Albanese isn’t just betraying authors like me. He’s selling out Australia to AI colonists

September 18, 2026 — 3:00am

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At the age of 13 I was taken to an election rally at the Hobart City Hall where Gough Whitlam was to speak. It was 1974, the hall was packed and when Gough came on the emotion grew electric.

Australia in 1974 still felt like a country shaking off being a colony. We had just stopped standing up in the cinema when God Save the Queen played, portraits of the English monarch had just been taken down from government offices, and Australia had finally begun exploring a foreign policy separate of the US, having withdrawn Australian troops from the bloody and pointless quagmire of Vietnam. To wave after wave of applause, Whitlam talked of buying back the farm. It was an idea of Australia as nation independent and sovereign, proudly charting its own course. Its bedrock was the beginning of a cultural renaissance that would see a flowering of Australian film, music and literature.

Jump-cut half a century and we have as our prime minister a Benny Hill impersonator who rarely met a corporation for which he wouldn’t roll over – more Toto than Toto. In the noble tradition of online scammers, US artificial intelligence corporations have persuaded the Albanese government that their offer of investment in Australia, replete with highly dubious conditions, is only for a short time, after which it will be withdrawn.

The Albanese government – with falling poll numbers, collapsing living standards, a renascent One Nation, reduced immigration and the consequent hit on GDP numbers – seems to see in AI, or at least data centre construction and “training” centres, a sugar hit for the economy that might perk up the national accounts enough to save its political skin at the next federal election.

For, after it promised to steer a careful path and protect creators’ rights with AI, we discover that the........

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