Unpacking Albo’s AI plan + Why Trump loves big stuff
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What headlines does The Briefing cover at the start of the episode?
Hey, Chris Spear with you.
Welcome to The Briefing. You might have caught news about Donald Trump's grand plan to change the colour of the reflecting pool at the Washington Monument and the unmitigated disaster it has become. It's just the latest major project, though, that he's undertaken in his second presidency that's skewing towards building permanent monuments to his leadership. So what does it all mean?
He can't control the war in Iran, for instance, like he wants to. Clearly he can't control all these different policy issues, but he can build stuff. And I think that's part of it. I think it gives him a dopamine hit in a soul that's very empty and hollow, and that's his drug of choice.
That chat with a former Republican congressman during Trump's first presidency is coming up in the second half of this episode. First though, let's get into the headlines with our senior producer, Alex Tai. It's Thursday, the 16th of July.
Morning, Chris. There are calls to pause all new data centre approvals until new laws are in place. Ewan Sash flagged yesterday that the Prime Minister would be making a major speech on AI regulation. In that speech, Albanese announced plans to protect Australian energy, water and copyright. The PM said that AI is a bigger challenge than social media, that he wants to attract frontier AI investment to Australia, and that he thinks Australia should shape the future of AI rather than letting it run wild.
Our power, our agency, our choice lies in embracing change and shaping it.
Yeah, so that's the PM speaking there. And of all the topics he spoke about, Alex, that you just rattled off, copyright. He ended up talking about copyright, which according to all the reports in the lead up, he was not going to talk too much about. But on that, we got more clarity. He announced the rules that he wants to set around when AI is trained on Australian copyrighted material and how the people who made the art or text or music get compensated for it.
Australian writers, musicians, artists and journalists must retain ownership and control of their work. Our laws will spell that out, plain as day. An artist's creative endeavour is their work and their property. No company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist's control.
Yeah, so there's the PM sending a pretty clear message to all those labs that were looking for carve-outs. He also wants any new AI data centres to generate more power than they use and for those data centres to pay for their own water infrastructure.
Now, AI data centers, they have been a political talking point for the last few months now with the Greens advocating for a pause on all new data center construction. And after Albanese's speech, the prominent AI expert, Professor Toby Walsh, who we've spoken to a bunch of times on the podcast, he told the AAP that it would be a good idea to pause data center approvals until those new laws around energy and water are in force.
Yeah, and I know a big part of this AI speech and stuff is that, you know, Albo's kind of looking to streamline approvals but also consolidate all the different things that different states and governments and departments are doing on this. So, yeah, to Toby's point, until we have that clarity and that real clear idea of how we're going to deal with it, it's probably a good idea for those approvals to be paused.
I'm so interested in this story, and particularly the Albanese government. Australia tried to lead the world on social media, and this under-16 social media ban, other countries have followed that. It's so interesting that Australia seems to be doing the same thing with AI.
Little Australia. Changing pace and to Queensland now where the state government has ruled out expanding knife search powers after two separate school stabbings this week. Police Minister Dan Purdy says Queensland schools are overwhelmingly safe, knocking back suggestions that principals should be able to use handheld metal detectors to search students.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What headlines does The Briefing cover at the start of the episode?
0:02–6:47
2
What are Albanese’s proposed rules for AI, data centres, energy and copyright?
6:47–14:11
3
Why are experts calling to pause new AI data‑centre approvals in Australia?
14:11–19:34
4
What recent school stabbing cases and policy responses are reported in Queensland?
19:34–25:01
Speakers
6 identifiedMore from The Briefing
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