Explanatory companion to the mock act
Explanatory memoranda are where drafters and courts go to learn what a provision is for. This companion gives the mock act's headline structure that treatment: one passage per chapter, in the memorandum register, stating purpose and operation. Because the act it explains is a prediction, each passage doubles as a statement of what the real chapter, whatever its final numbering, will need to achieve - which is the durable content.
Chapter 1 (Preliminary) establishes the machinery on which everything else depends; the work is done in the definitions. The chapter defines operative terms with testable referents - automated system, deployer, determination, automated determination - and uses "artificial intelligence" only in the title and objects, as an anchor to public understanding rather than as a term bearing obligations. The relationship-with-other-laws provision preserves the Privacy Act, consumer law and sector regimes; this Act coordinates, it does not occupy the field.
Chapter 2 (the Office) places coordination of policy, and advice on the making of Standards, in a single statutory office. The effect is that departments cease developing separate frameworks, and that the standards-making power in Chapter 3 is exercised on advice from a body with whole-of-government visibility. The Office's processes are administrative, but the chapter should be read with the expectation - stated in consultation - that submissions are published, meetings logged, and adopted text attributed to its source.
Chapter 3 (the Standards) is the act's engine. It confers a power to make Standards as disallowable legislative instruments, lists the matters they may address - risk management, data governance, human oversight of determinations, transparency, contestability, records - and requires consultation before making. The design intent is that obligations specify properties and the instruments specify conformity classes, so the framework absorbs technological change through the instruments rather than through amendment of the Act. Parliament retains control through disallowance.
Chapter 4 (data centres) converts the March 2026 expectations into obligations for designated facilities: underwriting new power supply, meeting connection costs, curtailing for grid security, and water efficiency. These sit in primary legislation rather than instruments because their content is settled and their subjects few and identifiable.
Chapter 5 (training data and Australian works) prohibits training on Australian works without licence and provides for recognition of declared licensing schemes, with records of training-data provenance supporting enforcement. The chapter interfaces with, and does not amend, the Copyright Act; scheme design proceeds through the established reference-group process. The published analysis this companion belongs to argues the chapter's consent principle warrants generalisation to data beyond creative works; drafting instructions for that extension are published alongside.
Chapter 6 (consumer safety and transparency) carries the obligations individuals will actually encounter: disclosure of interaction with an automated system, labelling of generated content, and - in Part 6.3, the chapter's centre - the automated-determination safeguards: notice, a statement of the determination's author or of what produced it, and review by a person with the power to substitute. Part 6.4's prohibitions are drawn by tool type; the published analysis argues a companion schedule drawn by decision type (decisions never automatable regardless of consent) completes the design.
Chapter 7 (the Safety Institute) gives the existing institute statutory functions: model access and testing arrangements, information-gathering with protection of commercial information, and publication. The effect is to convert testing access from a relationship dependent on provider goodwill into a function that survives a change of mood.
Chapter 8 (Commonwealth use) applies the Standards to Commonwealth entities, continues accountable officials and transparency statements, and establishes a register of deployments. The chapter is deliberately thin because the administrative framework exists; its significance is that the Commonwealth binds itself to the same standards it sets. This companion's parent analysis proposes it bind itself at the highest conformity class (the model instrument's class C, section 28) - the government as first and strictest adopter - a design proposal of that analysis, not a commitment the current APS framework has made.
Chapter 9 (compliance and enforcement) confers functions on existing regulators within their sectors, coordinated by the Office, with civil penalties, enforceable undertakings and audit powers. No new regulator is created; the design follows the stated doctrine of faster rules applied by regulators who already understand their sectors.
Chapter 10 (miscellaneous) provides the three-year statutory review. Given the pace of the underlying technology and the instrument-heavy architecture, the review is the scheduled moment at which the schedule of never-automated decisions, the conformity classes and the instruments' operation are re-examined in public - not a formality.
Written with model assistance. Read and edited by a human - though I'm not an editor, so tell me what I've missed: drop me a line. Parts of this were generated; all of it was read, checked and meant. Feedback is welcome and gets used.
Reviewed and checked by the human author: 2026-07-20.