Gorman MP Featured on Sky News Afternoon Agenda

TOM CONNELL, HOST: Welcome back. A third poll now has One Nation clearly out in front compared to both major parties. Joining me now political panel, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Patrick Gorman, and former Liberal MP Jason Falinski. Thank you both for your time. Patrick, I might start with you. How seriously is Labor taking, specifically the One Nation threat, that Labor people are switching from Labor to One Nation?

PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: Tom, if you're talking about the polls, obviously, we are so far away from an election that, appropriately, as the elected government of Australia, we are focused entirely on making sure that we deliver on those things that Australian people rely upon. Free TAFE. Making sure that we're investing in things like Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, where the Prime Minister opens the 137th urgent care clinic just on the weekend.

We will continue to focus on those things along with our plans when it comes to making sure, we're investing more in building houses for Australians and investing more in cheaper medicines and all those sorts of things. I think appropriately, if I and my colleagues were focused too much on polls right now, the Australian people would be rightly disappointed.

CONNELL: Sure. But we had multiple senior Labor MPs willing to talk about the fact that the Coalition's vote was tanking and One Nation voters, were - people were switching from the Coalition to One Nation. That's happening on a smaller scale with Labor, isn't it?

GORMAN: There would be no point in running political polls if you didn't see movement from poll to poll. That is entirely normal and it is for everyone who watches them, very entertaining. But at the same time, I accept the solemn and serious responsibility that rests on the shoulders of myself and my colleagues to focus on delivering for the Australian people.

That is what we will continue to do. That is what your viewers would expect us to do. I think you get to that point where if you've only got politicians focused on their self-interest rather than the national interest, it brings down our whole country and we can't have that.

CONNELL: Jason, is Tony Abbott going to stiffen the spine of Liberals to fight back against One Nation?

JASON FALINKSI, FORMER LIBERAL MP: No, but Angus Taylor will. And I think that's really the important thing here, Tom. I mean, do I need to remind Patrick that TAFE is not free, that someone still has to pay for it. And also, that really what these polls show is that Australians are now in complete and full revolt against unaccountable and incompetent government. Government that they feel is not delivering for them and lied to them at the last election. And I don't think that's just a pox on Labor's house. I think that's a pox on the Teal's house as well, and probably on the Greens too.

CONNELL: But on the Coalition. You're primary in this poll down to 18. Clearly, right now voters are upset with Labor. They go to One Nation. That's pretty stark, isn't it?

FALINSKI: Yeah. We've got a lot of work to do, Tom, and I think that it's probably fair to say that Australians haven't been hearing enough about us, about our future vision. Angus has only really had a proper go at the job for the last month or so and he's got a lot of work ahead of him and he'd be the first person to say that.

CONNELL: We've had a warning, Pat, from Anthropic. This is one of the world's leading AI companies and it said AI is moving so fast and essentially able to make itself now in a lot of ways - so keep developing itself without a lot of human interaction, that we need a global freeze or it might get out of hand. Labor seems pretty hands off here. Why are you not taking this warning seriously?

GORMAN: Of course, we should take the contributions from those in the industry seriously. But we already released our National AI Plan last year in December, which looks to a range of these risks, and it said that we wanted to cooperate -

CONNELL: A fair bit's changed since then, Pat.

GORMAN: Yeah, but the fundamentals of that plan are incredibly sound. They said we wanted to cooperate with those who are in this industry. Cooperate with other nations who are looking at how can this benefit the lives of citizens and, of course, protect Australians from the harms that we know are there.

Because we have seen, in previous waves of technology rollout, harms when it has come to things like social media. And you have seen our government be willing to take hard decisions, take on big global vested interests where necessary to keep Australians safe. We did it with social media and we have already said really openly that we are open to continuing to look at Australia's legal settings and our laws to make sure that we do deal with those risks.

CONNELL: But this is way beyond that. This is saying, 'freeze it. Talk to other governments, get together, freeze it.' Is that something the Government wants to go down the path of, or you're ignoring this?

GORMAN: I just said we always take the contributions from industry seriously. We hear that -

CONNELL: But specifically, will Labor talk to other countries? There's various - you know, he said the PM in all sorts of meetings. Is this now something on the agenda that if one of the biggest companies is saying, freeze this, don't go any further, we should do that?

GORMAN: Oh, look, I don't think there are really many meetings you can sit in now as a member of a government of a G20 nation and not be in conversations about artificial intelligence. And what we have always said is we want to mitigate the risks while grabbing the opportunities. That is the approach we take everywhere we look at AI.

I see there are huge benefits when it comes to how we make sure we have better services for the Australian people from the Commonwealth. But of course, whether different iterations of cyber security have been a focus of our government since we were elected.

CONNELL: Jason, what are your thoughts on this? The warning from within. The calls coming from inside the house.

FALINSKI: Yeah, look, I think this government has dealt itself out of the discussion around AI. I think the state governments have a primary responsibility for how that's happened as well. I don't think Anthony Albanese has showed leadership in any way, shape or form here. The one thing that I will say is, Tom, I don't think we can put this genie back in the bottle. There is no way that the Chinese government is going to agree to this. And it's interesting that every time a company gets discernibly ahead in their AI model, they call on regulation to stop any further development. So, about a year ago, ChatGPT or OpenAI made that claim. Prior to that, when Google was clearly ahead of the rest of the industry with Gemini and Deep Thinking. And now you've got Claude and Anthropic, which have clearly got the best model in the marketplace at the moment. They're now calling for government to stop any further development of it. But the problem that we face is that we are in an arms race - or the Americans are in an arms race with the Chinese and neither government is going to discourage this. And really, Australia's place in that discussion is very little because we keep taking all the innovation and all the help and all the natural advantages we have in Australia and we just kept tossing it overboard. So, you see that in data centres. You see that with the tax changes that the Government made at the Budget. You see that everywhere you go. So, you see large companies like Irene, Sharon AI, Thermo, etc. They're not listing in Australia, they're listing in the United States. And they're doing that because they just don't feel the future here in Australia is a good one for them.

CONNELL: So, as to the potential threat, do you agree it could be existential? I understand what you're saying around companies get ahead and say let's pause. I think that that cynicism is fair enough. I'm not seeking to debate that, Jason. I'll give you that one if you like. But is the threat, despite the self-interest there, is it existential? And from what you say, we just as a civilisation right now are crossing our fingers and hoping.

FALINSKI: Tom, I'm really happy to get into this with you, but I just don't think at the tail end of a 10-minute interview is the place to do it. What you're rarely referring to is artificial general intelligence, which of course anthropic is indicating, not that they're on the verge of, but they're on the verge of potentially losing control of the development of the model itself as it starts writing itself. That's different from AGI. What he's referring to is an issue where potentially it could write itself into an AGI. I don't think that most people in the sector agree with that. You heard Jeff Bezos the other day say, look, the problem that we face is you've got a whole bunch of small - very smart people like Geoffrey Hinton making claims that are clearly on the face of them - on the face of it, ludicrous. The history of technological advancement is that there is always fear about it. That there's always fear that displacement will be permanent and it will not be replaced with - it won't create any new value. But the history of it is it creates much more value than it destroys. And look, this is where we get into the Industrial Revolution and you probably want me to stop at that point, so I shall.

CONNELL: Look, I've asked for some deep thinking, if you like, some human version of it, so I'm not - you're entitled to say that. I think the interesting thing about history is it's true what you say about technology, but it doesn't mean it will always be true. It doesn't necessarily mean that. Anyway. Patrick, so what's your response out in the electorate, wine bars or otherwise, someone says, 'I'm worried about AI, it'll take my job, it could end the world.' Are you insouciant to that possibility?

GORMAN: We see technologies that rightly make people worried about the security of their employment. We have seen a range of those technologies roll out over time from automation, electrification, a whole range of things. We have seen that time and time again. What I take some great comfort in is that Jobs and Skills Australia looked at this question last year. They did a report that looked at what the labour market will do over the coming decades when it comes to artificial intelligence. And it told us a story of some areas where the labour market will change, but a range of areas where the growth that we're seeing, including in the care economy, will continue to grow.

And so, I'm always a huge optimist about Australia. I am a huge optimist about what Australia can do when it comes to artificial intelligence. We have world leading researchers here. This can turbocharge some of their work, solve some of those wicked problems that we've had in medical science and elsewhere. And of course, we do that with appropriate guardrails.

CONNELL: All right, well, look, we'll see if we're okay, I guess. we'll be fine until they get the robots perfect. All of us, maybe. Jason, Patrick, appreciate your time today. We'll talk again soon.