August 2025

The Productivity Commission is floating AI copyright exemptions – with worrying implications for Australian authors and publishers

by Alice Grundy in The Conversation

In an interim report released overnight, Harnessing data and digital technology, the Productivity Commission has floated a text and data mining exception for the Australian Copyright Act. This would make it legal to train artificial intelligence large language models, such as ChatGPT, on copyrighted Australian work. AI training would be added to the list of

July 2025

June 2025

Gender parity closer after federal election but “sufficiently assertive” Liberal women are still outnumbered two to one

by Skye Predavec and Bill Browne

Now that the dust has settled on the 2025 federal election, what does it mean for the representation of women in Australian parliaments? In short, there has been a significant improvement at the national level. When we last wrote on this topic, the Australian Senate was majority female but only 40% of House of Representatives

May 2025

Why the election’s closest seat went unnoticed: Too close to Calwell

by Rod Campbell and Skye Predavec

Updated 30/05/2025 The outer-Melbourne electorate of Calwell was named “Australia’s most unpredictable seat” by The Age after the election and was – aside from those going to a recount – the last seat to be called. The AEC labelled the counting process for the seat “likely the most complex in Australia’s history”. The count is

April 2025

Melbourne houses

The four things (mostly) missing from the major parties housing platforms

by Jack Thrower

The housing crisis continues to grip Australia and it’s a central part of this election campaign. Unfortunately, while both major parties have made housing policies key parts of their election platforms their policies mostly tinker around the edges and fail in four key ways. They do not address Australia’s distortionary, expensive, and regressive tax concessions

An Australian news agency advertises a variety of the country's newspapers in 2011.

Australia’s paper tigers – the state of news competition

by Skye Predavec

A competitive and diverse news industry is key to a democratic society, keeping institutions accountable and transparent. But the ability of Australia’s Fourth Estate to perform that role is increasingly in doubt. Australia was once labelled the “land of the newspaper” by British visitors, with a flourishing and diverse news industry, but for over a

General Enquiries

Emily Bird Office Manager

02 6130 0530

mail@australiainstitute.org.au

Media Enquiries

Glenn Connley Senior Media Advisor

0457 974 636

glenn.connley@australiainstitute.org.au

RSS Feed

All news