Australian political and international news updates

Welcome to our rolling live coverage of all the latest news and developments around Australia and the world this Tuesday, September 15.

Here is what’s making news today.

Science, Tech and the Digital Economy Assistant Minister Andrew Charlton says One Nation’s proposal for negative net overseas migration has not been costed or thought through.

On Monday, One Nation announced it wants to slash 750,000 temporary visa holders over three years to push the country into net-negative migration, but has not presented modelling on what the cost to the economy would be.

“If it’s going to hit the bottom line for a couple of months, but I think then it will improve, people’s quality of life will improve. Isn’t that what it’s about?” Hanson told News24 on Tuesday.

Charlton told News24 on Tuesday that One Nation and the Liberal Party had not costed their immigration policies.

“What we saw from One Nation is a plan that is uncosted,” Charlton said.

Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy Andrew Charlton says Australia must capture the economic opportunity to host data centres but must not trade it for weakened copyright laws.

Speaking on News24, Charlton said the government was “not compromising on what the prime minister has said are our principles on copyright”.

Earlier on Tuesday, OpenAI senior vice president Ann O’Leary said in an interview with The Australian that relaxed copyright laws could open the door to more advanced AI infrastructure being built domestically.

“Our copyright principles are that we want to support Australian artists, we want to give them control over their work,” Charlton said.

Member for Wentworth Allegra Spender says that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s comments towards Indigenous Australians and the prime minister’s mother are appalling.

“It’s Pauline’s normal approach, really,” Spender told Afternoon Briefing.

Hanson called Indigenous Australians the “most primitive race on Earth” and made remarks about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s mother living in public housing, in separate podcast appearances.

“I think this behaviour is what people hate about politics,” Spender said.

“We’re creating all this anger and resentment and division in the community, which is struggling, frankly, right now to stay connected and stay respectful, and then people in this place [parliament] behave like that … it’s not good enough.”

Community Action MP Allegra Spender says she is disappointed in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s response to her question about his government’s transparency record, comparing him to former prime minister Scott Morrison.

Earlier on Tuesday in question time, Spender asked the prime minister about whether he would release his diary publicly, to which he responded that he was very accessible, that, compared to other world leaders, he took questions from journalists regularly, and that his diary was frequently published under freedom of information laws.

“It’s around 72 per cent of Australians who think that politicians put themselves or vested interests before them,” Spender told Afternoon Briefing.

“That’s Australians speaking, and so for the prime minister to say, ‘Well, I’m a success, all these other countries are much less accessible than I am.’

Community Strong MP Allegra Spender says the ultimatum posed by OpenAI to the government, in which it called for Australia to loosen copyright laws or lose out on investment from the company, is a negotiating strategy.

“I think that as a country, we should not be afraid to enter that negotiation and to push back pretty actively,” Spender told Afternoon Briefing.

“I think there is an opportunity to work with our creatives and those companies to work together to work on outcomes that can work to protect Australian creatives who we all care about, but also make Australia an attractive destination for AI investment,” Spender said.

Spender also said that Australia should take the risks of AI seriously, including by investing more in the AI Safety Institute.

“If the government was serious about managing some of the AI security and some of these catastrophic risks, it wouldn’t be funding the AI Safety Institute at around $30 million for four years,” she said.

“We spend more on black spots on roads.

“This is a serious issue, and AI is changing the world, changing the business world, and I am a big supporter of the productivity gains, but we need to take the risks seriously and that means starting by stepping up in terms of that investment in the AI Safety Institute.”

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg says he doesn’t know how Australia’s copyright laws could be loosened to suit artificial intelligence organisations.

Earlier on Tuesday, in an interview with The Australian, OpenAI senior vice president Ann O’Leary said the company wouldn’t invest in Australia unless it changed its copyright laws.

“I’m not sure how we could loosen these laws in a way that would suit the artificial intelligence organisations, because we have to maintain the idea that the laws that exist on the books apply across the board,” Bragg told Afternoon Briefing.

“I’m yet to see a compromise that could work.

“I make the general point that what we can control is how competitive our jurisdiction is in terms of the taxation, in terms of the regulation, in terms of the energy.”

Liberal senator Andrew Bragg says US President Donald Trump has a point about not wanting to slow down artificial intelligence development, despite calls from AI company bosses to do just that.

Earlier today, Trump called into a conference where Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang was speaking. On loudspeaker, Trump dismissed AI fears as a hoax.

“I think on this front if we pull back on the accelerator, I’m not sure what that means for the Western world because we generally have been well served by having a lot of this technology led by the West,” Bragg told Afternoon Briefing.

“I’m not sure what we can do here because if we pull back on this technology, it doesn’t mean that the other countries will stop what they’re doing.

“I mean, they will continue to develop this,” Bragg said. “So, I just don’t think we can do much with it, frankly.”

Australia’s Indigenous social justice commissioner has condemned One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s comments labelling First Nations’ people “the most primitive race on earth”.

“This country prides itself on shared values of fairness, dignity and respect. The senator’s comments utterly contradict these values and have no place in the national conversation,” Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Katie Kiss said.

“Such commentary is a tactic to divide us at a time when we need to come together. In fact, people have come together over the past 24 hours, across the political spectrum, to criticise the senator’s comments. For that, I am heartened. But the harm caused should not be underestimated.”

Earlier today Hanson offered her “regret” if people were offended by her comments, but qualified the statement, saying: “If we go back to the time of settlement in Australia, they were primitive compared to the settlers that came out here from England … I’m not talking those terms now.”

Resources Minister Madeleine King has called Hanson’s qualified apology to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese over remarks she made about his mother “pathetic”.

“Sorry if I caused offence is not really an apology,” King told Afternoon Briefing.

Earlier this year, Hanson said on the Karl Stefanovic podcast that Albanese’s mother had lived in the same housing commission she was born in for 65 years, and that those houses should “not be there for people to live in them for 30, 40 [years]”.

She said it was “not on” for people like the prime minister’s mother, Maryanne Albanese, to live in public housing for decades.

On Sunday, Albanese defended his mother and said he was stunned to hear Hanson’s criticism more than 20 years after his mother had died.

Resources Minister Madeleine King says it would be challenging to manufacture cars on Australian soil again, after former prime minister Kevin Rudd floated the idea in a Nation Press Club address.

A car manufactured in Australia would need to be “a highly specialised type of vehicle for an extraordinarily niche market,” King said on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

“It’s hard to get back into car manufacturing, and that’s why we’re making sure we preserve a lot of the capacities we have now, like in steel making and the smelting capacity as well in copper, for instance.

“We do make certain vehicles, the Bushmasters and Bendigo, an iconic defence-based vehicle, which is really important.

“Setting up an EV production line is going to be a challenge,” King said.

“We do need sovereign capacity. We can’t do everything.”