Tuesday, 9 December 2025

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (22:26): (2236) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Industry and Advanced Manufacturing. Victoria is dipping further behind the rest of the nation in the race to implement and adopt artificial intelligence and create productivity and jobs and wealth for the next generation. At a time when the rest of the world and other Australian jurisdictions have invested heavily in preparing regulatory environments, investment environments and energy environments for AI, Victoria is falling further and further behind. The New South Wales government has released an innovation blueprint to 2035, which sets out an integrated and cohesive 20-year strategy to attract $27 billion in new investment and create nearly 100,000 high-value jobs. Its newly established Investment Delivery Authority is specifically designed to fast-track major tech and data centre proposals, cut red tape and give investors confidence in New South Wales that New South Wales is open for business, yet in Victoria AI was given only passing references in last December’s Economic Growth Statement around the digitisation of government services and a recognition of a prior learning pilot. The Victorian Industry Policy, released in June this year, only briefly mentioned AI twice, with a vague statement about being a leader in AI but with no actual substance to it.

The Premier had her chance to put the government’s stamp on the issue when she spoke about AI at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, but all she announced was the ongoing development of the sustainable data centre action plan. I will make this very clear: if you want your state to adopt AI rapidly, you do not go from zero to 100. It takes years of layering up both the ethical, regulatory and investment environments. Every other jurisdiction has been doing this for five years. We are at ground zero, and that puts us at a massive disadvantage to the rest of Australia and what is happening around the world. We will not develop the regulations overnight, we will not develop the guardrails overnight, we will not develop the skills overnight, we will not have the energy supply overnight, we will not have the skills – we will have nothing. We are so far behind, it is frightening.

The action I seek from the minister is to recognise that the Victorian government is simply not doing enough in this area and commit to significant regulatory reform, regulatory preparation and investment preparation so that we can take advantage of the productivity growth and economic growth that AI will deliver over the next 10, 15 years. We either participate in this revolution or we are going to be economically wiped out by our absence from it.