US big tech wants to end Australian tech rules. Its local lobbyists are much subtler

At the centre of Australia’s trade dispute with the US is Australia’s tech policy. While Australia was spared the worst of the tariffs and was slapped with a measly 10% duty on goods imported into the US, the case for the trade penalty has been laid out over the first few months of the Trump administration. First, the White House’s executive order on “defending American companies .

.. from overseas extortion” regarding digital regulation and taxes named Australia first out of all countries.



Then, just before so-called “Liberation Day” this week, the United States trade representative took aim at Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code and local content requirements. What’s behind this sudden tech trade focus? It’s no great surprise. Silicon Valley has been unashamed in its full-throated support and wish list for the Trump administration, calling on it to help combat international regulatory efforts from the EU and, yes, Australia.

Last month, much attention was given to the call to essentially raze all Australian tech regulation by one of the tech lobby groups, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), to the Trump administration. It’s no surprise that the CCIA wants that. The reason it was a five-alarm fire this time was because it seems a possibility Trump might actually grant its wish.

But while tech CEOs lined up to whisper in the ear of the US president and their lobbyists in Washington drew up lists of international regulatory targets, their counterparts over in Australia were much quieter. There are two major Australian tech lobby groups: the Digital Industry Group Inc. (DIGI) and the Tech Council of Australia (TCA).

While not exact duplicates — TCA has some Australian, “non-big tech” members — the two cover the who’s who of Silicon Valley: Apple, Amazon (via AWS), Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, etc. Both these groups are active participants in Australian policy processes through submissions to parliamentary inquiries and broader lobbying efforts. They make a more-or-less similar case to their US counterparts, but in a more domestically palatable way.

The groups are US tech’s local fixers. But when it comes to the CCIA’s brazen call to free the tech, and the Trump administration’s enthusiastic acceptance, both were much quieter. DIGI declined to comment.

A TCA spokesperson didn’t reject the US group’s stance that Australia’s floated AI regulation is a “key example” of a “danger to the future of all digital services exports”. Instead, their response was much more muted: “A measured approach to regulation of the tech sector is critical for Australia to harness emerging technologies, including AI, to grow our economy’s productive capacity,” they said. The velvet glove approach of these Australian groups (compared to the US sledgehammer) makes sense.

Their audience is Australian policymakers and, to a lesser extent, the broader public. What’s interesting is how comparing the two reveals that “eliminate all regulation” and “we should be careful with our regulation” are two sides of the same coin: both ultimately oppose any regulatory effort, but the latter has some plausible deniability. It’s not that Australia’s tech lobby opposes all regulation — it’s just that [insert policy] isn’t quite right and we should wait until we have the perfect regulation to regulate.

(Needless to say, a perfect piece of regulation is always around the corner but never arrives.) Where this gets even more complicated is how a large amount of Australia’s tech regulation is actually created in concert with tech groups. Australia’s online safety codes are mostly written by the industry and codified by the regulator, the eSafety commissioner.

The fact that the groups’ public wish is to remove any such rule shouldn’t fill us with confidence about Silicon Valley’s commitment to finding the best ways to keep Australians safe online. Whether big tech’s hubris will come back to bite it in the US when the pendulum swings back is unknowable. But in Australia — where we still have the power to determine how these companies operate within our borders — we should believe tech when it tells us who it really is and what it thinks of our expectations of its behaviour.

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