The prime minister is facing growing discontent within his own electorate as creatives push back against the federal government’s proposal to allow AI companies to scrape everything Australians create online. Anthony Albanese’s seat of Grayndler in Sydney’s inner west is home to more than 3,000 cultural and creative businesses, and 10% of its workers are employed in cultural and creative fields – compared with 4.2% nationally. He has held it on a safe margin for three decades, and has spoken of its high representation of live music, theatre and artist spaces with pride.
But now, as Labor considers giving AI companies unrestricted access to Australian creatives’ works by default as it pursues a compromise with US tech giants, locals are reacting with dismay. Labor is mulling over the copyright changes in a suite of reforms surrounding AI, including datacentres, energy and the economy. While Albanese has promised “the strongest possible protection”, warning it would be “theft” if creatives weren’t paid for their work, creative industries are alarmed that AI companies have requested a weakening of copyright law to train their models using Australian material.
Some AI companies have said making licensing agreements under existing copyright law would be too difficult, while Anthropic suggested an “opt-out” model which would allow it to scrape content unless a rightholder objected, prompting warnings from Coalition senators and the recording industry that this could amount to an acquisition of property by the government. The federal government’s draft laws are expected by the end of the year, with consideration in parliament due in 2027. Pete Strong is a screenprinter and Greens councillor for Bayside.
His business is based in Grayndler, with his solar-powered wheelie bin sound systems a fixture around the inner west. He said AI could be “good for humanity” but is now an “extraction industry mining for profit for the few”. It’s hard enough being a starving artist these days without having all your work taken and used in these nefarious ways.” ng curated a show called “overthrow the algorithm”.
He has also been a vocal critic of a proposed datacentre at Cooks Cove. For the inner west designer and artist Lu Campbell-Smith, AI has been useful in her practice. But she said having to opt out was “outrageous”.
Albanese’s face as a much younger man is plastered on to cans of Albo Pale Ale at Willie the Boatman brewery in St Peters. For the past few elections, he has won on first preferences alone. But at the next federal election, he will be challenged by 28-year-old Hannah Ferguson, the co-founder of Cheek Media, who will run as an independent.
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