Liberal MP Aaron Violi has accused prime minister Anthony Albanese of a “profound failure of leadership” over his decision to pursue a national artificial intelligence regulatory framework despite not personally using AI tools.
Speaking at the TechLeaders conference in Bowral on Monday, Violi, the Coalition’s AI point person, said politicians seeking to shape the technology needed to “understand it first-hand”.
Last month, Albanese promised Australian creatives “the strongest possible protection” against misuse of their work by AI models, warning it would be “theft” if writers, artists and musicians didn’t have control of their work or receive payment for its use.
“Now, the prime minister didn’t even take the 15 minutes it would have taken to download Claude or ChatGPT or any other model, run a prompt, test a new workflow, or engage with the technology he is now seeking to shape,” Violi said.
“In my opinion, this is a profound failure of leadership on the most important technological development in a generation.”
Violi said the government’s approach lacked a broader national vision for AI adoption.
“Today we still don’t have a vision of how AI will benefit our nation or how we will be kept safe from new cyber risks,” he said.
He argued the government had “begun multiple journeys on different roads, only to turn back and go the other way without reaching a destination”, pointing to its earlier consideration of an AI Act and subsequent shift towards a lighter-touch regulatory approach.
Violi said he and opposition leader Angus Taylor were regular AI users, contrasting their approach with the Prime Minister.
“I hope he doesn’t mind me saying this, Angus has even spent the time to understand the maths behind the models,” Violi told the conference. “Angus uses it a lot, and has conversations with it a lot. I use it a lot [as well].”
He said he continues to encourage his own team to use AI with safeguards in place, including not entering private or constituent information into AI tools and treating model-generated sources as requiring independent verification.
Violi said AI use by politicians and public servants needed to be accompanied by appropriate privacy, copyright and security protections, but argued that understanding the technology firsthand was critical for policymakers.
“There is a really big opportunity within Parliament, whether it’s parliamentarians, whether it’s our staffers, whether it’s the public service,” he said.
“How does the public service use AI more efficiently and make sure we’re getting access to the right models, but putting those protections in place around privacy and copyright and those kind of things?”
The Albanese government has argued that Australia cannot afford to wait for the consequences of AI to emerge before establishing rules.
In announcing the Office of AI, the government said it wanted a coordinated national framework that could capture the economic benefits of AI while protecting Australians and ensuring investment remained aligned with national interests.
Violi, however, said Australia will face consequences if it moved too cautiously.
“Remaining cautious and waiting to see what other countries do will leave Australia a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker when it comes to the rules and regulations,”
