Our parliamentary speeches are literally robotic

Politicians are often the butt of disrespectful jokes about the artificiality of their intelligence, but many seem to have taken it literally and are outsourcing their precious way with words to machines. While universities and schools struggle with academic integrity breaches, faculty skill gaps and the future of jobs, and debate rages over the threat posed by AI and attendant data centres, many federal MPs have made up their minds about the technology and lead the English-speaking world for AI use in their parliamentary speeches.

According to British news and current affairs journal The Economist, a random sample of Australian parliamentary speeches made from September 2025-26 found more than 20 per cent delivered in the House of Representatives were flagged by AI content detector Pangram for AI-generated or AI-assisted text. Just under 15 per cent of Senate speeches were flagged. Compared to other English-speaking legislatures, Australian MPs were the most prolific users, just ahead of Canada but triple the rate of the British.