Australian Public Servants Demand Ai Safeguards As Politicians Eye Staff Savings

CANBERRA — The biggest union for Australia’s federal public servants has said the government must stop blocking “sensible claims” on worker protections during artificial intelligence rollouts, as One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce told POLITICO retiring bureaucrats should be replaced with AI tools to drive productivity.

The Community and Public Sector Union is deadlocked on the issue in pay and conditions talks with the Public Service Commission, which negotiates on behalf of the federal government. The union wants more control of AI and its impacts put into workers’ hands.

Any agreement reached in the ongoing talks will lock in an AI status quo for three years for the 196,000-person public-sector workforce. Given the pace of development in AI technologies, and the growing pressure on the government to rein in public spending, there’s a lot riding on the talks.

“When I used to go to delegate’s meetings two years ago, AI might have been mentioned. Now AI and the need for strong workplace protections is mentioned at every single delegate's meeting that I go to,” CPSU national secretary Rebecca Fawcett told a parliamentary inquiry into the use of AI on Oct. 30.

“Trust is paramount here, trust is the licence to operate and innovate on AI in the public service and across the rest of the economy.

“If workers are not brought along and workers don't have strong protections, then we really do risk that trust of the workforce and we risk the trust of the public.”

A 12,000-person survey conducted by the Australian government, published Oct. 30, found that 62% of Australians trust public services, with trust levels up to 89% for certain services, such as foreign travel advisories.

Successive governments have faced condemnation for the use of automated decision-making in public services — most notably through the robodebt royal commission which condemned the “crude and cruel” scheme run out of Services Australia, and most recently via a Commonwealth Ombudsman report into the flawed use of an algorithm to determine levels of home care support for older Australians.

The CPSU is asking for a suite of enshrined rights, including commitments not to use AI for surveillance or performance management, to train and reskill displaced public servants and to guarantee human involvement in decision-making processes.

To date, the government has only offered to establish rights for training on the ethical and safe use of AI, as well as a requirement for management to consider the impacts of the technology on employment matters.

The commission’s position is that a more prescriptive clause on AI could quickly become outdated, “potentially leaving the enterprise agreements misaligned with current practice, community expectations, and the broader regulatory landscape.”

The standoff over AI comes as the federal government looks to rein in government spending, with an internal AI plan for the public sector suggesting widespread adoption could lift public‑sector gross value added by 13% by 2030.

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce told POLITICO in October that retiring public servants could be replaced by AI in order to drive productivity.

“One of the big areas you’re going to need a productivity increase in is government, and the way you’re going to do that is utilization of such things as AI, so that when people retire — not sacking them — when they retire, you to the very best of your ability try to fill in a lot of those jobs with something that that is cheaper and works 24/7,” Joyce said.

“If we don’t do that — we’re just a trillion dollars in debt, there’s no secret to this — you’re going to go broke. All that matters is not whether, it’s when.”

Former NSW digital government minister, Victor Dominello, said “there’s no doubt there will be jobs displaced, but there will be jobs created as well.”

“The public want better services, the public are using AI themselves, there's no doubt about that,” Dominello said.

“If they see that technology is used for good, and responsibly they would expect the government to meet [them] where they're at.”

Dominello is the author of "Government 3.0," and his book points out that the same technology that is bound to displace people, could be deployed to help retrain and place them back into the workforce quickly.

“There's lots of downside risks, and we're aware of that, but we should not forget the upside that if we use AI for good, we will have profound reduction in suffering and improved quality of life,” he said.

“We will see tech miracles, but we need to lean into it responsibly.”

The outcomes of the talks are likely to set a standard for state governments and the private sector and Fawcett said it would be risky not to implement the union’s claims.

Lack of trust "is really going to hinder the implementation and innovation of this technology,” she said.

“They're pretty sensible claims, they're pretty straightforward claims and they're incredibly important to the workforce in this round of bargaining.”