Policy Focus on Australia
Policy Focus on Australia
Two new reports from the CoSTAR Foresight Lab provide new insights into how Australian public policy is supporting the adoption of technologies across the Creative Industries. The reports provide insight into key policy developments shaping film, television, games, performance, and digital entertainment, with a particular focus on convergent technology research, development, and innovation.
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What does the Australia Policy Snapshot cover?
The Policy Snapshot on Australia brings together insights from three closely connected policy areas:
Creative Industries policy,
Technology strategy and regulation, and
Artificial Intelligence (AI) governance.
While these domains are governed through different strategies and institutions, the report highlights how they align around shared priorities: strengthening national capability, developing skills and talent, supporting innovation ecosystems, and ensuring that technological change delivers broad public benefit.
At the core of Australia’s Creative Industries agenda is Revive: a place for every story, a story for every place (2023), the national cultural policy. Revive focuses on strengthening cultural production, improving creative careers, and embedding equity across the sector. In parallel, Australia’s technology policies prioritise critical and emerging technologies, most notably AI and quantum, through major investments, infrastructure development, skills initiatives, and international partnerships. These agendas intersect around digital capability, workforce development, data governance, and innovation systems that support both cultural expression and technology-led growth.
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Why this matters?
Australia’s Creative Industries and technology policies reveal an effort to position creativity and advanced technology as joint drivers of economic prosperity and social inclusion. By combining strong support for artists and creative workers with forward-looking approaches to AI and critical technologies, Australia is building a policy environment that is both innovation-oriented and ethically grounded.
The Policy Snapshot on Australia provides a clear, accessible entry point into this landscape, offering valuable insights for policymakers, researchers, and industry stakeholders interested in international approaches to Creative Industries, technology adoption, and responsible innovation.
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Read the full Policy Snapshot on Australia to explore the findings in more detail.
The Australia Policy Snapshot is part of a wider series of short policy studies produced between June 2025 and September 2026. Alongside Australia, the series covers India, Japan, ASEAN and the Philippines, South Korea, and Canada, and should be read in parallel with our regular Creative Technologies International Scans delivered with Olsberg•SPI.
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AI Policy deep-dive
Alongside this Policy Snapshot, the CoSTAR Foresight Lab has also recently published AI Policy and its Impacts on the Screen Sector Across the Globe, prepared by Olsberg•SPI. This in-depth study examines how AI is already embedded across the global screen sector, from development and production to post-production and distribution, while also raising complex questions around rights, responsible adoption, labour, sustainability, and public trust. The research explores the rapidly evolving relationship between AI, policy, and creative practice in Australia – along with California, Canada, and France. The report distils global lessons most relevant to the UK as its own AI governance framework continues to evolve.
Olsberg•SPI study found that Australia’s English-speaking population enables early adoption of global technological innovation, particularly from the US. While this offers clear advantages, it also creates risks if the local cultural context is overlooked. Indigenous representation is also critical. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples hold a unique and legally protected cultural heritage with significant intellectual property value. Despite existing protections, consultees noted that ongoing vigilance is required. Related to this, consultees noted that greater collaboration between government and industry is needed to develop domestic AI models that reflect Australia’s cultural uniqueness.
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Read the full AI Policy and its Impacts on the Screen Sector Across the Globe here.
Read the Australia case study here.
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This blog was co-authored by Katya Tarnovskaya, Research Associate at the CoSTAR Foresight Lab and Joshua Dedman, Consultant at Olsberg•SPI.
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