From CommsDay of 17 and 18 September 2026
There is a lot going on in Canberra this week, with the Senate Report on the Tripe Zero outage of September 2025, the Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation bill and the Telecommunications Amendment (Enhancing Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2025. However, both bills appear to have been delayed, and the Report has not yet been published. Becasue we are going to hear a lot more on all of these issues, we have chosen two articles on AI and copyright and on investment conditions sought by OpenAI as, collectively, the Story of the Week.
The first article is from CommsDay AI INFRA supplement on Thursday and covers the policy approach that the Government has in mind for balancing the interests of copyright holders with those of AI model developers. The second article is from the AI INFRA supplement today, and analyses the submission from OpenAI to the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence. This submission covers copyright and other requirements that the company sees as important “conditions” for investment in Australia.
Government canvasses copyright safe harbour to lure frontier AI investment
The Australian government is considering granting AI companies statutory permission to train models on unprotected online content as part of a proposed copyright framework explicitly designed to encourage frontier AI investment in Australia.
The confidential consultation paper, titled AI on Australian Terms, was tabled in parliament by independent senator David Pocock on Tuesday night. It presents two options for compensating creators while addressing AI companies’ concerns about the “long tail” of publicly available internet material for which individual licensing deals are considered impractical.
The paper says the framework should “improve legal certainty for AI companies and bring advantages of AI training home for Australians”, while upholding the government’s commitment to a “strong and vibrant Australian creative and media sector”.
SAFE HARBOUR LINKED TO LICENSING DEALS: Under the more industry-friendly Option B, an AI company would receive statutory authorisation to train on unprotected online material after reaching data access agreements with a minimum number of
rights holders for a prescribed period.
The value of those agreements would be negotiated between the parties.
Once the company met the mandatory licensing quota, it would receive statutory permission or a safe harbour covering its use of other unprotected internet material for training. No additional compensation would be payable to the creators or rights holders whose material was captured by the broader authorisation.
The document does not specify how many agreements would be required, how long they would need to remain in force or which entities would qualify towards the quota.
The proposal could give frontier model developers a route to legal certainty without requiring licences covering every work included in large training datasets. It would also concentrate direct payments among the rights holders capable of negotiating qualifying agreements.
CENTRALISED PAYMENTS ALTERNATIVE: Option A would establish a broader compensation mechanism. AI companies would receive statutory permission to access unprotected online material for training but would be required to make payments to a central body.
That body would distribute the funds among registered rights holders. An alternative version of Option A would extend licences administered by Australian collecting societies to cover “long tail” material belonging to non-members, as well as other unprotected material.
Both approaches would preserve voluntary agreements between AI companies and rights holders. Companies would not be expected to enter agreements covering material they did not use for training.
RIGHTS HOLDERS EXPECTED TO OPT OUT: Both options would place responsibility on rights holders to digitally protect online content if they did not want it used without a licence.
The paper cites mechanisms such as robots.txt as a way for rights holders to opt out of AI crawling and training. It proposes serious statutory penalties for companies that evade those protections.
Other possible safeguards include transparency obligations, compliance audits, a requirement for AI companies to use their best efforts to exclude pirated material from training datasets and protections for Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property.
The proposals expose the central trade-off facing the government: whether to require AI developers to compensate a wide pool of creators or offer a more limited licensing obligation in return for investment and domestic AI training activity.
REACTION SPLITS TECH AND GREENS: The Australian Information Industry Association called for transparent, market-led reform that supported AI investment while protecting creators. Chief executive Elizabeth Whitelock backed commercial licensing
and warned overly complex rules would increase legal risk and discourage Australian AI development.
Greens arts spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young accused AI companies of trying to “blackmail” the government into weakening copyright, saying they should pay for Australian content. She also called for a moratorium on data centres to protect artists, communities and the environment.
Grahame Lynch
OpenAI ties Australian infrastructure investment to copyright certainty
OpenAI has told a parliamentary inquiry that Australia could play a significant role in the global build-out of AI infrastructure, but argued that copyright policy, competitive energy costs and timely approvals would help determine whether investment comes here.
In its submission to the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, OpenAI also backed expectations that data centre projects pay their own energy costs, support grid reliability and deliver measurable benefits to host communities.
The submission, dated 14 September, reiterated OpenAI’s intention to become an initial customer for computing capacity under its memorandum of understanding with NEXTDC to collaborate on sovereign AI infrastructure, with an option to expand over time.
“Australia can play a significant role in the global build-out of AI infrastructure, if the right conditions – particularly copyright policies – and partnerships are in place,” OpenAI said.
INVESTMENT CONDITIONS: OpenAI supported the National AI Plan’s proposals to facilitate project development and construction, describing AI infrastructure as essential to economic beneϐits, local innovation and Australian leadership in the region.
It identified reliable and affordable energy, supply-chain readiness, timely construction and approvals, skilled workers and globally competitive project economics as prerequisites for large-scale investment.
Strong community partnerships and legal certainty were also central to attracting projects.
“Policy certainty is critical because decisions about where to undertake AI research, model training and related investment are long-term, capital-intensive decisions which are made across competing jurisdictions,” it said.
OpenAI argued that a copyright framework allowing models to learn from publicly available information, while providing opportunities for collaboration with rightsholders and maintaining protections against piracy and infringing outputs, would help attract developers and infrastructure companies.
“Clear, pro-innovation policy would put Australia in a competitive position globally, and would act as a market signal to attract investment from developers and infrastructure companies,” it said.
ENERGY AND COMMUNITY BENEFITS: OpenAI said the Australian government’s expectations for data centre and AI infrastructure developers aligned with its approach to communities surrounding its US Stargate sites.
Its common principles included ensuring projects covered their own energy costs without passing them to households.
“Projects should pay their own way on energy and should not shift their costs to households; they should support grid reliability, use water responsibly and invest in sustainability,” it said.
OpenAI also called for local jobs and training pathways, opportunities for local suppliers, and investment in the public services and infrastructure on which host communities depend.
“Commitments should be measurable, reported publicly and adapted as local needs change,” it said.
Where OpenAI takes a direct role in shaping a partner-developed site, it said its approach starts with the host community. Each Stargate site would have a locally tailored community plan developed through early engagement with residents, officials, utilities, schools, workers, businesses and community organisations.
Its Community Compact approach would translate those plans into specific commitments and accountability. OpenAI said implementation should reflect national, state and local priorities and be tailored to each project and community.
CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY: The submission also urged Australian public agencies and critical infrastructure operators to prepare for AI-enabled cyber attacks, including rehearsing responses through tabletop exercises.
OpenAI described a “narrow defender’s window”: a temporary opportunity to use AI to identify and repair longstanding vulnerabilities before attackers could exploit them at greater speed and scale.
It recommended prioritising internet-facing services, authentication, deployment systems and systems handling sensitive information, before addressing vulnerability backlogs and verifying repairs.
OpenAI said its Daybreak programme included a Trusted Access for Cyber partnership with Australia, providing vetted defenders with advanced models for authorised vulnerability discovery, malware analysis and remediation.
The infrastructure proposals came as OpenAI reported Australians were sending nearly 60 million messages to ChatGPT each day, approximately 30% more than a year earlier.
Australia had also entered the global top 20 for ChatGPT messages per capita since the beginning of 2026 and ranked among the top 15 for per-capita adoption of agentic AI tools, it said.
Grahame Lynch
IN TODAY’S COMMSDAY (Friday 18 September 2026)
Vocus has called for faster backbone fibre approvals and expanded subsea cable protection as surging AI demand puts pressure on Australian transmission capacity and global supply constraints threaten to delay new cable builds into the 2030s.
Mining companies are evaluating data centre developments in the Pilbara following completion of Vocus’s Horizon fibre network, with the company arguing that rising hyperscaler cash flows underpin the broader AI infrastructure investment cycle.
Two major telco bills have been delayed until at least the week of 12 October, leaving the imminent release of the Senate’s Triple Zero inquiry report to potentially reshape negotiations over new industry obligations.
BAI Communications has appointed Mat Jones as its new CEO, effective from the start of 2027.
Spacetalk will prioritise the launch of a co-branded Vodafone family safety app and the migration of its mobile customers to TPG Telecom’s network in FY27 as it shifts towards recurring connectivity and software revenue.
TPG Telecom sees scope for AI to deliver significant improvements to mobile networks over the next decade, but says it is not conducting dedicated AI-RAN trials despite being named in Nokia’s latest announcement about operators advancing the technology.
Sydney-based non-Earth imaging company HEO has successfully repurposed an Earth observation satellite to provide sustained rendezvous and proximity imaging capabilities around a noncooperative rocket body.
EXA Infrastructure launched a new trans-Atlantic cable project aimed at supporting the growing bandwidth demands of artificial intelligence workloads.
Only 2% of Australian organisations have recovery plans equipped to withstand threats posed by frontier AI technologies, according to Cohesity’s 2026 Global Cyber Resilience Report, despite 99% having a cyber resilience strategy.
Nokia has integrated its Data Suite with Microsoft Fabric to support AI-driven network operations, saying operators can access trusted data in minutes rather than weeks.
Ericsson has announced NetCloud Private, enabling organisations to centrally manage Cradlepoint wireless WAN devices while retaining network-management and telemetry data in their own environment, including an on-premises data centre or trusted in-country cloud.
AND IN OUR NEW AI INFRA SUPPLEMENT
Data centre operators representing around 86% of Australia’s operational capacity have pledged to fund their own infrastructure and avoid special subsidies under new industry commitments covering power, water and community impacts.
Greens senator David Shoebridge has attacked his party’s exclusion from parliament’s Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, ahead of its first public hearing today.
Amazon has urged the federal government to consider incentives for cloud investment and an AI stream of skilled visas, warning that shortages of skilled workers and uncertainty over regulation are constraining Australia’s AI adoption.
OpenAI has told a parliamentary inquiry that Australia could play a significant role in the global build-out of AI infrastructure, but argued that copyright policy, competitive energy costs and timely approvals would help determine whether investment comes here.
Federal member for Maranoa David Littleproud has called for a duplication of the Kogan Creek coal-fired power station to help supply Zerra DC’s proposed Western Downs Digital Park, warning its eventual demand of up to 2,200MW must not increase electricity prices or undermine reliability.
Dexus has disclosed its involvement in the proposed Western Downs Digital Park, with its Australian Data Centres business holding a 25% interest in the consortium developing the Queensland hyperscale campus for an Australian subsidiary of Anthropic.
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