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August 7, 2025
PETER STEFANOVIC: Midnight Oil frontman and the former Labor Minister Peter Garrett is leading a push against AI, which is led by multinational, multibillion dollar tech companies. The claim is whether it's music, art, or even news, well that should be paid for, not just mined for free. Joining us live, Shadow Finance Minister James Paterson. James, thanks for your time as always this morning. So the government is taking a light touch approach so far. Where are you on this today?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Good morning, Pete. My very strong corporate view is that overwhelmingly, AI will be positive for Australia and Australians, that it will enhance our productivity, that it offers opportunities to improve the lives of our citizens, and that, frankly, we can't afford to be left behind. AI is happening whether we like it or not, and there's no alternative except to make the most of the opportunity. That doesn't mean that there aren't risks that need to be managed, and one of those is people's intellectual property and copyright. And I do understand why musicians, and artists, and journalists, and others feel that companies that are building multi-billion dollar enterprises in part by scraping the internet of content that was created by other people, that they should be compensated for that. I do understand that, that's a legitimate concern, and I do think the government needs to think carefully about how to balance the opportunities for innovation here as well as making sure that people's hard-earned intellectual property is not misused.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Is it theft, as Peter Garrett calls it?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, in a technical sense, it's not the same as theft, but I understand why if you're an artist, you feel like it's theft. I mean, what AI does is it is building models by collecting data, the more data it collects, the better the models are, the better the content it creates. It's not replicating exactly what artists have created or what anyone has created and put online, but it is using that to build models to make content for users, and it does profit from that. So I think there's a reasonable argument that there needs to be compensation or some kind of amelioration of the fact that it's using other people's intellectual property, but we shouldn't allow it to get in the way of AI innovation development. The last thing we would want to do is make Australia a jurisdiction which is hostile to the rollout and development of AI technology, because that will just mean we miss out. That will just mean other jurisdictions that don't have these rules develop this technology and deploy this technology, and we get left behind.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Now that's true, but can these companies be bargained with, though? I mean we know from experience when it comes to tech giants, they'll try and wriggle out of any extra cost.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I think we need to be mindful of the fact that Australia is a medium power, that we're not the main source of innovation and development in this industry, that most of these companies are headquartered overseas, either in Silicon Valley, or indeed in China, or elsewhere in the world, and our ability to regulate them is limited. I think it would be far better if we work with governments of aligned thinking to work on this collectively in a way that is enforceable against these companies, which are enormous and which have their own intellectual property which they can quickly move from jurisdiction to jurisdiction to find the most attractive settings and the most attractive policy settings that allow them to flourish and to innovate. And if Australia just becomes a hostile jurisdiction to that then we don't win from that, we only lose from it.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay, moving on, James, an idea floated in Nine newspapers this morning, well, Nine newspapers reporting on it. It's a broadening of the GST to 15%, which has been pushed by some, but to placate those who would be disadvantaged, they'd get a $3,300 check, I mean, everyone would get it. That's the trade-off here. What are your thoughts, your initial thoughts on this idea?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, as I understand it, this proposal from some economists which has been supported by Kate Chaney also includes adding the GST to a range of things which aren't currently captured by the GST, including water and sewage and fresh food, but also private health insurance and private education fees. There's a lot of misremembering of the history of the introduction of the GST. When Peter Costello brought in the GST, some of those things were excluded as a result of a political deal with the Democrats to get it through the Senate. But some of them were excluded for deliberate policy choices, and health and education was one of those, because the Howard government recognised that people who spend their own money on private health or private education are actually taking a burden off the public purse, and therefore it would be unjust to tax them on top of that, for that. And I would say it would be an incredibly brave government that put a tax on top of private insurance or private educational fees and hit aspirational families who are trying to build a better future for their children and get ahead and make their education more expensive for them. I think that would be a very, very bold move. More broadly on this proposal, I am concerned that it appears that about two-thirds of the revenue it raises it uses to compensate people partially for the increased tax that it collects. I don't see the virtue personally in a significant increase in revenue, which is just spent on compensating people for increasing that revenue.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay, yeah, fair enough. On another note too, James, a final one here. It seems this economic roundtable is running out of puff before it even started. The Treasurer dampening expectations yesterday. Now, you guys got an invite, the Libs got an invite. What are your expectations?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: It is very clear, Pete, that the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, has got ahead of himself and the Prime Minister has pulled the reins and brought him back to where he wants him to be. I thought it was very pointed the other day when the Prime Minister said that just because this is a meeting in the cabinet room doesn't mean it's subsuming the role of the Cabinet. He's very clearly unhappy with the way that Jim Chalmers has allowed the scope to creep here, and for this to get far bigger than the government intended it to be and for ideas to be put on the table which the government has no mandate for. I thought it was also very illustrative that in a lot of the reporting yesterday, of the Treasurer's walking back, that they still said that the government was going to use this exercise as a mandate for reform. Well, you don't earn a mandate from a hand-picked group of small experts meeting in the cabinet room. You earn a mandate by taking policies to an election, and this government has no mandate for any tax increases, and we will not be supporting them to increase taxes on Australians that they didn't have the decency or the honesty to put to them before the last election.
PETER STEFANOVIC: So, will you still cooperate? Will you still attend and put up ideas?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Of course, Ted O'Brien has been invited. We're grateful to be able to participate in this. We'll be constructive in the room in part of this process, but that doesn't mean we're going to sign up to a secret Labor agenda or a union agenda of raising taxes. The union movement has launched another new tax increase proposal in the media today on businesses to try to make them pay more for training of their workers, after launching I think a dozen new taxes over the weekend. I mean, none of this was put to the Australian people. None of this has the endorsement of the Australian people. The government has no mandate to do any of this, and they will be very unwise to try and construct a process to make it look like they do have a mandate for tax increases.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay, we will leave it there. That's the Shadow Finance Minister James Paterson. Always good to talk, James. Thank you. Chat again soon.
ENDS