Australia's creative and media sectors unite at Parliament House to make the case for licensing in the age of AI

Australia's creative and media sectors today brought their case directly to Parliament, hosting Powering Intelligence: Media, Culture and the Future of Innovation at Australian Parliament House in Canberra.

The event, hosted by the Australian media and creative sector and supported by ARIA and PPCA, APRA AMCOS, Australian Publishers Association, Australia New Zealand Screen Association, AWG Collecting Society, Copyright Agency, Free TV Australia, The Guardian Australia and News Corp Australia, brought together parliamentarians, senior public servants, policy advisers and industry leaders for a panel discussion on the policy choices facing Australia on AI and copyright.

The panel was moderated by Claire Harvey, Editorial Director of The Australian, and featured Jonathan Dworkin (Executive Vice President, Digital Business Development, Universal Music Group), Rebecca Costello (Managing Director of The Guardian, Australia and New Zealand), Charlie Chan (award-winning composer, pianist and creative technologist) and Prof Edward Santow (Industry Professor and Director, Policy & Governance, Human Technology Institute, UTS). Attorney-General the Hon Michelle Rowland MP and Senator the Hon Sarah Henderson delivered opening remarks.

The discussion took place against the backdrop of significant international momentum. Earlier this month, the United Kingdom reversed its position on a broad text and data mining exception. Australia's own decision in 2025 not to introduce a TDM exception confirmed that commercial AI developers must obtain permission to use copyrighted material for training.

The Attorney General, the Hon Michelle Rowland MP, said: “The Government has been clear for some time that there are no plans to weaken copyright protections when it comes to AI. This includes explicitly ruling out a Text and Data Mining exception, which I was extremely proud to announce last year.”

Pointing to UMG's partnerships with Udio, Klay, Spotify, Nvidia and others as evidence of the market working at scale, Jonathan Dworkin said: “We didn't defeat piracy by turning off the internet. Ultimately, we prevailed because streamers built a better product than piracy. That's what we hope to do with AI.”

Rebecca Costello said: “We invest everything in journalism. When that work is taken and used without compensation, the impact is fewer journalists, fewer newsrooms and less public interest journalism. No market operates when you can take something for free and then charge for it. Licensing is happening and it has to, because the alternative is the erosion of the journalism that feeds these models in the first place.”

Charlie Chan said: “We actually have the technology we need to license things properly, to protect content and find where everything is. We cannot fall into a homogenised experience of all of our creativity. Australia has something truly unique – a thousand generations of First Nations culture – and we have a responsibility to protect it.”

Prof Edward Santow said: “We need government to play the role of government: to ensure there is a fair market so that organisations can participate fairly, and to protect the population. Australians have among the lowest levels of trust in the world when it comes to AI, not because we are scared of technology – the opposite, we tend to be among the earliest adopters – but because people can see when technology goes wrong.”

Australia's creative sector contributes $67 billion to the national economy according to Creative Australia. Licensing arrangements for AI training already exist across journalism, music, publishing and visual media.

Globally, major AI companies are signing agreements across industries, with recent deals including Google with AAP, OpenAI with The Guardian and News Corp, Merlin with Udio, and Canva with Getty Images. Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music have also signed agreements with large AI platforms. The sector's message to policymakers is clear: licensing works, it is already happening, and Australia's copyright framework should be allowed to do its job.

For more information, please contact: 

Andrew Knowles

M: 0449 510 357

E: andrew@skmediagroup.com.au