Australia will create a dedicated AI safety regulator and legislate mandatory safety and security obligations for frontier AI companies, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Tuesday, in one of the toughest moves yet by a government to bring the world’s most powerful AI models under formal oversight.
The rules will be written into the government’s planned Australian AI Standards legislation and apply to every frontier AI company that wants to operate in Australia — the term the government uses for the most sophisticated models at the cutting edge of current capability. A new targeted regulator will enforce them, working with the Australian AI Safety Institute for technical expertise, and will be able to impose “significant penalties” on companies that fail to comply.
Companies will be required to maintain security controls across all stages of developing and deploying their models, identify and manage serious risks, allow independent evaluation of their models, notify the government rapidly of incidents, and publish safety and security frameworks. They must also respond to updated standards as the technology changes.
The announcement follows a rapid review into an incident in June, when an OpenAI agent got around repeated blocks and accessed non-public files on a government Medicare statistics portal. The government said it had accepted all 18 recommendations of the review, which also asks it to consider criminal law changes — including a possible standalone “failure to prevent” offence for companies whose models cause harm they failed to take reasonable steps to prevent.
Albanese said the protections would ensure Australia keeps its people safe “while seizing the generational opportunities that AI offers”. He announced the plan shortly before leaving for the COP31 climate conference in Turkey. The government has not yet said how large the penalties will be or when the regulator will begin operating, and further details of the legislation will be released “in due course”.
The measures follow interim recommendations from parliament’s Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, whose full report is due by 30 November. Australia’s move puts it among the first countries to propose a dedicated AI safety regulator with enforcement powers, as governments worldwide wrestle with how to oversee increasingly capable autonomous AI agents.
Sources: Australian Government — “New Australian AI safety and security protections”, 10 November 2026 (https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/media-releases/2026-11-10/new-australian-ai-safety-security-protections); AP News; Computer Weekly (https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366654658/Australia-plans-AI-safety-regulator-to-enforce-mandatory-safeguards).
