Australia’s biggest musicians have gone public with a desperate plea to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese: stop AI companies from scraping their life’s work. Bernard Fanning of Powderfinger, Janet English of Spiderbait, Hannah Joy of Middle Kids, and members of the Go-Betweens and the Fauves all told The Guardian what they’d say to a PM who has made his love of Australian music part of his public identity.
🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE
Big tech is offering Australia a $50 billion datacentre investment and a $350 million compensation fund in exchange for weaker copyright laws. Senator David Pocock called it the “ultimate dirty deal.” The musicians who soundtrack Albanese’s DJ sets are now the ones demanding he reject it — and they’ve discovered their work is already being scraped.
The Deal That Sparked the Revolt
An industry proposal circulating in Canberra would see tech companies commit more than $50 billion in datacentre investment and set up a $350 million fund to compensate creatives — but only if Australia waters down its copyright laws to allow text and data mining. In practice, that means AI companies could legally scrape Australian music, journalism, and books to train their models without asking permission.
The Albanese government has insisted it has no plans to weaken copyright protections, having ruled out a text and data mining exemption last year. But creatives are sounding the alarm because the industry proposal is still in play, and because they’ve already found their work in AI training datasets. Last month, Australian musicians discovered their songs had been scraped into an AI training tool — including work by Nick Cave, Kylie Minogue, and Paul Dempsey.
”Don’t Kill Music”
The musicians’ message is blunt. Bernard Fanning, whose band Powderfinger was gifted by Albanese to former NZ PM Jacinda Ardern during a diplomatic vinyl swap, said: “It feels like a violation. We have always been very careful about where our music is placed, and this upends that consideration.” He called on Albanese directly: “Any partial or wholesale waiving of our rights as copyright holders would put Australian artists at a massive disadvantage.”
Janet English of Spiderbait — whose song “Buy Me A Pony” made Albanese’s top 10 Australian songs list — was more raw: “As musicians we are appalled that our life’s work has been stolen from us. We haven’t given consent or been compensated, it’s just been swiped. How is this fair?”
Lindy Morrison of the Go-Betweens revealed that AI has already sampled 95 of the band’s songs. “I’d be pissed off if my drum beat in Cattle and Cane was used anywhere without attribution or payment,” she said.
Hannah Joy of Middle Kids, voted by Albanese in the 2024 Hottest 100, framed it as a cultural survival issue: “If artists can no longer be artists because of their work being scraped by AI, it will come at a great cost to Australian culture. AI cannot perform live.”
The Bigger Picture
This isn’t just an Australian story. The same copyright battle is playing out globally — CNN sued Perplexity over 17,000 articles, Suno acquired Songkick in a move that blurred the line between licensing and land-grab, and Meta faced a publishers’ lawsuit over Llama training data. What makes Australia different is the explicit quid pro quo: the copyright carve-out is being traded for infrastructure investment, putting the government in the position of negotiating away creators’ rights for datacentre jobs.
Australia’s earlier retreat on AI regulation — covered in our analysis of the Husic-era regulatory retreat — set the stage. The government walked back ambitious AI safety proposals under pressure from both the Trump administration’s deregulatory stance and domestic industry lobbying. Now the copyright question is the next domino.
NZ Angle
New Zealand faces the same structural question without the same leverage. Australia’s $50 billion datacentre offer is a explicit bargaining chip; NZ has no equivalent industry proposal on the table, but the Trans-Tasman regulatory alignment means whatever Canberra decides on copyright will flow across the ditch. If Australia accepts a text and data mining exemption, the pressure on Wellington to follow suit will be immediate — particularly given the current government’s preference for light-touch AI regulation.
The NZ music industry, smaller and more dependent on Australian distribution channels, would feel the scraping impact faster. Local artists already operate on razor-thin margins. A copyright weakening across the Tasman could effectively mean NZ musicians’ work enters AI training sets via Australian distribution agreements they never signed.
❓ FAQ
Will the Albanese government actually weaken copyright law? The government says no — it ruled out a text and data mining exemption last year. But the $50 billion datacentre offer is still on the table, and industry proposals have a way of resurfacing in budget negotiations.
Has AI already scraped Australian music? Yes. The Guardian confirmed last month that Australian musicians including Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue found their work in an AI training tool. The Go-Betweens alone had 95 songs sampled.
What would a $350 million compensation fund actually cover? By comparison, Australia’s music industry contributes roughly $1.5 billion annually to GDP. A $350 million one-time fund for permanent copyright weakening is less than a quarter of one year’s revenue — and there’s no guarantee it would reach individual artists rather than industry bodies.
Does NZ have equivalent copyright protections? NZ’s Copyright Act 1994 covers unauthorised use of creative works, but has no specific AI training exemption. The current National-led government has signalled a light-touch approach to AI regulation, making Trans-Tasman alignment a live question.
🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE
When the musicians who appear on your Spotify Wrapped are publicly begging you not to sell their rights, the political calculus gets uncomfortable. Albanese has built his brand on Australian music — DJ Albo, Hottest 100 votes, diplomatic vinyl swaps. The test now is whether that brand survives a $50 billion offer that would let AI companies legally strip-mine the songs he says he loves. The answer will set the copyright baseline for the entire Asia-Pacific, including New Zealand.
