A reform roundtable looms as a bridge march reverberates

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Hello and welcome to the party room.

I'm Patricia Carvellis and I'm on Wurundjeri Country in Melbourne.

And I'm Frank Kelly on the Gadigaland of the Aura Nation in Sydney and PK.

This week kicked off with that march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday.

It was absolutely enormous, at least twice, some say four times as big as organisers had been predicting.

Despite the heavy rain, thousands have joined the Palestine Action Group in marching across the harbour bridge.

After New South Wales police unsuccessfully sought a prohibition order to prevent the protest, today about 700 officers are facilitating the march.

Organisers say they were determined the peaceful march go ahead and hope the demonstration on the Australian landmark will send a powerful message to the international community.

The bridge will remain closed to north and southbound traffic.

The message was unmissable and politicians from both sides were forced out the next day to acknowledge people's concerns.

We're going to get to that in more detail soon with Paul Sakal, the chief political correspondent with The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.

But PK, first, there's been all sorts of jostling and gibbering going on ahead of the Treasurer's National Economic Reform Roundtable.

It's less than a fortnight away now, so people are getting very, very excited.

You've spoken a lot about it during the week, I know.

Since the Treasurer announced this productivity summit, PK, it's morphed into something broader, I think, or is it something narrower?

I'm still a little confused about the level of ambition.

What do you think?

So it got broader, and then the government started using language to narrow it again.

And what I mean by narrow it again is narrow not its...

content because it hasn't changed that that broadness still is there that it's an economic roundtable there are many roundtables within the broader like it's there are so many tables there's so many tables they're gonna need a ballroom for all the tables.

That's right.

They're going to need a special mar-a-lago-style

approach to this all.

So they haven't changed.

They haven't taken tax off the agenda.

That's not true.

They have just lowered expectations about whether there's going to be, for instance, some grand bargain, some grand communique that says, yes, we've decided to cut company tax or we've decided to

return

all of the sort of tax for the lower brackets in exchange for this.

You know, I'm just like, or we're going to have this big negative gearing reform.

That's not going to happen.

Was it ever going to happen?

I believe,

well, realistically, no, because as one very senior person in the government said to me, the idea that the ACTU and the Business Council were going to go, kumbaya, you know, we agree on this same rate and we're fine.

We have different ideas.

I'm happy to abandon my ideas about the redistribution of taxation.

I mean, some of these ideas are hard-baked in, I suppose, if I can call it this, on both sides, a bit of ideology, right?

About, well, you know, you either believe in a redistributive tax system that you tax the rich more and redistribute it to the poor.

or you believe in a more sort of hands-off system where individuals do more heavy lifting and therefore can keep more of their money too.

So less collectivisation.

See the pie, grow the pie, all of that.

But PK, the idea that a group of people will come together in a room and put all their ideas on the table, which is what the treasurer says he still wants, and the treasurer would within that three days go, yep, okay, that's what we're doing.

I mean, that was never going to happen.

Was it?

I mean, I thought originally it was called the productivity roundtable and the treasure was all about, we've got a productivity crisis, we've got to fix this.

And it was about everyone getting serious about trying to get on the same page about what that might mean and then start the work.

I mean, you're not going to come out with an announcement after a round table, are you?

No, and they won't.

There might be some smaller, lower-hanging fruit where there are some, you know, agreements that we need to advance on.

And I think, so I think you'll see some, you know, smaller surprises.

But on the big fights, the things that are actually, if it's, if it's, if we're going to be honest, the things that matter, the things that are hard to land, then I think, no.

What will happen, though, is that it will spearhead something.

And the government hopes, like, this is what I think will happen.

The debate starts.

Big ideas are put out there.

They gather ahead of steam.

particularly ones that, you know, really win over the court of public opinion, so to speak.

Like the housing concessions.

Yeah, that you get a kind of consensus.

It doesn't mean everyone agrees in the community but there is a sort of sense of inevitability that it needs to happen and I do think this actually

I'll put it out there on negative gearing even though so far only ACTU and ACOS but I think you'd call them and I'm not saying disrespectfully to them but you know both left-leaning big organizations that you would have to say would think this that you should reform negative gearing so no surprises there I haven't seen anyone surprising back at it

But for so many years now, there's been a building consensus that not just for housing supply, park that, just for fairness, you need to do something on this.

I think the government lets them ventilate it, lets people debate it,

sees if it becomes this kind of

overwhelming tsunami of we must do this, and then says, look, in another year, by the way, big timeframes, bit like the Prime minister's approach to the stage three he did I was just gonna say that that's what happened there wasn't it Jim Chalmers started pushing for the change to stage three straight away soon as that election happened was like right PM held back PM was like nah nah

but he what he did do was wait till I mean everyone you could barely apart from again the usual suspects because you're always going to have some entrenched groups that never change but what ends up happening with a consensus is they become irrelevant you know what I mean by relevant, politically so.

So, you know, who cares if the group that always was against it continues to be when the broad consensus is that something shifted?

And that's what I think he's doing here, the PM.

He is waiting for the sort of shift in the public.

in the court of public opinion.

So don't expect fast tax reform.

Wait it to keep boiling.

Think about it on the oven.

You put the eggs in.

They're not ready yet.

They're still soft.

They're simmering.

Yep, but you want hard-boiled ones and you just have to wait.

Okay, we're going to talk more about this with Paul because there's a lot of politics around this.

I mean, already the opposition are suggesting that it is just a Trojan horse.

I think Susan Lee

dismisses it as a summit to increase your taxes.

So, you know, there's a lot of pre-positioning going on, shall we say.

But Piquet, last week we did promise to bring people up to date with what happened at the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land.

This is an important, very important annual gathering for First Nations Australians to get in the same place, the same red dirt, as it turns out, with policymakers, politicians.

It was here that Anthony Albanese committed to the voice referendum those years ago, and he was there again this year.

He's been every year since he's been PM.

And he came with an economic plan in hand for First Nations Australia, focusing on long-term prosperity, support for, for instance, Indigenous-led renewable energy policies, money for mobile TAFE to train First Nations people in place and on the jobs.

And basically, his message was: forget about the culture wars and focus on jobs and economic sovereignty.

But Pikachu, what struck me was that's a message the government's been putting out for a while now, but we just had the Closing the Gap update.

And I know you talked a lot about this in the podcast through the weeks.

You know, it showed we're failing badly on incarceration rates, on new suicide rates, for instance.

And I didn't hear a plan from the government about this, but I did hear some push from the First Nations people gathered there that the government start to do something about this, basically use its muscle and its funding muscle to put pressure on the Northern Territory government.

Is that right?

Was that the feeling in the room, so to speak?

Well,

that is the feeling among that leadership, different.

Obviously, it's a very diverse leadership group, but broadly Indigenous leadership, that is what they think.

And I think the government knows that this, this, how intense this is, how serious this is.

So I do think they've clocked that.

They're not yet at the stage of using heavy-handed tactics with the Northern Territory government.

They're still going down the road of,

I suppose, carrots rather than sticks.

You know, come on, guys.

I don't see that they're getting anywhere with that.

from my observation.

So we now have a closing the gap agenda, which is very broad, which includes reducing incarceration rates.

But we have policies, and I've ranted about this before, but I will, if you like this podcast,

you must, like, and this is something I feel like I have covered for long enough to understand quite deeply.

If you continue on the policy trajectory that we are on,

we will have more and more Indigenous Australians locked up.

That's a fact.

Not reduced, more.

Not status quo, more.

You know, there's some some easy politics on tough on crime approaches.

It's so easy.

And actually, you know, you know why it's easy?

Because it's really horrific having your house invaded or not being safe, you not feeling safe when you go to the shops, right?

Like

absolutely correct, indisputable.

What everyone fails to get is, you know, it's that trying to sort of look in the future, this doesn't make that better.

This creates more of it at the end.

This is what people are missing.

You cannot

lock all the children up.

You have to, at some point, invest in helping them before it happens.

And guess what, Fran?

That's where the federal government needs to do more heavy lifting.

And this is the hard truth of it.

People love to go on about how it's not about money.

It is partly about money.

Not entirely, but partly about money.

You know how expensive early intervention is.

Yes, but so but so is the cost of incarceration.

I mean, I haven't got the rate right in front of me but the daily rate the yearly cost of one child in in incarceration is enormous and for that amount you could look at some of the programs that have been tried and have worked in places that have then been defunded that you know long-term health programs these are health programs intervening these problems are not unknown they are not new the solutions are not unknown the solutions are new but it seems yes it's funding I agree but it's shifting of funding from that bucket to this bucket.

It'll take time, It'll take political will and courage.

But, you know, if it doesn't happen, we're on a road to nowhere, right?

Yeah, we're on a road to nowhere.

But back to the pressure on the federal government, they're not willing to go there yet.

But they do have, they've got the armoury, they've got the toolkit.

Like they can really put pressure on all governments actually because of the partnership agreements they have, but particularly the territory, yeah.

And so, you know, I would be really fascinated to know if

Melandiri McCarthy says she has reached out to Leah Finakiaro.

I asked her this when I last spoke to her.

All of this is happening, Fran.

But, you know, the hard word, like, you know, this road you're going down will have these consequences.

We can't be in a partnership agreement because the federal government, just sorry, they have to then deliver this Closing the Gap report, Fran, saying, oh, incarceration rates went up again.

I mean, come on.

Why would you be in an agreement with another government when you know your next report card is going to get worse.

It's insane, right?

So, yeah, watch that space.

It's hard.

Shall we bring in Paul?

Let's do it.

Paul Sakal is the chief political correspondent of the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Paul, welcome to the party room.

Morning, Fran.

Morning, Patricia.

I'm sitting actually in the guest seat in the RN studio in Canberra.

So I can feel the fear.

Do you feel like the treasurer or something?

I can feel the nervous tension that many have felt on this seat before facing you guys.

That's right.

Well said.

Paul, great to have you with us.

Paul, all week, the federal government's been under pressure to explain why it hasn't joined our friends in France and Britain and Canada with that, with a pledge to recognise a Palestinian state.

And that pressure just went up like so many knots on Sunday after that massive march across the harbour bridge.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has said since then, you know, there is risk there will be no Palestine left to recognise.

And, you know, that statement is truer than ever right now with these reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing to announce perhaps as early as today, we're recording this on Thursday, his plans to fully occupy Gaza.

How do you see, you're there in Parliament House, how has the size of Sunday's march affected the government's thinking?

Well, I think it's pretty telling that a day or two after that march would shut down the Harbour Bridge, obviously an iconic building, but also a key traffic arterial that a couple of days after a massive march like that the Prime Minister didn't even go close to emphasizing the disturbance element of the protest he didn't want to lean in at all to the argument that this was you know over the top in terms of how it shut down traffic for a whole day leading into the city well that's such a silly argument I mean there is a tunnel there are trains and we do have protests on the harbour bridge sure but the New South Wales Premier Chris Minns was emphasizing for days and days very strongly that this was going to shut down the city.

I'm not questioning the motives of many of the protesters.

I accept that this is a protest that many people want to have.

My argument here is I can't close down the central artery for a city as big as Sydney, even on a short-term basis.

But even if we had a private sector.

And I think

if a year ago you had a protest like this, I don't think public opinion would have been in a position

that allowed the Prime Minister to not at all lean into the disturbance argument.

I think he probably would have said, look, it's not, protest is important, has a place in our society, but

we shouldn't be shutting down the hub breach.

But public opinion has shifted so strongly, it's becoming so difficult to make an argument that appears to favour Israel because of what we're seeing on the ground in Gaza, that the Prime Minister and his ministers effectively said that the protest

showed where the Australian mindset has gone to and that the protest exemplified the same concern that existed inside the cabinet.

I think that's a telling sign of where public opinion has got to in Australia.

Yeah, I think so too.

There's been quite a dramatic shift and I'm really kind of fascinated by that dramatic shift, to be honest, Paul, because it's worth noting that we have now gone through almost two years of the most horrendous images coming out of Gaza.

They have been horrendous for the whole two years, and yet something suddenly shifts with the starvation element.

Yeah, well, I mean, it probably speaks to the, I don't know what you guys think, but I think it's

the radical change in recent weeks, which, you know,

a pro-Pelican activist might listen to us here and think, come on, guys, this has been going on for two years.

Did you really need a couple of photos to change your mind?

We've been here all along.

And I understand that argument.

So do I.

It's a really, it's a potent argument, but yet it's true that something's changed.

So what is it, Paul?

Well, the power of images is immense.

Exactly.

Sometimes you need something that strikes you in such a way that has a powerful emotional effect.

But,

you know, for the whole two years, a year and a half now, there have been strong arguments on the Israeli side that they need to get the job done.

Hostages are still being held.

But

the length of time that this is drawn out for and the lack of clarity about what Israel's endgame is, you know, exemplified by Andrew Hastie, a very pro-Israel voice in the coalition, saying that the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to explain what his next move is because this is dragging out for too long.

Sometimes, you know, a straw can break the camel's back, and I think that's happened.

The images of those starving children were unavoidable, undeniable.

And the fact that for two months or three months now, Israel has denied food going into this place, which denies not just Hamas fighters, but women and children and innocence, is you know, it is undeniable.

And now we have Benjamin Netanyahu coming closer, Paul, to saying what his end game is, which is

to occupy Gaza.

And as Foreign Minister Penny Wong said,

if something doesn't change soon, there will be no Palestine left to recognise.

To ensure peace and stability in the Middle East is for there to be two states.

And the reason for urgency behind recognition is this.

There is a risk that there will be no Palestine left to recognise if the world does not.

I think, as we said last week, that's as much the reason for these countries now coming out because the end game for Israel is becoming clearer.

I do think it's important to maybe just caution about how widespread sentiment around this war is.

There's no doubt that on the left this has become totemic.

There is a groundswell of frustration about what we're seeing on our screens.

But if you look at polling, I think the Essential Poll is doing the best work on tracking public opinion on Gaza and Australia.

There has pretty much been no change in, it's been very steady in terms of what people think about Labor's position on Gaza and whether the government's doing enough.

It's pretty consistently showing that a majority do think that the government

has positioned itself well in terms of balancing the Israeli and Palestinian side.

And just if you think back to 20 years ago, massive, massive protests against the Howard government over the Iraq war, similar to the ones on the weekend, and then a resounding win for the Howard government.

So these issues can tap into huge amounts of emotion.

They can look very powerful, these demonstrations.

But I do think there are still questions about how big an electoral force this is.

Yeah, I think that's a good point.

Generally, people, I think that's why the Prime Minister's been doing the whole that people just want the killings to stop.

I think

that's the broad view, and

that's kind of it.

Like, just do what you can to make the killings stop.

And then people are very focused on their own material conditions and let's go to that because that's where the economic roundtables and the promise of prosperity and change and the fears of job losses and AI are now coming into fruition very much center ground in our political discourse.

The government's focus is clearly on the upcoming economic roundtable.

It seems to me a bit of expectation management going on, Paul.

You wrote a great piece of thought about, you know,

what the treasurer may have wanted, what the prime minister's wanting, and then where's the reality going to come and kick in here?

Well, I think there's been a narrative that's spread in recent weeks around this roundtable and the political management of it.

And the framework, the frame through which people are looking at it is the Howard Costello Keating Hawk

frame where the stereotype is an ambitious treasurer trying to do reform, dragging a more cautious Prime Minister towards big ideas.

So people have been suggesting around the traps that Jim Chalmers has been leading this roundtable from the moment it began and he's been held back a bit in terms of some of the ideas being put on the table by the Prime Minister.

I learnt this week that that's not quite right.

It actually was the Prime Minister's idea, the roundtable.

He first floated it in a meeting with the BCA, the Business Council of Australia, in February before the election.

So it's his idea to do the roundtable.

It gets handed over to Chalmers at the start of this term to kind of do the planning, get the policy

issues papers going, do the consultations

and do the rhetoric in public.

And I think what's happened is Chalmers has welcomed ideas, all and sundry, big ones, small ones.

He doesn't want to rule things in or out.

It was the Prime Minister who ruled out the GST, not the Treasurer at first.

That was telling.

And because of Chalmers, the gusto with which he's taken this up, because he does like to talk about ideas, he's been reading the abundance book that many others have been reading.

Been loaning it through the cabinet.

Many others have been reading it.

Ezra Klein can't believe how famous he is.

Exactly.

Anyway, yeah.

Unclear how many people have actually read it, or maybe they're just saying they're reading it.

Oh, they've read it.

They say that.

The cabinet ministers, I'm sure, have.

And because of

an edit, that's all I can say.

Keep going.

Because of the big ideas that have been put on the table around tax, it's led to quite a lot of fever pitch of speculation that the government might move move into the tax terrain to some,

you know, on wealth taxes or various other ideas that have been on the political agenda for years and have always been too hard to tackle.

And I think that's worried the Prime Minister and some of his colleagues.

They don't plan to do those things, at least not in the short run.

And so this week in Parliament, there have been some quiet conversations with reporters and members of the cabinet, organised conversations, where the government has tried to put some guardrails around the expectations of this.

Because I think it's becoming clear that they're worried that people are imbuing too much into the significance of this.

Yeah, I must say that I think you're right.

Obviously,

clearly this has really got the PM style.

Let's have a summit early on.

This is what he likes to do.

So I think that's absolutely on the money.

And he's been getting his cabinet ministers doing the work.

I read there've been something like 43 round tables have been held by different cabinet ministers in the run-up to this.

So they are busy, busy out there talking to people.

The hard bit comes when you try to turn that talk into, well, one, agreement and cooperation, but two, policy.

And that takes time.

And Piquet talked earlier about getting the basic the social license for that, getting people on board behind an idea and how that's needed.

But we did see the AI debate get a shove this week.

The Productivity Commission was asked by the Treasurer to give them reports on, I think it was five areas.

One of them was on AI and the Commissioner Danielle Wood handed that over this week and it was very

positive talking up the impact of productivity and the economy more broadly if we get the AI regulation and boundaries right, if we don't over-regulate it basically.

Intelligence is a game changer for our economy.

It has the potential to support all of our major economic goals, making our economy more productive, stronger, lifting living standards over time.

And every single part of our lives will be impacted over time by artificial intelligence.

And so it's very welcome that the PC has put this thought into this work released overnight.

I'm optimistic that AI can be a force for good,

but I'm also realistic about the risks.

It is not beyond us, in my view, to maximise the opportunities of AI while we manage the risks the best that that we can do.

Boy, did this kick off some very ferocious debate very quickly, particularly within our creative industries and our media industries, right?

Yeah, well, one of the elements in this report from the Productivity Commission was this suggestion that we should amend Australian copyright law to allow large language models, so ChatGPT and others, to effectively use news stories and music and art and all the rest of it to train their models.

And the idea being that there's huge upside in not just the existing models, but new AI

systems requiring content to then turn into profitable products that grow productivity and

create profit for Australian tech firms.

This has a downside consequence, of course, of potentially using the work of journalists without paying for it or at least it not being clear how much they would pay for it.

So, our bosses at my bosses at Channel 9 and News Corp and even ABC's managing director on Tuesday met with the Communications Minister and the Assistant Treasurer Daniel Molino.

They're largely meeting to talk about the news bargaining incentive, which is separate and focused on paying

meta and Google are paying for news.

But a separate issue, which is growing in prominence in the mind of these news executives, is AI.

And separate and

related to the copyright issue is this other huge problem around click-through rates.

And what I mean by that is, is that when people now go into Google and search what's Anthony Albanese done today, they get an AI summary and they may not need to click into a news article.

And more and more, I think people aren't clicking through.

I mean, I noticed that even with myself, more and more you're just not doing it.

And yet AI is gathering the material from news reports like yours, isn't it?

Yeah, totally.

And on this question of where the government goes next on regulation, I think there's also been a shift in rhetoric over about the past year.

I think, Patricia, you had Ed Husick on your show yesterday, or sorry, on Wednesday, is that right?

I did.

Did he confirm that he supported a new act to regulate AI?

Because this was his idea about a year ago when he was still a minister.

Yeah, he certainly did, and I thought it was quite a significant intervention, in fact.

I mean, people have been speaking to Ed Husick a lot about his position on Gaza and the Middle East, and that's clearly something he's really championed, even when he was minister, let's be honest.

But this is his baby right and he was he was moved out of the industry at science portfolio for factional reasons but he's very passionate about an AI act he's done all the consultations and so I suppose if you look at where we line up, and because there's a lot of positioning going on here, he was pretty scathing of the Productivity Commission's approach.

He thinks we're going to, he described it as a whack-a-mole approach if we don't do an AI act.

Now, Jim Chalmers, he's very smart about the way he responds to critique of AI.

He's very finessed, isn't he?

Oh, mate, he is so good at the way he doesn't diss his colleagues, respects their views, but doesn't kind of entertain their views in some ways.

What do you reckon, Paul?

Like, because he was like, yes, yes, my colleagues have done a lot of work on this when he was asked.

But really, the AI Act idea, that's also the union movement's view.

So there is a real thing going on in the government, isn't there?

There's not a lot of love loss between Ed Husick and Jim Chalmers.

So that's in...

And they're not BFFs for anything.

They're not BFFs.

So

the backstory to this is when Husick was,

you two will know this, but just to listeners, the backstory of this is when Ed Husick was the minister in charge of innovation and science in the first term, when the debate flared up around chat GPT, you'll recall that there was huge international concern about these crazy new bots that are doing all these new sorts of things and how do we get on top of this.

AI harms were being talked about a lot.

And the vibe internationally at that point was around regulation and what we can do quickly to make sure that there are, and this was a very cliched term, guardrails around AI.

And Ed Husick leant into that strongly at the time and he floated the idea of an AI act.

That was his preference and the government would pursue it.

You get to the election, he's dumped as the minister, the new minister is Tim Ayres.

And since then, globally, there has been a bit of a shift in thinking on AI.

There is now more contemplation of the unbelievable potential benefits, transformative benefits it could have for the economy, and less emphasis being placed on so-called harms.

I was a bit persuaded when the commissioner who brought this forward within the Productive Commission spoke yesterday on RM Breakfast, I think, to Sally,

suggesting that the problem with an act is you write it all down, it's a big, unwieldy thing, and then things change.

I mean, in this technology, things are changing at the rate of, well, not even knots.

I mean sure but that is now I I'm just to defend Ed Husick that is not the what the version he's calling for though like he's not calling for this unwieldy huge act that that goes into detail it is a guardrail vibe right isn't it Paul this is the thing where but then a lot of the guardrails we have already which is what the Commission was suggesting with the copyright laws or ASIC or you know all these kind of laws Danielle Wood the Productivity Commission head also believes we should use existing regulation there's people mind you it's not working now.

People's work is getting swiped all over the place.

Exactly.

We need to find a way through that issue.

There are some members of the cabinet who are very sceptical about the idea of a AI Act.

They believe it would put Australia, it would push Australia in the wrong direction on this issue.

They argue that it's...

The proponents of an act are not really clear about the harms they are trying to regulate against and not clear about how a small jurisdiction like Australia can

actually where it has sovereignty to regulate in this space.

I mean if we're talking about specific items like using deepfakes to create explicit images of people in an Australian workplace, that's a

clear use case that can be put into criminal law.

And this is where the people who are more positive about AI say that we can use other mechanisms to regulate obvious harms, but we should not have an act that sends the wrong signal about what Australia would like to do with AI.

And, you know, the Productivity Commissioner, its report said, let's put a figure on it for people, AI changes could contribute more than $116 billion toward economic growth over the next decade.

I just put that there.

Exactly.

And at a time when the Treasurer's focus on productivity and growth,

his language suggests that he is worried about what an AI act would give effect to in terms of people's views on

how Australia should embrace AI.

It would send the wrong signal to tech firms, send the wrong signal to government agencies about how to utilise technology.

So it looks like the government's moving in a direction away from where HUSIC wants it to go.

I agree.

But also, we're recording this on a Thursday, we're seeing the fault lines on this issue also in the coalition.

This is mirrored in the coalition.

Actually, James Patterson saying there is a reasonable argument that intellectual property used in artificial intelligence model training should be compensated, but really warning much stronger than his colleagues, I think, that we don't want to miss out on AI.

So basically the more let-it-riep approach, more

was very, very strong on this.

I had, and I reckon, Paul, you wouldn't have missed this either because you were clearly watching the best show ever.

Bridget Mackenzie, leader of the Nationals and the Senate, saying that she was very alarmed and worried about AI and what it's going to do, and we shouldn't be obsessed with the budget bottom lines and, you know, it shouldn't all be about business.

She agrees with Husick.

Like, there is...

There is stuff going on in the coalition, too, isn't there?

Well, I wonder if the Nationals' kind of old agrarian socialist roots would make them less disposed to speak positively about this transformational technology that might steal jobs of working class people.

I imagine, you know, Peter Dutton did not share the views of some of his metropolitan, liberal, more laissez-faire colleagues on issues around tech.

He's a kind of censorship-focused

community protection-minded politician.

With Dutton gone, I think there's more room for your productivity, laissez-faire-minded Andrew Braggs and James Pattersons to speak more freely about needing to embrace tech.

And I imagine that they would view the Nationals brag, and Patterson would view the Nationals as kind of,

you know, backward on issues like this.

And yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I had Jason Vilinsky on, you know, just on a panel right after, you know, former liberal moderate sort of dude.

For anyone who doesn't know who he is, on the panel right after Bridget McKenzie, and boy, oh, boy, was he scathing.

He was like, that's dangerous, what she just said.

Call it dangerous.

I was like, whoa, here we go.

We can tell where everyone sits on this amazing spectrum.

Look, Paul, I am certain that you're so good AI is not going to take your job.

So you're fine for at least the next six months.

That's as long as I can guarantee anything, though.

I think someone in my office

some months ago, I hope I don't get this wrong and someone fact checks me in my own office, but I think someone asked ChatGPT to write a column in the voice of my former and far better colleague, David Crowe, and it did a pretty good job.

So maybe it's not far away from replacing us.

Oh come on, no one could replace Crowe.

Come on.

Sorry Paul.

Maybe over time Paddy.

No.

Well not

for us.

Not for us.

So is Crowe in Europe.

He's doing an amazing job and we miss him.

All right.

See you Paul.

See you Paul.

Thanks.

Questions without notice.

Are there any questions?

Members on my route.

Prime Minister has the call.

Thanks very much Mr Speaker.

Well then I give the call to the Honourable the Leader of the Opposition.

Thank you Mr Speaker.

My question is to the Prime Minister.

The bells are ringing and that means it's time for question time and this week's question comes from Matt in Sydney.

Hi team, this is Matt from Sydney and I'm interested in asking what role do you think AI is now playing in political journalism?

How it's reported, how politicians engage with journalists and do you have any hot tips about how you use it in your own work?

Thanks.

Bye.

Really interesting question, Matt.

Look, I'll start with the role it's playing in political journalism.

Every news organisation is using AI differently.

Here at the ABC,

as you would hope and expect, we are very, very cautious.

We have very strong rules, actually, that we're not to go on and use ChatGPT to do our work.

Like we're not allowed to.

It would be breaching the rules, which I'm personally very happy with.

And I'll tell you why.

I don't engage much with in my own work with chat GPT and there's a reason for that.

I did experiment with it, not to do my work because I abide by rules, but also just more like to understand it, right?

Like, how can you not understand a technology and live on earth when the world's changing around you?

And there was one day where I had Penny Wong on, and I said to ChatGPT with my producer, Josh, let's make ChatGPT construct an interview with Penny Wong and see what sort of questions it comes up with.

Now, I had my own questions, don't like, I'm not trying to, but like, it wasn't about that, it was more interested to see, is it smart enough.

I thought it was the most banal interview I had ever seen.

It had pulled out kind of the most, I can't tell you, like I reckon, I don't know, like a grade six kid could come up with better, you know, it had just, it was so bad.

Now, that's at this stage.

I know the technology is changing fast, but in terms of political journalism, you, you know, just say the rules did allow it.

You would never want to rely on it for your, for your, you know, questions or your construction of intros or anything like that.

However, you ask about politicians and stuff,

they are absolutely using AI.

I know many of them have told me that, just for ideas, just for they are, it's happening in real time.

And so,

you know, I do think different people are using it to different extents.

But right now, and it might sound really arrogant, I reckon I'm still better than AI, friend.

Well, I reckon that's what you get paid to be to be better than AI.

So that's good.

Look, interestingly, apparently the ABC did do a bit of a study on ChatGPT within the corporation and found out it was being widely used on our computers.

So that tells us something.

But I think you're right, PK.

We've got rules around it, guardrails.

People aren't using it to write their interviews.

But imagine you're a producer of a daily radio show and you've got to turn out two stories.

and one of them is about a book that you don't have time to read the whole book and you ask ChatGPT to tell me, synthesize the main points of this new book, and that becomes your backgrounder for the interview that you then write.

Is there anything wrong with that?

Is that just a labor saving device so you can prep, that producer can prep three stories in that day rather than one?

Yeah, that's a good point.

In fact, David Spears was mentioning that yesterday on the pod that I do with him on Wednesday on politics now, because he said to me, you know, if you have lots of reports,

you know, and you want the whole Productivity Commission, it just came out this week, report, and you want to put it through, what are its main almost contentious

points?

So it has to be pretty smart to understand the concept of the most contentious points or whatever, that it's not just banal summaries, but that you're getting some of the tension and stuff like that.

Yeah, that's right.

But that's when your journalism experience comes into play and you can read more widely than just the chat GPT report and see what is being picked out and work out the tensions for yourself.

And that's what you bring to bear on the interview.

But all I'm saying it is being used widely and is a labor-saving device that in some tasks is useful.

Yeah, and look, you know, we know it's happening in schools.

My partner's a teacher.

She says it's happening a lot with students and sometimes in good ways and sometimes in bad ways.

I've realised I've made a monster because my daughter said to me the other day, I just don't think any of its ideas are very good, so I can't use it anymore.

And I thought, oh my God, that's something I'd say.

Anyway, so, you know, maybe it'll get smarter and then it'll write better essays and better columns.

but at this stage it's just not there yeah well if it's allowed to take everybody's creative ideas and use them it will get smarter because it's about training

exactly

that's it from us send your questions in because we love getting them we're particularly fond of voice notes which you can email to the party room at abc.net.au and you can follow politics now on the ABC listen app so you never miss an episode.

That's it for the party room this week.

David Spears will be back in your podcast feed on Saturday.

Don't forget for insiders on background speaking to the eSafety Commissioner, Julia Inman-Grant, who is right across all of these debates and legislation, is a real sort of powerful force in this field for Australia.

See you, Fran.

See you, Piquet.