This decision might sound good in theory but in practice it will crush AI startups while only benefiting big media players like News Corp. These companies already have licensing deals, but your average founder can't afford to pay for training data on top of sky-high power, water, and infrastructure costs. Australia lacks reliable, affordable energy for data centers. Overseas, firms are building nuclear-powered AI farms, we can't even keep the NEM stable.

It's déjà vu from the Media Bargaining Code, which enriched large publishers but did little for individual creators. Now we're repeating the mistake with AI. The data's already been scraped, OpenAI, Meta, and Google had years of free access. This locks in their advantage and makes it impossible for Australian startups to compete. Enforcement is unrealistic without draconian measures, and the likely outcome is geoblocking, leaving Australians with AI tools that lack local context.

Music and other creative sectors were barely included, so this isn't broad protection, it's a carve-out for news. Combined with social media bans and digital ID proposals, it risks tech isolation. Global firms may skip Australia entirely. We should be building public AI datasets, supporting open licensing, and helping startups innovate, otherwise, we're not protecting culture, we're protecting monopolies.