Week of 3 November 2025
Good Ancestors' October/November 2025 newsletter covers a dense cluster of Australian and international AI policy developments.
Key points
- Key Australian threads include Treasury's light-touch ACL review, eSafety's new AI chatbot codes, and the pending National AI Plan.
- Australia's IMD digital competitiveness ranking fell from 15th to 23rd, with its AI laws ranking dropping from 8th to 34th in one year.
Week of 20 October 2025
NAIC's updated Guidance for AI Adoption consolidates the Voluntary AI Safety Standard into 6 streamlined key practices.
Key points
- Guidance offers two tiers - Foundations for new adopters and Implementation Practices for scaling organisations - with templates included.
- Primarily targets Australian businesses, not government agencies directly, though principles align with APS AI governance frameworks.
Week of 29 September 2025
NIST's CAISI evaluated three DeepSeek models against four US models across 19 benchmarks, finding significant US leads in performance and security.
Key points
- DeepSeek models were 12 times more susceptible to agent hijacking and responded to 94% of jailbreak attempts vs 8% for US models.
- Australian agencies using or considering DeepSeek models face security and CCP-narrative-propagation risks flagged by a peer-jurisdiction regulator.
Week of 22 September 2025
CAISI worked with OpenAI and Anthropic to identify security vulnerabilities and improve AI security measurement.
Key points
- Evaluations were completed in partnership with the UK AI Security Institute, signalling ongoing Five Eyes-adjacent AI safety cooperation.
- Australia's AISI is not mentioned; this bilateral US-UK arrangement may inform where Australia sits in frontier AI security collaboration.
Week of 8 September 2025
Good Ancestors' September 2025 newsletter covers major Australian and international AI governance developments across two months.
Key points
- Australian threads dominate: a national AI Act debate, six new AU-focused reports, GPT-5 oversight gaps, and calls for an Australian AISI.
- International threads include the US AI Action Plan, China's competing governance vision, EU GPAI Code of Practice, and UK AISI pre-release testing.
Week of 25 August 2025
The Responsible AI Index 2025, now in its fourth year, tracks RAI maturity across accountability, safety, fairness, transparency and explainability.
Key points
- Only 12% of Australian organisations are rated 'leading' in responsible AI; smaller organisations struggle with resource-intensive practices.
- A self-assessment tool accompanies the index, letting organisations benchmark their RAI maturity against peers and receive tailored guidance.
NAIC has released a free Responsible AI Self-Assessment Tool benchmarking organisations across five RAI dimensions.
Key points
- Only 12% of Australian organisations currently reach the top 'leading' maturity level, per the accompanying 2025 index.
- The tool targets businesses broadly; direct applicability to Commonwealth entities depends on how APS-specific the benchmarks are.
NAIC launches a year-round AI event calendar open to organisations across Australia to submit events.
Key points
- The calendar consolidates NAIC webinars and events; AI Week 2025 runs 20–24 October.
- Low signal for APS governance practitioners - primarily a public engagement and outreach tool.
Week of 4 August 2025
NAIC's Q1 2025 AI Adoption Tracker shows 82% of larger SMEs (200-500 employees) using AI, versus 33% for micro businesses.
Key points
- A new responsible AI dashboard reveals a gap between SME intentions and actual deployment of responsible AI practices.
- Primary industries and micro businesses lag significantly - awareness gaps, not just adoption gaps, are the key barrier.
Week of 28 July 2025
Two independent investigations found no APS Code of Conduct breaches by the APS Commissioner in the Robodebt inquiry.
Key points
- This is an APS integrity and accountability item, not an AI or algorithmic governance item.
- Robodebt involved automated debt raising, but this statement concerns the Commissioner's conduct, not AI governance.
Week of 7 July 2025
Good Ancestors' July 2025 newsletter covers EU GPAI Code of Practice, Trump AI Action Plan, and OpenAI's Australian economic blueprint.
Key points
- OpenAI's Australia-specific blueprint and the OAIC privacy self-assessment tool are the most directly APS-relevant items.
- Also covers Switzerland's sovereign LLM, US state AI laws, and a brief roundup of international regulatory developments.
Week of 23 June 2025
NAIC and CSIRO's 2025 AI Ecosystem Report shows AI hiring tripled since 2015, with 1,532 organisations seeking AI-skilled workers in 2024.
Key points
- Australia accounts for just 0.18% of global AI patents over ten years, signalling a commercialisation gap the upcoming AI Capability Plan aims to address.
- Energy, healthcare, and resources sectors lead AI adoption; public and private company approaches to AI differ materially.
Week of 9 June 2025
Good Ancestors' June 2025 newsletter covers four lead items and a broad 'in case you missed it' roundup of AI policy developments.
Key points
- Australian-relevant items include the Albanese-AWS $20B data centre deal, the government's 'light-touch' regulatory posture, and AI workforce concerns.
- International items cover California's AI policy working group report, G7 AI-for-prosperity statement, and tech giants' superintelligence pivot.
Week of 5 May 2025
Good Ancestors' May 2025 newsletter covers three distinct developments: US AI safety rollbacks, OpenAI's Stargate global expansion, and Federal Court GenAI consultations.
Key points
- The Federal Court of Australia item is directly relevant to APS practitioners - submissions were open until 13 June 2025.
- US deregulation under Trump is framed as increasing pressure on Australia and other middle powers to fill the governance gap.
Week of 17 February 2025
Attorney-General's Department has published its Data Strategy 2025–2027, covering four focus areas.
Key points
- AI and machine learning are named as analytical tools to support evidence-based policy - but remain secondary to the data governance framing.
- Limited direct AI governance content; this is primarily a data maturity and literacy strategy with AI as one thread.
Week of 9 December 2024
Good Ancestors' December 2024 newsletter covers three distinct AI policy developments across Australia, Singapore, and Canada.
Key points
- Australia's Senate AI inquiry final report recommends dedicated whole-of-economy AI legislation with a risk-based approach.
- Singapore has enacted deepfake election content bans; Canada has announced a national AI Safety Institute with research partners.
Week of 28 October 2024
Attorney-General's Department 2023–24 Annual Report covers performance and audited financials to 30 June 2024.
Key points
- No AI-specific content is indicated in the extracted text or publication metadata.
- Limited direct relevance to APS AI governance work - included for completeness only.
Week of 7 October 2024
Good Ancestors' October 2024 newsletter covers three distinct AI governance developments across Australia, the US, and the UN.
Key points
- Australia's voluntary AI safety standards and mandatory guardrails consultation paper are the primary Australian thread.
- California's SB 1047 veto and UN Advisory Board recommendations round out the international coverage.
Week of 9 September 2024
APSC Commissioner finds 12 individuals breached the APS Code of Conduct 97 times in connection with Robodebt.
Key points
- Two former Secretaries, Campbell and Leon, named publicly - a rare exercise of discretion under s72A of the Public Service Act.
- Limited direct AI relevance; Robodebt's automated debt-raising mechanism is not the subject here - conduct and accountability are.
Week of 5 August 2024
Good Ancestors' August 2024 newsletter covers deepfake legislation, US AI content bills, and regulatory sandboxes.
Key points
- Australia's Criminal Code Amendment (Deepfake Sexual Material) Bill 2024 has passed the Senate and is now in force.
- US legislative items are proposed only and not yet voted on; California's SB 1047 is flagged as a breaking development.
Week of 8 July 2024
Good Ancestors' July 2024 newsletter covers three distinct AI policy developments across Australia and California.
Key points
- Two Australian items dominate: a joint federal-state-territory AI assurance framework and new deepfake criminalisation legislation.
- California's proposed $100M training-cost threshold for mandatory AI safety testing is the international item covered.