physiotherapy and exercise physiology twice a week and sees a psychologist every fortnight for mental and physical injuries from his service. These are accepted conditions.”
“The RSL has strongly supported this direction, and so do I. Sexual misconduct has no place in our Defence Force, and this parliament should say so plainly. So this is a good bill, and the broader reform effort around it has been welcomed across the veteran community. The RSL has called the recent budget a 'long-overdue investment in veteran health care'. The fee increase for allied health providers included in the budget, the largest in more than two decades, means more providers will be willing to see veterans, and there will be better funded care when they do. But I can't speak about this reform package and stay silent on something that sits right alongside it and threatens to undercut it: the $5,000 annual cap on allied health services for veteran card holders, due to commence a year from now.”
“The bill also establishes, for the first time, a comprehensive legislative basis for the Defence health system, with a clear benchmark that care must meet or exceed civilian standards; it brings in proper quality assurance and improvement protections so that clinicians can speak candidly when something goes wrong; it strengthens support for Defence families, including allowing benefits to flow to former partners in the immediate aftermath of separation where there's family violence; and it implements mandatory discharge for members who are convicted of serious violent or sexual offences and sentenced to imprisonment, and bars such people from joining in the first place. The royal commission was unequivocal that sexual violence in the ADF is both a moral catastrophe and a driver of suicide.”
“A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 12:38 to 12:46 But the safeguards have to be real, not just on paper, and I'll be watching development of those guidelines closely to make sure that that balance holds in practice.”
“It keeps the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles in force, requires ministerial guidelines made with advice from the Information Commissioner, requires a proportionality assessment before information is disclosed, and defaults to consent wherever it's practicable. The principle is right; the answer to bad information sharing is not no information sharing but rather careful, accountable information sharing. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 12:28 to 12:46 The principle is right. The answer to bad information sharing is not no information sharing. Rather, information sharing should be careful and accountable.”
“A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 12:17 to 12:27 The RSL has indicated it's broadly supportive of this legislation and agrees with its intent, and I share this view. The RSL will also rightly seek assurances about how veterans' data will be protected, how it will be used and who will be able to access it, particularly given the privacy failures which led to the closure of the MATES program in 2024. Veterans were right to be angry then and they're right to expect better now. The bill goes some way to answering those concerns.”
“This bill creates a clearer framework for research, data analysis and evaluation so that we can identify suicide risk earlier and intervene before a life is lost. I want to acknowledge the privacy questions this raises, because they are serious. We're talking about health records and deeply sensitive personal information. The RSL has indicated it's broadly supportive of this legislation and agrees with its intent, and I share that view. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 12:07 to 12:17 The RSL has indicated it's broadly supportive of this legislation and agrees with its intent. I share that view.”
“More than merely symbolic, this is a legal and cultural commitment that the lifetime wellbeing of the people we ask to serve is a core responsibility of the Defence Force, not an afterthought once the uniform comes off. The bill modernises how Defence and the Department of Veterans' Affairs share and use information. The royal commission found something that should shame us: that fragmented systems, lost records and ad hoc, consent-by-consent information sharing have contributed to real harm. Veterans were forced to tell their story over and over at the most vulnerable moments of their lives. Risks that were obvious at a cohort level stayed invisible because nobody could see the whole picture.”
“The Defence Legislation Amendment (RCDVS Implementation and Related Measures No. 2) Bill 2026 is a further response to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, building on the reforms that this parliament has already passed. That commission spent three years hearing the testimony of families who had lost someone and survivors carrying wounds that this parliament should have reckoned with long ago. It handed down 122 recommendations. The task now is to move more of those recommendations from paper to practice. This bill takes up this task on several fronts, and I support it. Let me briefly set out what it does. For the first time, the Defence Act will contain a dedicated part devoted to the health and wellbeing of ADF members, veterans and their families.”
“We need to get the framework right so that it is actually dealing with technology as it continues to change. I commend the government for its approach to online safety so far. We have been world leading with the under 16's ban. We need to back that up with this bill to ensure that we can enforce that and make it meaningful, partly for all the other countries who are looking to see if we can pull this off. I urge the government to continue to be brave and consultative and to listen to the community as it develops that digital duty of care so that we can lead the world and make sure that we are creating spaces that can be used safely. I commend the bill to the House.”
“Penalties must be substantial enough to change behaviour. Fifthly, transparency requirements are needed to ensure the government and the public understand and can monitor how digital platforms are managing the risks. This would involve regular transparency reporting to government on key metrics such as usage statistics and quantitative data on exposure of children to harmful content. This would also involve requirements for platforms to make data available publicly to increase transparency. Sixthly, AI models—like general-purpose chatbots such as Claude and ChatGPT—need to be included. This is currently ambiguous, but these cause a range of novel harms like attachment hacking and erosion of critical thinking, and in 15 years we don't want to be in the same position with AI that we are now in with social media.”
“A well-designed duty of care on paper means nothing without a regulator capable of enforcing it. This bill is an important step towards this, but the government will have to continue to monitor the situation and empower and resource the commissioner as required as this space changes when we recognise a digital duty of care. Fourthly, strong enforcement measures and penalties are needed. This would ensure that platforms actually meet the digital duty of care and are held to account. Again, that involves the eSafety Commissioner having resources and powers to compel the production of documents and data from platforms and audit algorithms. This bill is a step in the right direction there, too. The eSafety Commissioner also needs resourcing to litigate any appeals, because these big tech companies are not going to go quietly.”
“The government's current issues paper sets the threshold at 'serious harm', but serious harm means loss of life or severe physical injury, and that threshold risks leaving out harms that are less acute or immediate but deeply damaging and widespread. This could include the erosion of a child's developmental capacity through unhealthy relationships with AI companions or the slow degradation of mental health in a teenager who spends years in an algorithmic environment that continues to serve up distressing content. None of these may clearly meet a serious harm threshold as currently framed, but they are still deeply problematic, and the government must lower the bar to use a threshold of harm rather than serious harm. Thirdly, the eSafety Commissioner must be properly resourced and empowered.”
“A list of specific duties only captures what the drafters anticipated, not new and emerging harms, and this space is moving so fast that legislators cannot keep up with an ongoing list of harms as they become apparent. Specific duties for the highest risk categories could sit underneath an overarching obligation to give industries and regulators greater clarity, but the overarching duty must not be traded away. This is about creating a new culture where platforms think about those safety issues before they roll out new products, rather than taking a strict compliance approach. Secondly, the framework must capture the full range of harms.”
“It could also require operating systems to be required to integrate an AI classifier that's set to block illegal child sex abuse material. Overall, it will shift responsibility to those who can actually prevent the harm in the first place. The government has committed to implementing this digital duty of care, and there are a few design features that are essential to make it effective. Firstly, it's important that there is a single overarching duty. This would mean platforms have a general obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm to their users, rather than a list of named specific obligations. And the difference is significant.”
“Similarly, an AI chatbot developer, if covered by a digital duty of care, that builds a product it knows is likely to be used by children for emotional support cannot claim it bears no responsibility for the foreseeable consequences. In practice, a digital duty of care would require digital platforms—including AI developers, I think—to take steps like conducting risk assessments before deploying new products or features, implementing age-assurance measures where their products are likely to be used by children, implementing effective mitigation measures to remedy risks identified in assessments, designing recommendation systems that do not exploit psychological vulnerabilities, having accessible and effective mechanisms for users to report harm and taking prompt action when harms are identified.”
“Beyond the social media ban, the next step is a digital duty of care. Establishing a digital duty of care places an obligation on all digital platforms and services to take reasonable steps to prevent harm to users, including through AI chatbots, social media sites and other digital platforms that incorporate AI. This is an online safety framework that's proactive rather than reactive, a framework that requires platforms to be safe by design, not endlessly catching up with the latest harms. It would mean that social media platforms would not just have to remove extreme content but would also have to reconsider how their algorithms are developed in the first place.”
“So I strongly support the greater empowerment of the eSafety Commissioner. I also support the doubling of penalties for noncompliance, although I don't think a $100 million fine is a huge deterrent for some of the world's wealthiest companies. I also remain concerned by the eSafety Commissioner's budget. The commission will need to take on these technology giants in court, and it remains unclear whether it has a sufficient litigation budget to take them on. The minister has said that that is something that she's aware of and that she will guard against, and I will take her at her word on that. Without a doubt, properly resourcing and empowering the eSafety Commissioner will be essential for the success of the under-16 social media ban and essential to Australia's long-term approach to online safety.”
“Studies show around 80 per cent have found their way through the ban. And part of the reason it's not working is because our eSafety Commissioner hasn't had the powers or the resourcing to properly enforce the ban. The eSafety Commissioner herself described it as trying to fence the ocean. This bill will make a difference here. It gives the eSafety Commissioner expanded powers to compel documents from digital platforms and other related stakeholders to assess whether the social media companies are actually doing as much as they can—and I have no doubt that they're not. These companies want this ban to fail. If it fails here, it means other countries won't pursue the same policy. If it works here—and we can make it work—we set an example for the rest of the world to follow.”
“In this context, I strongly commend the Australian government's world-leading work in regulating online spaces. The under-16 social media ban is world leading. It required courage to implement, and I congratulate the government for this courage. It's great to see so many countries overseas now following in our footsteps, and I'm glad to see we're not stopping there. The government's commitment to a digital duty of care could be a transformative policy for improving our online spaces. It wouldn't just protect children by removing them. It would force companies to make their platforms into better sites and experiences. But there's no question that the implementation of the under-16 ban has been questionable. The vast majority of teenagers I speak to have made their way around the ban.”
“Social media is now home to a constant negativity and enshittification that wears people down—constant misinformation, constant AI slop, constant misogynistic and racist comments, constant outrage and polarisation. So many of the adults and children I speak to don't like social media. They're sick of algorithms that produce outrage and negativity, but they feel obliged to use it. They feel obliged to use it because we've welcomed these technologies into our lives without thinking about the harms they would cause, and now it is too late. Our lives are so entwined with social media and digital platforms that it's impossible to undo, and it makes unpicking the harms really difficult—not to mention that the big tech companies are now as powerful as many nation-states.”
“Imagine sitting down with someone from the 1970s or 1980s and telling them this: within 50 years, nearly everyone on earth will carry a device in their pocket that gives them instant access to the sum of human knowledge—every book, every paper, every fact, available in seconds. They would have assumed the obvious consequence: productivity would soar. But it hasn't. Productivity has declined, and almost all of the promises of our online spaces have fallen flat. It is not necessarily because the potential wasn't there but because the downsides of our online spaces have well and truly trumped the positives. Our online spaces are now vectors for incredibly harmful material: child sexual abuse material, suicidal content, aggressive bullying, radicalisation and racism. But the harms are actually deeper than this.”
“I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. Sometimes I reflect on the promise of the internet, of social media and of our digital platforms. We thought that they would be a place to connect, to cross oceans and skies, to stay in touch with family and loved ones despite the distance. We thought they would give everyone the opportunity to have their say. Suddenly, all you needed to have your voice heard was a phone and an internet connection, and we thought that that would contribute to a flourishing democracy. We thought that they'd be spaces for children to learn and for people to find support and friendships. We thought they'd spark incredible productivity and growth.”
“That's why I'm consulting with industry experts in my community to develop a vision for WA's future articulating how we can lower energy costs, build our future prosperity, strengthen our own energy security and bring emissions down by decarbonising and diversifying our economy and exports. We can leverage our strengths to build the clean export industries of the future—green iron, green hydrogen and processed critical minerals. If we want to lead these industries and help the world decarbonise through our exports, it's time to commit and stop locking in a future we're trying to leave.”
“Western Australia's resources sector is world leading, but our prosperity is less secure than it looks. Our economy leans on one industry, one export and one market, and China's steel demand is peaking. At the same time, Western Australians are feeling three pressures at once: rising energy bills, dependence on imported fuel and a changing climate. WA is the only state with rising emissions. These are usually treated as competing problems. They're not. The same response answers all three—decarbonising and diversifying our economy. Right now, WA's vision for the future is contradictory. We say we want to be a renewable energy superpower, but we keep approving new fossil fuel export expansion, extending gas out to 2070. These two futures compete for the same land, capital and workers.”
“We let companies invest under a generous regime and then were told it was unfair to change the rules. The result? A prolonged fight, delayed reform and billions forgone. We cannot repeat this with AI. So I support this matter wholeheartedly and I urge the government to treat it not as a standalone fix but as part of the urgent need to consider the impact of AI on the Australian economy and society and to regulate appropriately now. I commend the matter to the House.”
“It calls for a digital duty of care to protect Australians and especially children from real harms happening now. It calls for national AI literacy programs so every Australian can use this technology and protect themselves from its risks. It calls for properly funding the institutions, like the AI Safety Institute, which are meant to keep pace with all of this. These are not competing priorities. They're the same project: making sure AI delivers for Australians rather than at their expense. Uncertainty about AI is no excuse to wait to act. We don't know exactly how fast or far this technology will go, but we know that data centres are being approved today, models are being trained today and value is being banked offshore today. We made this mistake with gas.”
“The matter of data centres, important as it is, is one piece of a much larger picture. I've just released an AI discussion paper setting out 18 practical policies the government should act on now. This MPI concerns one of them—data centres—and this cannot be the only priority that we pursue. We need an honest conversation about tax. AI companies will generate enormous value from Australian users' data, energy and land, and right now we have no mechanism to ensure any of it stays here. We already know this playbook. In 2025 alone, Google and Meta moved almost $11 billion to offshore entities and paid just $140 million in tax. We cannot let AI replicate that. We need to prepare for the harder questions. My paper calls for scenario analysis of AI's impact on jobs and the economy so government is ready, whatever happens.”