Matt Comyn backs Norway-style AI stake for Australia
matt comyn is at the center of a new argument over who should own the gains from Australia’s AI buildout. Peter Lewis says Australia should secure a bigger public stake in any artificial intelligence expansion, with reparations tied to copyright as a condition for companies seeking to train models here.
The push lands as the chief executives of Microsoft and Anthropic court Canberra over training data models in Australia. Lewis says the country should not let the next industrial rollout be built on private control alone, especially after a string of court cases established that hyper-scalers have systematically and illegally scraped the web to train their models.
Norway and A$3tn
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, worth more than A$3tn, was built on North Sea oil deposits discovered in the 1970s. Lewis uses that model to argue Australia should think about artificial intelligence the same way it once should have thought about resources: secure a public claim early, before the value is locked away elsewhere.
That comparison reaches back to huge gas deposits discovered off the West Australian coast, when the Hawke government chose not to be an upfront investor in the resources sector. Australians facing rising energy prices later questioned how the gas industry operated with little control over the asset, and Lewis says AI should not follow that path.
Microsoft, Anthropic and Canberra
Microsoft and Anthropic are courting Canberra because AI companies need secure places to train massive models. Australia offers space, renewable energy and a stable political environment, a combination Lewis presents as useful for mega-data projects that need room, power and political certainty.
But the bargaining position is not just about land and electricity. The article says these companies have exhausted public tolerance in the United States for data centres and the energy and water they consume, which leaves Australia with leverage if it wants to set the rules before buildout starts.
Last year, Scott Farquhar pitched a data mining exemption to copyright, and the backlash was immediate. Lewis calls Farquhar refreshingly honest for making the case so openly, but says the answer should move in the opposite direction.
Copyright and reparations
40 years after the resource debate that followed the West Australian gas discoveries, Lewis says the same mistake would be to let AI companies arrive first and negotiate later. He argues that if Australia wants the benefits of an AI industry, it should demand more than access and investment: it should demand a public stake and a payment for the material already taken.
David Pocock and Pauline Hanson have also called for a different path, which gives the issue political reach beyond the tech lobby. Lewis ends on copyright, saying: "We must hold the line on copyright: a condition for operating these centres should be reparations".
