Front-runner countries, led by Canada, China and the United Arab Emirates laid down their ambitious policy markers in 2017.
Australia decided to get serious in 2025 but still has not matched even Canada’s 2017 commitments in dollar value, scope of change or level of imagination.
An explicit foundation for much closer cooperation with Canada on AI was laid down in comments by Canadian PM Carney during his visit to Australia in March 2026.
Australian governments have been sleepwalking through the artificial intelligence revolution. That’s the judgement in a website editorial from two Social Cyber Institute leaders released on 29 March.
“Australia lost eight to nine years in its take-up of the AI challenge compared with front‑runner countries such as Canada, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates which set ambitious strategies as early as 2017”, said Professor Greg Austin. “Australia has only recently moved beyond pilots, frameworks and consultations.”
“Australia must now treat AI as a strategic capability that demands clear, bold and coordinated government action”, said Professor Glenn Withers AO. “That means moving beyond gentle nudges, grants and incrementalism towards more radical but practical shifts in how we govern, educate and equip the country for an AI‑enabled balance of power.”
Withers is a former President of the Academy for the Social Sciences in Australia and an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. Austin is an internationally recognised researcher on cyber and tech policy. Both are co-founders of the Social Cyber Institute. They propose four radical steps for Australia to meet the AI revolution.
- Australia should legislate for AI as a national priority. A National AI Security and Productivity Act could embed AI as a core pillar of national policy, drawing on best practice from leading EU member states, Canada, Korea and Japan.
- Australia must engineer a national AI talent dynamic, including a National AI Service Year for mid‑career professionals in the public service, defence, industry and the community sector
- Australia needs to build sovereign AI infrastructure: a public, sovereign AI cloud – a government‑backed platform offering secure, affordable access to powerful compute for high‑value projects in national security, health, education, climate and advanced manufacturing
- Australia must drive AI adoption across the whole economy. Australia cannot simply hand policy direction of its AI security interests to one specialist safety institute in one department and hope for the best; this has to be a whole‑of‑economy endeavour.
The country will need to mobilise its diplomacy to engineer much closer cooperation with the partners such as Canada, Japan, Korea and leading EU nations. Global trends – including projections that Chinese AI researchers will outnumber US‑based researchers two to one by 2028 – underline the urgency of acting now.
“We have done hard things before: breakthrough advances in wi‑fi, floating the dollar, building Medicare, and forging novel international partnerships”, Withers said. “The question is not whether artificial intelligence will reshape Australia, but how determined Australia will be to produce AI outcomes in our favour.”
About us:
The Social Cyber Institute (SCI) creates new social science insights to complement technology in the fight for a more secure cyberspace. The Institute is a non‑profit research centre.
Contact details:
Greg Austin 0450190323 [email protected]
