Australian Liberal Senator Warns AI Copyright Reform Must Not Sacrifice Artists

Andrew McLachlan, a Liberal backbencher from South Australia, has publicly challenged both his own party and the Labor government over artificial intelligence, warning that artists' copyright should not be sacrificed for investment and that new datacentres must not be prioritised over environmental concerns. Guardian Australia reported his remarks as Labor works through a policy suite spanning copyright, datacentres, online safety, energy and economic benefit.

"The works [artists] create must not be sacrificed on the altar of global corporate profiteering," McLachlan said. "Artists' property rights must be respected and protected. It is unimaginable that as a nation we might value the machine over beauty created by the artist."

The timing matters. According to the report, Labor announced earlier this week that it would set up a new AI safety regulator and impose six key obligations on AI companies, after a breach of government sites by OpenAI. The wider AI package is expected to be unveiled before the end of the year, which puts McLachlan's intervention directly in front of a live legislative window rather than in the realm of general commentary.

McLachlan's intervention adds weight to mooted constitutional challenges over whether watering down copyright law would amount to an illegal acquisition of property. Fellow Coalition senators Ross Cadell and Michaelia Cash have backed concerns raised by the recording industry body ARIA that letting AI companies scrape copyrighted material could constitute an acquisition of property by the government, which the constitution requires to happen on just terms.

The industry backdrop is contested. AI companies say they need legal certainty on copyright before investing in Australia, and Anthropic has put forward an "opt out" model that would allow it to scrape music, books and journalism unless a rights holder signals an objection. Recording industry figures have warned against weakening existing law, while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has previously said it would be "theft" if creatives were not paid for their work.

On compensation, McLachlan argued arrangements must be considered individually for each artist, saying an industry-wide scheme would be difficult to make fair. "As a Liberal, I believe property rights are foundational to a healthy democracy and a strong economy," he said, adding that the state should never compulsorily acquire or trade away an individual's property rights "except in very limited circumstances and not without just compensation".

He extended the argument to infrastructure and the environment. "Datacentres must not be built at the expense of our biodiversity," he said. "We must explore ways to build sovereign AI capability in a sustainable way. I choose real forests over virtual ones." The report notes that datacentre growth in Australia is expected to increase emissions and household power costs, drawing backlash from environmental groups and some communities.

Politically, Labor and the Coalition have largely agreed on AI, with independent senator David Pocock complaining of a major-party "stitch-up" on AI regulation. This week shadow ministers Jonno Duniam and Aaron Violi said AI was "too important to become an unnecessarily partisan political contest". McLachlan's remarks show that consensus is not total.

What to watch next: whether the package due before year's end settles copyright compensation as an industry-wide scheme or on a per-artist basis as McLachlan urges, and whether the "just terms" argument moves from political pressure into an actual legal challenge. For companies deploying models and datacentres in Australia, those answers will set where compliance costs land.