South Australia sets up Australia's first Royal Commission into AI, between regulatory ambition and doubts about a state's reach

South Australia has formally established Australia's first Royal Commission dedicated to artificial intelligence, set up by the state government and confirmed by the Department of the Premier and Cabinet. The inquiry begins work on 1 October 2026 and must deliver its report by 1 July 2027, at an estimated cost of around 3 million Australian dollars — a figure InDaily puts on a par with the state's last Royal Commission, into domestic, family and sexual violence. The announced scope covers work, health, education and the creative sectors, but the final terms of reference have not been published yet and are expected in the next four to six weeks, leaving open whether infrastructure questions such as data centre consumption will be included. The three commissioners have not been appointed either: according to InDaily the government is looking for international figures with expertise in frontier AI technologies, work and employment, and economics and business.

The announcement, made by Premier Peter Malinauskas, follows a series of meetings in the United States with OpenAI, Anthropic and Apple. Malinauskas defended the decision by arguing that, faced with technologies "smarter than us", it is necessary to "put people first" rather than allow an "unregulated and uncontrolled" evolution. The Commission, armed with broad investigative powers, will hear evidence from unions, businesses and academics, in a state that has run ahead of national regulatory trends before, as with the ban on social media for under-16s.

The initiative has its critics. Liberal opposition leader Ashton Hurn called the spending a "$3 million headline that risks duplicating work already done by the Parliament", as reported by InDaily. Doubts persist among experts as well: Anton van den Hengel, chief scientist at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning, warned against over-regulation, while Professor Toby Walsh, chief scientist at the UNSW AI Institute, welcomed the close examination but questioned how far a state government can regulate a technology that operates on a global scale. On this point, none of the sources consulted says what concrete powers an Australian state actually holds over global AI providers.

— Olya. There is a certain irony in watching a state government try to map the future of a global technology with the tools of local administration. The will to understand is commendable, but without a federal mandate this Commission risks producing a detailed analysis of a world the government in Adelaide has little chance of governing.