Wednesday, 17 June 2026

 Danny PEARSON (Essendon) (11:14): I am rising to make a contribution on the 2024–25 financial and performance outcomes Public Accounts and Estimates Committee report, which was tabled in the house in March of this year. I refer the house’s attention to 8.6, ‘Investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure’, page 138. The committee questioned the Secretary of the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions in relation to the development of an AI mission statement. At that point in time when the outcomes hearings occurred, that mission statement had not been released, but I had the great privilege of writing that mission statement, and I want to take the time to explain why I think this is important.

I was asked to write the mission statement by the Premier. I had a long road trip in the car, and I spent a couple of hours in the car writing out and trying to frame what I thought would be the right response in relation to AI. The Europeans have gone down a pathway where they are using a very 20th century approach to artificial intelligence, where they are trying to legislate and regulate in order to control it. The Americans have basically said, ‘Look, let it rip, and if there are consequences, we’ll deal with them later.’ I think what you are starting to see now in a public policy sense in America is that whiplash effect where people are not necessarily liking AI, because there have not been any appropriate controls put in place. Indeed I read a report recently which had some market research which showed that AI in America is less popular than, for example, immigration and customs enforcement.

What I thought would be the right way to approach this is to recognise the fact that AI is all around us. It has reached mass adoption in three years. Compare and contrast that: the running toilet took 75 years to reach mass adoption. This form of technology has reached mass adoption more quickly than any other form of technology. You might make the argument, ‘Well, we don’t really like AI. I’ve got concerns and reservations’ – and I absolutely understand the arguments about that – but you cannot put the genie back in the bottle. This thing is all around us. It is everywhere. In some respects I am reminded by the fact of the discussions and the debates we had in this place in our first term of office in relation to Uber and taxidrivers. I remember one Sunday morning I was walking through the streets of Ascot Vale and a car pulled up, a person got out of their house, walked down their driveway, jumped in the car and left. I remember thinking at the time that that could be a person just picking up a friend, it could be a family relative picking up another family relative or it could have be an Uber driver picking up a passenger. The reality was at that point in time, I realised, that as a state we had no knowledge, we had no capacity to know whether that person was being picked up as part of a rideshare agreement or not.

The reality with AI is it is everywhere. The question is: given this is the case, how do you choose to respond? You can turn around and bury your head in the sand and say, ‘Well, we don’t like it, and we’re going to try to turn our back on it,’ or you can recognise the fact that there is an opportunity here to embrace this and recognise that there are significant advantages that we can play by moving quickly and having that first-mover advantage. That is one of the reasons why I really pushed for the data centre rollout here in this state. The reality is that a lot of the tech companies in the states are now saying, ‘We hear that New South Wales is a problem, but we hear good things coming out of Victoria.’ It is why we are leading the nation when it comes to private sector investment in this state, and a lot of that is through data centres. Data centres will be that digital spine from which we will be able to start to look at innovating and having further levels of investment. It is why, for example, it was deliberately a mission statement – not a strategy; it is a mission statement – because I wanted to keep it broad enough to be able to indicate where we should go. It covers things like investment attraction and adoption, data centres and digital infrastructure, local innovation products and services, talent and workforce, the ethical use of AI and public sector adoption.

This is our moment in time where if we get this right as a state we have got the capacity to crowd in this capital, and we can find ways in which we can harness and utilise AI to improve our operational efficiency, both as administrators, from a public sector perspective, but also in relation to the way in which we can harness AI to play to our competitive strengths. We have got a fantastic food and fibre sector here in this state, we do pharmaceuticals and medical research extremely well and we do great work when it comes to transnational education. The ability to harness and utilise AI to play to our competitive strengths will drive some significant advantages. But we must back ourselves. We must be brave and we must be able to invest in our people and in our talent to make sure that we have got a workforce that is highly skilled, agile and mobile. Now is not the time to hesitate. I look forward to the future.