Published on Capital Brief on 5 August 2026
A Labor senator says Australia must begin training the next generation of AI experts and engineers now if the country is to develop any sovereign capability in the technology.
Raff Ciccone, who chairs parliament’s influential intelligence and security committee, tells Capital Brief that Australia must be not only a trusted AI partner for the US but also a smart one.
He has recently returned from talks in Washington as part of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, where AI was the topic du jour for everyone from Congress to the Pentagon.
He believes it needs to be viewed through a security lens, as well as from productivity and economic perspectives.
“They are asking the same question that we are — are we serious about artificial intelligence? And the answer is obviously yes. But equally, is Australia a trusted partner? And I think that’s a fair question,” Ciccone says.
He believes Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recent move to place AI at the centre of public policy, the push towards Australian standards, greater clarity for data centre proponents and the establishment of an AI Safety Institute should prove to the Americans that Australia is both serious and trustworthy.
State governments are also starting to think in this space, as evidenced by the new Victorian cabinet unveiled yesterday, which includes Anthony Carbines as minister for AI and the digital economy.
But Ciccone wants Australia to get ahead of the next technology wave, not just ride this one.
Opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie has been a big proponent of Australia developing its own AI models. He used a major speech in June to liken the AI race to the Cold War and argue that, as with nuclear weapons, Australia either needed to have its own or build a strong relationship with an ally who does.
Ciccone says that, for now, Australia needs a “hybrid model” in which American tech companies bring in their cutting-edge models and train them on Australian data. But he says we should also be thinking longer term.
“We should also have in tandem a parallel program where we are training the next generation of IT or AI experts, academics, engineers, people who can actually ultimately build these for Australian sovereign capabilities, but in the short term, using American tech to help grow the Australian AI sovereignty,” he says.
“In the same way with AUKUS, we clearly don’t have a nuclear workforce, but we’ve got to train people who can be the next sailors or submariners or nuclear engineers and start to uplift our economy. And once we are at a point where that is possible, then obviously we can start to develop our own and be on our own feet.”
EY Oceania chief economist Cherelle Murphy backed the call for more and earlier training, saying: “It’s all very well having the technology, but you’ve got to use it, and the more effectively you use it, obviously, the more likely you are to get the benefits.”
Ciccone’s call comes as Labor think tank the Chifley Research Centre prepares to announce the members of its new Fair AI Taskforce. It will be led by NSW Senator Tony Sheldon and draw members from the parliamentary caucus, Labor’s rank and file and unions.
The centre unveiled the taskforce concept on the sidelines of the ALP conference last month. It was subsequently endorsed by members as a way to feed research and local concerns into policy development.
Chifley executive director Emma Dawson said the idea was to understand how we could “shape this industrial revolution” like previous Labor governments have tackled times of disruption.
She tells us the tech companies have been highly engaged on policy questions and that the taskforce’s role would be to put “the voices of the less powerful in that room”.
“Just about every profession is going to be touched by this in some way,” she says.
