Two Fridays ago I was on RNZ’s Morning Report with Ingrid Hipkiss talking about Australia’s new Office of AI.
Last Friday I was on TVNZ's BNZ Business Breakfast with Mei Heron at quarter past six in the morning, talking about the same themes but that time to people packing school lunches.
Same topic both times....
Australia has set up an Office of AI inside the Prime Minister's department, so should NZ do the same?
Yes, I think we should copy the basic function. But setting up a ministerial AI Office isn't an answer on its own, and prepping for those two interviews forced me to work out what I'd actually ask for from the Govt regarding AI, if I had their ears.
I ended up with five pillars...
Lead it. Replicating the AI Office that Australia has deployed is a great start. One team at the centre of government holding the whole picture, and ministers and chief executives who have had their own hands on these tools and had practical skills and literacy training themselves. They can't lead something of this consequence off what they've been briefed on.
Learn it. Free basic AI skills and literacy training training for any NZ adult who wants it. Enough to know the full capability of what these tools do, how to use them safely, and how to use them to enable humans not replace them. With job and retraining support in there from the start.
Use it. Practical help for small businesses to get going, leaders learning AI themselves, and a public target for how many businesses are using AI in a way that actually changes how they work. We have never set one. (Canada is a great example of a country who has, btw)
Teach it. Our teachers are being squeezed by AI and I've got real empathy for that. Let's fund them, with release time to learn the technology properly, before we hand them a new curriculum. Once they truly understand AI's power and nuance, they'll be well placed to guide our children how to use AI without surrendering their own thinking.
Own it. Know what a data centre will cost us in power and water before it's consented, not after. And Māori set the terms for how Māori data, te reo and mātauranga Māori get used by AI labs.
Two days after that interview the Green Party put a data-centre pause in their manifesto, and the government said it wants common-sense rules for big data centres. So one pillar of my five is getting argued about already. The other four aren't being discussed seriously enough though.
So, over the next fortnight I'm turning these five pillars into a non-partisan AI manifesto and will putting it on a public website, free. Any party will be encouraged to take any part of the manifesto, put their name on it and call it their own.
Sources & citations
- What NZ can learn from Australia’s AI approach, RNZ Morning Report, 17 July 2026.
- BNZ Business Breakfast, TVNZ, 24 July 2026.
- AI in Australia’s interests, Prime Minister of Australia, 15 July 2026.
- New Zealand’s AI Strategy: Investing with Confidence, MBIE.
- Call for one-year pause on consenting new AI data centres, Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, 26 July 2026.
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