Australia just outlined more ‘AI safety’ priorities, but is the plan actually coherent?

This week, Australian government ministers announced artificial intelligence safety priorities—privacy law reforms, automated decision-making rules, and a digital duty of care for AI services. The Conversation reports, though, that these are mostly recycled initiatives languishing for years, lacking the coherence to tie them together and representing a move away from the government's earlier push for mandatory high-risk AI safeguards. The government scrapped those guardrails after two and a half years of consultation, and dissolved its AI expert body in February with no explanation. The new AI Safety Institute got only twenty-nine point nine million dollars over four years—well short of what experts say is needed. Without better funding, clearer agency coordination, and accountability mechanisms, Australia will likely repeat its pattern of drift and delay on AI policy.

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