{"id":774281,"date":"2026-07-02T12:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T12:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774281\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T12:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T12:46:14","slug":"fair-ai-platform-new-labor-group-demands-stronger-worker-protections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774281\/","title":{"rendered":"FAIR AI platform: New Labor group demands stronger worker protections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RobSave<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s NSW Labor conference, sharpening party divisions over how far the Albanese government should accommodate the technology sector.<\/p>\n

Senator Tony Sheldon, a senior right-faction figure and former Transport Workers\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\"LaborLabor senator Tony Sheldon.The Sydney Morning Herald<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Sheldon said governments could not ignore the technology, but must actively shape its impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of governments want to embrace it because they feel they have to embrace it, because if you don\u2019t, it\u2019s going to run over the top of you,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can\u2019t leave the space to everybody else, it\u2019s here.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said regulation would need to evolve across sectors rather than rely on a single law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no overarching law that does that \u2026 we have to move, we can build guidelines,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Former treasurer Joe Hockey last month warned Australia could face 15 per cent unemployment within five years, saying the nation was \u201csleep-walking into the future\u201d. 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Those discussions have intensified political tensions after Assistant Minister for Technology Andrew Charlton said Australia\u2019s copyright framework was \u201cnot working\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIncreasingly, I\u2019m hearing from people from all walks of life concerned about the pace of AI growth,\u201d he told the ABC. \u201cMost local communities have no say about construction of these centres, leaving residents fuming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Industry Minister Tim Ayres, who replaced Husic and has favoured a lighter touch, hit out at critics of the government\u2019s position this week, saying it was in Australia\u2019s national interest to have Australian sovereign capability in technology, particularly where there was competitive advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not this government\u2019s view that we should just be a cork bobbing on the ocean of other people\u2019s technology and a customer at the long end of technology supply chains, that is not in our interest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"<p>\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sheldon\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Hayley French said the FAIR AI group emerged from ALP\u2019s Ermington branch discussions and engagement with Western Sydney Tech Innovators about AI\u2019s opportunities and risks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs 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?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw an opportunity to create a place within Labor where workers, communities, researchers, unions and industry could come together to shape AI\u2019s future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"RobRob Harris<\/a> is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-774281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}