6 March 2026

Welcome

Most of Australia’s policy brains were focusing on the war on Iran and other matters this week, and I’ve been flat out on a variety of things too, so today I’m just listing a bunch of stories rather than providing any analysis.

And apologies in advance, ’cos next week is likely to be much the same. I’m moving house later this month.

In the news this week

• The government has scrapped its freedom of information law, given it was clear it would pass in the Senate. And, as it happens, there was no flood of FoI requests, destroying the government’s argument for the changes.

• Working from home and AI have led to a sharp rise in workplace surveillance. Australian laws are struggling to keep up, according to a new report (PDF) from the Human Technology Institute (HTI) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

• Last month the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) partially overturned a ban on Bunnings using facial recognition in its stores. This week the Privacy Commissioner says they would not be appealing the decision.

• Some of the world’s major porn sites are blocking Australians because their owner objects to the new age assurance rules which come onto force on Monday.

• Crossbench senator Fatima Payman has introduced the Online Safety Amendment (Broadening Adult Cyber Abuse Protections) Bill 2026, which aims to lower the threshold for what’s considered to be abuse material. This was a recommendation of the Statutory Review of the Online Safety Act 2021, but so far it hadn’t been acted on.

• From the Guardian: “She helped design Australia’s aged care assessment tool — but now Lynda Henderson is too scared to use it,” describing it as “underpinned by [a] ‘ridiculously simplistic’ algorithm”.

• There’s also a nice piece on how some big Australian retailers want “delightfully human” AI to do your shopping. Will the chatbots go rogue?

• Jim’s Group’s AI seems to have gone rogue, though, going off-script to offer customers some life advice.

• From The Conversation, a reminder that Australia’s official plan for AI safety isn’t much more than a single dot point.

• In a reminder that AI is much more than chatbots and large language models (LLMs), a new Australian-made tool can measure the risk of breast cancer more accurately than the other methods that doctors rely on. It’ll be ready for real-world use within the next five years.

• Four years ago the Data Availability and Transparency Act was meant to enable federal agencies and universities to share data for innovation. But it has “fundamental” design flaws, and so far only one data asset has ever been built with it.

• The Tropfest short film festival is under fire for selecting an AI-generated film as a finalist. The festival had been on hiatus since 2019 thanks to venue problems and that pandemic we all remember, so it’s good to start with some media coverage I guess?

• The .au internet domain is 40 years old. How times have changed.

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Elsewhere

• The New York Times looks at those talks between AI company Anthropic and the US Department of Defense [sic] and how they fell apart (gift link). Anthropic has vowed to sue the Pentagon over being designated a supply chain risk. Meanwhile, OpenAI has leapt in to fill the gap, saying its products would not be used for autonomous killing systems or mass surveillance — although I’m not sure how they could ensure that. There’a a lot going on there, and it represents big money, so I’ll try to come back to it next week.

• The New York Times also has a profile of Palmer Luckey, founder of defence tech company Anduril (gift link).

• Techdirt has summarised this one rather well, I think: “Palantir sues Swiss magazine for accurately reporting that the Swiss government didn’t want Palantir.”

• Seriously Risky Business has a rundown of the four-hour cyber war on Iran. It looks like plenty of Iran’s infrastructure had been penetrated, include all of Tehran’s traffic cameras.

• And on a related note, Bluetooth-connected sex toys are becoming the latest cybersecurity frontline, reports Cyber Daily.

HOW’S THAT AI BUBBLE GOING? My most recent podcast episode is The 9pm S-Bend of Technology with David Gerard. He’s the editor of the Pivot to AI newsletter, video essay, and podcast. Look for The 9pm Edict in your podcast app.

Inquiries of note

• The Senate has kicked off an inquiry into the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025. At the time of writing they haven’t given a closing date for submissions, but the committee has to report back by 14 May so don’t faff about.

What’s next?

Parliament continues sitting this coming Tuesday 10 to Thursday 12 March. Then there’s a one-week gap, then another couple of weeks of sittings — including a short week before Easter.

There’s another public hearing for the inquiry into Triple Zero service outages this coming Thursday 12 March.

DOES SOMETHING IN THE EMAIL LOOK WRONG? Let me know. If there’s ever a factual error, editing mistake, or confusing typo, it’ll be corrected in the web archives.