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A new ALP ginger group pushing for stronger worker protections in the face of artificial intelligence will launch at this weekend’s NSW Labor conference, sharpening party divisions over how far the Albanese government should accommodate the technology sector.
Senator Tony Sheldon, a senior right-faction figure and former Transport Workers’ Union national secretary, will use the FAIR AI platform to argue workers must have a stronger voice in shaping how technology is deployed in workplaces, including transport, logistics, gig-economy platforms and creative industries.
The group underscores a widening fault line inside Labor over balancing innovation policy with industrial protections, as Australia seeks to attract large-scale AI infrastructure investment while managing concerns over jobs, copyright and regulation.
Sheldon said governments could not ignore the technology, but must actively shape its impact.
“A lot of governments want to embrace it because they feel they have to embrace it, because if you don’t, it’s going to run over the top of you,” he said. “We can’t leave the space to everybody else, it’s here.”
He said regulation would need to evolve across sectors rather than rely on a single law.
“There’s no overarching law that does that … we have to move, we can build guidelines,” he said.
Former treasurer Joe Hockey last month warned Australia could face 15 per cent unemployment within five years, saying the nation was “sleep-walking into the future”. Others have warned against bold claims about AI and jobs, arguing much of the rhetoric is speculative and driven by tech companies promoting their products.
The internal debate within Labor is playing out alongside negotiations between the federal government and major technology companies including Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft and Google over multibillion-dollar data centre investments in Australia.
In exchange, the companies are seeking easier access to Australian content for AI training, alongside greater certainty over tax settings and more flexible energy, water and planning regulation.
Those discussions have intensified political tensions after Assistant Minister for Technology Andrew Charlton said Australia’s copyright framework was “not working” in the AI era and flagged possible reform to attract investment. His remarks have alarmed sections of the creative industries, which say the government had previously indicated it would not allow unrestricted scraping of copyrighted material.
Labor MP Ed Husic, who argued for AI guardrails and consideration of a major new act as industry minister, has warned against an open-armed embrace of data centres, saying the political edges were ready to pounce.
“Increasingly, I’m hearing from people from all walks of life concerned about the pace of AI growth,” he told the ABC. “Most local communities have no say about construction of these centres, leaving residents fuming.”
Industry Minister Tim Ayres, who replaced Husic and has favoured a lighter touch, hit out at critics of the government’s position this week, saying it was in Australia’s national interest to have Australian sovereign capability in technology, particularly where there was competitive advantage.
“It is not this government’s view that we should just be a cork bobbing on the ocean of other people’s technology and a customer at the long end of technology supply chains, that is not in our interest,” he said.
Sheldon’s FAIR AI initiative, which he plans to expand into a national movement at the federal Labor conference in Adelaide later this month, is expected to intensify debate within the party, framing AI as an industrial relations issue requiring stronger workplace protections and limits on algorithmic decision-making.
The Financial Sector Union is expected to raise concerns this weekend over a dispute involving Commonwealth Bank and AI-assisted workplace decision-making, while the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association will highlight new NSW laws giving unions greater visibility over workplace algorithms.
Hayley French said the FAIR AI group emerged from ALP’s Ermington branch discussions and engagement with Western Sydney Tech Innovators about AI’s opportunities and risks.
“As those conversations evolved, they kept coming back to the question: how do we ensure the people whose work, communities and daily lives will be transformed by AI have a genuine voice in the decisions that guide its development?” she said.
“We saw an opportunity to create a place within Labor where workers, communities, researchers, unions and industry could come together to shape AI’s future.”
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Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect via email.From our partners
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