Over 512,000 Australians (a COAD-derived estimate, explained below) already work in occupations with high observed exposure to AI automation. Australia can prepare before the damage is done, or respond after it.
October 2026: COAD has paused active advocacy. Read our update →
COAD in 75secs.
Between March and October 2026, COAD put a fully costed proposal to the Queensland Treasurer, federal ministers, the Prime Minister's Office, departmental officers, members of the Senate and the ACTU. Three Australian Government portfolios have replied in writing. The Government is aware of the proposal and of the gap it addresses: income support for Australians whose work is displaced by artificial intelligence.
Since July 2026 the Government has moved on AI governance. It has established an Office of AI in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, secured National Cabinet agreement to mandatory national AI standards, and plans legislation in 2027. Those measures focus on safety, data centres and skills. Whether, and how, Australians displaced by AI are supported is now a decision for Government.
COAD has therefore paused active advocacy. Everything on this site remains available: the proposal, the evidence base, the policy calculator and the full record of our correspondence. Figures on this site are current as at October 2026 and will not be updated while COAD is paused. If AI-driven job displacement in Australia accelerates, we will resume.
Greg Hoskin
COAD Initiative Director (coad.life)
greg@coad.life
These figures are drawn from peer-reviewed research and authoritative Australian and international sources. Figures that are COAD-derived estimates, or drawn from overseas data, are labelled as such.
These are on-record public statements, checked against primary sources. The speakers include a Nobel laureate, the head of the IMF and the chief executives of Anthropic and Microsoft AI.
In the next one to five years, AI could potentially wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs.
If you automate 90% of the job, then everyone does the 10% of the job. And the 10% kind of expands to be 100% of what people do and kind of 10xs their productivity.
We're going to see it having the capabilities to replace many, many jobs. It's already able to replace jobs in call centers, but it's going to be able to replace many other jobs.
Tasks that are eliminated are usually what entry-level jobs present, so young people searching for jobs find it harder to get to a good placement… The middle class, inevitably, is going to be affected.
Unless you’re in the top 1%, you’re a peasant. There is no middle class… if a CEO can be replaced by an AI, all of our middle class is going to disappear.
We are 12 to 18 months away from AI that can perform at human level on a very wide range of knowledge tasks. The labour market implications of that are profound and will not be gradual.
If we simply adopt AI in the most direct, profit-maximising way, we could end up with up to 80% of existing jobs automated within 20 to 30 years. This is not science fiction — it is the logical conclusion of the technology we are already deploying.
These forecasters don't all share the same incentives.
Who profits from the prediction? We have mapped the commercial interests behind the main AI forecasts →AI automation happens in both scenarios. What differs is who benefits from the productivity it creates.
The Citizens of Australia Dividend (COAD) is a fully costed proposal for a sovereign wealth fund that would return a structured share of AI's productivity gains to the Australians displaced by it. Its design draws on two working precedents: Alaska's Permanent Fund and Norway's Government Pension Fund.
COAD is funded from Australia's existing national wealth, AI productivity gains and government bonds, not by raising income taxes on ordinary Australians.
Payments go only to workers who have lost their jobs to AI automation and are actively seeking work or retraining. Built-in work incentives mean a job always pays more than COAD.
Payments start at $20,000/year in 2027 and rise to $35,000/year by 2041, increasing as AI displacement accelerates.
Developed by a volunteer team using peer-reviewed methodology. The model has a $91.3 billion annual capacity by 2041, $15.3 billion above projected demand. The demand side of that comparison is currently under review (see FAQ 1.5).
A universal basic income pays everyone, whatever their employment status. COAD pays only AI-displaced workers while they move into new work, and the model is designed so that working always pays significantly more than COAD.
Workplace AI governance is advancing, but it stops at the factory gate. COAD would provide the income support after displacement that existing measures do not.
The NSW Work Health and Safety Amendment (Digital Work Systems) Act 2026 governs how AI may be deployed in workplaces, protecting workers still in employment. It does not provide income for workers after displacement.
A national tripartite forum (government, unions and employers) is examining AI's workforce impacts. A union-backed think tank has called for mandatory AI consultation in workplaces. These instruments govern AI inside the workplace. None provides income after displacement.
COAD is designed to complement workplace AI governance. When workplace protections do not prevent displacement, COAD would provide the structured income support that lets workers retrain and re-enter the workforce with dignity.
COAD's model tracks five macroeconomic indicators over a 20-year horizon to estimate what AI automation does to an economy, and how a citizen dividend changes the outcome.
Each funding source has direct international precedent. No single source bears an unsustainable burden.
The COAD Policy Calculator lets you stress-test the main assumptions. Adjust AI displacement rates, payment levels, Future Fund returns and each funding pillar, and see in real time whether the model holds.
COAD is a volunteer initiative with no commercial interest, no funding and no lobby group behind it. We are ordinary Australians who think this matters, and we have been working to get governments to listen.
The Australian Government's National AI Plan (2025) acknowledges workforce transition under Action 5, with $47M in graduate programs and more than 150,000 AI microcredential course enrolments. These are starting points, but the Plan leaves four gaps:
The Plan does not name or quantify the occupational groups at greatest risk, so there is no way to measure whether investment is reaching those who need it most.
Reskilling pathways are necessary but insufficient. Workers displaced mid-career need income support while they navigate occupational change.
The Plan sets no measurable targets for the number of Australians to be retrained, nor timelines linked to the actual pace of AI adoption.
There is no monitoring framework linked to actual AI exposure data, even though the Anthropic Economic Index and similar datasets now make one possible.
In US data, AI is affecting entry points to careers before it shows up in redundancy statistics: youth hiring into exposed roles has slowed by ~14%, the earliest measurable signal so far. Australia has no equivalent data yet. DEWR's July 2026 monitoring report finds no broad AI-driven disruption in Australia to date, and COAD does not claim otherwise. The case for acting early is to prepare before the signal appears here. By the time aggregate unemployment rises significantly, the window to prevent the worst outcomes will have closed.
In November 2024, the Government confirmed the Future Fund will not be drawn down until at least 2032–33, and issued a new mandate directing it towards national priorities: energy, housing and infrastructure. Treasury projects the Fund will reach ~$380B by 2032–33. The Government itself described this as laying "the foundation for the Fund to become an enduring sovereign wealth fund for Australia."
This supports COAD's Pillar 1 design, in which the corpus is preserved and only returns are deployed. It also shows that sovereign wealth thinking at the federal level is no longer hypothetical.
Read the full policy validation →Claims on this site are sourced to peer-reviewed research, multilateral institutions, official statistics, news reporting or on-record public statements by named people. Figures derived by COAD are labelled as such.
The window to act is open, but it will not stay open. Here is what you can do now.
Ask them directly: does the Government have a plan for the Australians whose jobs AI is displacing? A constituent question is harder to ignore than a submission.
A short, personal email from a constituent carries real weight. Ask whether the Government is considering a sovereign wealth fund or equivalent mechanism for AI-displaced workers.
Share coad.life with friends, family, colleagues, union representatives, and local business owners. Awareness is the first step to political pressure.
Questions, media enquiries, or want to get involved?
greg@coad.lifeGreg Hoskin, COAD Initiative, Maroochydore QLD