Senator the Hon Katy Gallagher

SASKIA MABIN, HOST: Joining us now is the Finance Minister, Katy Gallagher. Of course, she's also the Labor Senator for the ACT. Good morning and welcome to the program.

SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR FINANCE: Good morning. Thanks for having me on.

MABIN: Shall we pick up where we left off with Melissa? The fears about jobs being slashed – entry level jobs, administrative jobs – and also, interestingly mentioned in this report about the trial, that women could be disproportionately impacted as they currently comprise most of the APS’ administration staff. You, of course, are also the Minister for Women, so you would be clearly attuned to that concern. What are you doing to ensure that these people are protected?

GALLAGHER: So yesterday, I made it clear that this plan isn't written to replace people. It really is looking at how we can enhance capability and improve services to the Australian people by augmenting, essentially, our staff with the tools that this technology provides. And when I look at the big workforces where we would have more women – I mean, it's pretty gender balanced across the APS, and our gender pay gap is very low. The area where we do have more women than men is in those, particularly in big employment areas like Services Australia with those, you know, contact centres and service centres, where we have more women. But those jobs require human decision-making. Although the work that Services Australia does, the ATO does, it can be supported and assisted by AI, you know, the right AI technology, but it's not going to replace those jobs. Those jobs where you make a decision about whether someone gets a payment or whether they're abiding by tax law, things like that. We've been very clear, will continue to require human empathy, human decision-making, and judgement.

MABIN: So what kind of tasks do you envision this government AI tool, which will be rolled out next year, will assist with?

GALLAGHER: Well, it's really, I think, about streamlining and providing quick access to knowledge, our knowledge systems across government. So look, it's not going to be easy. I've been consulting with all of the big employers across Australia about how they've done this, because many of them are further down the track than us, and what is useful and what has helped. And it's very clear that if you can build a system that works for your enterprise, and the APS is a big enterprise, and it does so many different things. It's not like, say, a Telstra or a Commonwealth Bank or somewhere like that, where the nature of the work is, you know, is pretty clear. You're a bank or you're a communications provider. We do things like run national parks in the Northern Territory. We undertake science in Antarctica. We run a defence force. Everything and anything in between those things, the Commonwealth APS does. So it's not easy to design a tool that might be useful for everybody, but in particular, being able to provide staff with very quick access to information, policies, guidance, you know, would be really helpful to many people performing their work. You know, rights and responsibilities, all – it's hard to kind of condense what it could look like, you know, in a five minute interview, but the potential is there for people to have something that helps them with their work. Makes it easier, quicker, means they don't have to search 15 websites to find an answer. All those kinds of things where we just, in a generalised way, improve our systems.

MABIN: After this trial, some of the people who participated reported that there were inaccuracies in the AI-generated work and also security concerns that perhaps they had access to documents that they should not have had permission to access. These are going to be things that you're going to have to work through before next year. How do you reassure people that those security concerns will not be part of the government AI that's rolled out and everyone will have access to?

GALLAGHER: So I think the major thing that we need to do to provide assurance to APS staff that we're coming through with GovAI and with this plan is, the Government wants you to be able to use AI. We see it as an important part of the APS’ future. New public servants coming in, younger public servants coming in, are using this as a very standard part of their day. So the APS needs to move with that. But we, as you say, we need to be safe about it, we need to be responsible, and we need to be ethical, and so there's a lot of guidance that has already been put out, but will be developed further that provides that assurance. Because what I hear from public servants is, we're not sure if we're allowed to use this or if it's proper to use it. So, part of having a GovAI – well we've got a GovAI now – but say, a GovAI Chat and those tools would mean that we've got the right protections around it. So even though people might use ChatGPT, they might use Claude or Gemini, for some things that if, for particular tasks, that GovAI chat would be tailored in a way and safe for information. And we're trying to build it with information up to Protected. There are different permissions in the APS about access to information, but getting it to Official level is probably reasonably easy, and then making sure we can build it to protect it will be another piece of work. But definitely, security and providing that assurance to public servants that it is safe to use, is a really important part.

MABIN: Yeah, and as part of this, there will be Chief AI Officers appointed within the public service. All agencies will have to track and report their AI use as well. We're almost upon the news, but could you tell me a little bit about the roles and responsibilities of that Chief AI Officer?

GALLAGHER: Well, it's really about taking leadership and ownership in your own entity. So, we want it to be seen like a CIO or a COO. We want people to take it seriously. We want it to be led by the SES, because that's an important part of ensuring others take it up. So that'll be an important part. And the other point quickly is around transparency. So reporting how and when it's being used, and making that information public, I think will drive trust.

MABIN: Thank you very much for your time this morning. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher there, also Senator for the ACT.

GALLAGHER: Thank you.