Why the PM’s inner‑west voters are right to worry about AI scraping

When the federal government’s proposal to allow AI companies to scrape everything Australians create online lands with a community, the reaction should be taken seriously — and nowhere is that clearer than in Grayndler. The prime minister represents an inner‑west Sydney seat that is home to more than 3,000 cultural and creative businesses and where roughly 10 per cent of workers are employed in cultural and creative fields, compared with 4.2 per cent nationally. That concentration of artists, makers and creative enterprises makes any change to copyright and content use far from an abstract policy debate. Creatives in Grayndler have described the proposal as ‘insane’. That is blunt language, but it captures a real fear: that the works which sustain livelihoods and communities could be harvested en masse and used without appropriate control, attribution or compensation. For many in the arts and cultural sector, the internet is not only a marketplace but also a place for reputational capital and cultural exchange. The idea that everything created online might be swept up as raw training data for corporate AI systems raises questions about ownership, remuneration and the long‑term viability of creative careers. This is not merely a constituency complaint. It is a policy problem with practical consequences. If artists and cultural workers feel their work can be repurposed without permission, fewer people will take the financial and creative risks that make cultural life vibrant. That would be a profound loss for cities and suburbs where local galleries, music venues and studios contribute to economic activity and community identity. The numbers in Grayndler show the extent to which such communities are embedded within the local economy; they are not an elite footnote. The federal government needs to recognise that copyright is not a technicality. It underpins how creators earn a living and how the public benefits from artistic endeavour. Regulation that allows unrestricted scraping of “everything Australians create online” treats creators as raw material, rather than rights‑holding contributors to a shared cultural commons. Any move of this scale demands careful, open consultation with those most affected — the artists, writers, musicians and cultural workers who will feel the impacts first. There is also a political cost. Grayndler has been a safe seat for the prime minister, but political safety does not exempt representatives from accountability to local concerns. When a community with such a high concentration of creative workers voices alarm, it should prompt a serious, respectful dialogue rather than a dismissal. The government can still seek sensible regulatory frameworks for AI — ones that promote innovation while protecting creators’ rights and livelihoods. Practical options exist: targeted exemptions, clearer remuneration mechanisms, and robust opt‑out or licensing systems that respect creators’ moral and economic rights. The starting point must be the voices of those who would bear the consequences. If Canberra wants to build AI policy Australians can trust, it needs to listen to places like Grayndler first and legislate carefully, not sweep the country’s creative output into a data ocean without a lifeline for the people who made it.