A fully costed, evidence-based framework to ensure every Australian shares in the prosperity that AI creates — not just those who own it.
Artificial intelligence is not a future workforce risk — it is a present-tense economic event. Unlike previous waves of technological change, AI displaces cognitive labour across skill levels simultaneously, compressing the timeframe in which workers and policy systems can adapt. Filing clerks, customer service operators, administrative assistants, and mid-level knowledge workers are already experiencing measurable employment softening.
The question is not whether this transition will occur. It is whether Australia builds the policy architecture to manage it justly — or allows the gains to accrue exclusively to capital while workers bear the cost of displacement alone.
AI is a tsunami that is building in the global economy. On average 40% of jobs are touched by AI — either enhanced or scrapped, or changed quite significantly. We need to prepare now or we will be overwhelmed.
— Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund — World Economic Forum, Davos, January 2026Many workers never got back to a position comparable to the one they had previously enjoyed, within their lifetime. They were treated as disposable. Cast onto the scrap heap.
— The Hon Amanda Rishworth MP, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, AFR Workforce Summit, 28 April 2026 — describing the consequences of the Industrial Revolution's displacement of skilled weaversThe Profit Paradox is the central macroeconomic risk that current Government policy does not address. It operates as follows: AI automation reduces labour costs, initially lifting corporate profits. But if displaced workers have no structural income replacement, household purchasing power declines at scale. As consumer spending contracts, demand for the goods and services those same companies produce collapses. Corporate profits — initially elevated — ultimately follow consumer income downward.
This is not a theoretical projection. It is a mechanism that has operated in every prior wave of major labour displacement. Australia's productivity growth over the past two decades has not translated into proportional wage growth — labour's share of national income has declined materially even before AI accelerates this trend.
Without a structural mechanism to ensure displaced workers receive income — not charity, but a share of the productivity gains their displacement enabled — the transition destroys the economic foundation it was meant to strengthen.
The Government's National AI Plan and the newly established AI Employment and Workplaces Forum represent genuine progress. But five structural gaps remain unaddressed:
✔ Commonwealth policy gap confirmed — 28 April 2026
At the AFR Workforce Summit in Sydney on 28 April 2026, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations — the Hon Amanda Rishworth MP — delivered the Commonwealth's most developed public statement on AI and work to date. The Minister confirmed a newly elevated tripartite AI Employment and Workplaces Forum at ministerial level and a departmental gap analysis of whether workplace laws are fit for AI, while describing the Commonwealth's policy toolkit as industrial relations, retraining, reskilling, redeployment, and employment services. No post-displacement income-support instrument was identified anywhere in the policy set. This is the most current primary Commonwealth source confirming each of the five gaps below. Source: Ministers' Media Centre (DEWR), ministers.dewr.gov.au.
The entire Government response is employer-led: employers upskill, employers redeploy, employers share gains. There is no mechanism for workers displaced by entire industries — where no employer remains to redeploy them.
Government policy states that workers "should" share in productivity gains through pay rises. There is no tax instrument, levy, or legal obligation that ensures this occurs rather than gains being retained as corporate profit.
Current policy focuses on individual workers and individual firms. No policy instrument addresses the systemic macroeconomic risk of suppressed purchasing power undermining the broader economy.
Policy focuses on students entering VET/TAFE and workers redeployable within their current employer. A 52-year-old filing clerk displaced from a role that will not recover has no viable retraining pathway within a practical timeframe.
The Forum, gap analysis, and tripartite dialogue contain no quantified targets, no timelines, and no consequences if the process produces no outcome for workers.
The Citizens of Australia Dividend is a Sovereign Wealth Fund mechanism that captures a portion of the productivity gains generated by AI-driven automation and redistributes them as a direct dividend to Australian workers — prioritising those most affected by displacement.
It is not a welfare payment. It is a productivity dividend: a share of the gains that workers' displacement made possible, returned to those who bore the cost of generating them.
| Indicator (2026–2046) | Without COAD | With COAD |
|---|---|---|
| Labour Costs (employer) | Decline sharply as AI replaces workers | Moderate decline; offset by dividend contributions |
| Corporate Profits | Initial spike, then collapse as demand falls | Sustainable growth as consumer spending is maintained |
| Worker Income | Structural decline for displaced cohorts | Stabilised by Citizen Dividend; grows with fund |
| Investment Returns | Volatile; undermined by demand collapse | Steady; SWF provides counter-cyclical buffer |
| Purchasing Power | Deteriorates; Profit Paradox takes hold | Maintained; economy avoids deflationary spiral |
Levied on firms that realise measurable labour cost reductions attributable to AI-driven automation. Scales with the quantum of displacement.
Capitalises the fund in its early years via long-dated sovereign bonds, serviced by AI Productivity Tax receipts as they grow.
Leverages Australia's existing sovereign wealth infrastructure — the Future Fund — as an investment and governance vehicle.
Australia has the sovereign balance sheet, the existing Future Fund infrastructure, and the policy precedent to implement this model. The incremental step required is the political commitment to direct a portion of AI-generated productivity toward the Australians whose displacement generated it.
Annual dividend paid to every Alaskan resident from oil revenue — $1,000 per person in 2025 (legislated, paid Oct 2025); $1,702 per person in 2024. Operating since 1982.
US$2.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund funded from petroleum revenues — the world's largest. Regarded as the global gold standard for resource-to-citizen wealth transfer.
Universal credits paid directly to citizens for skills development — funded by the state as a structural investment in workforce transition.
✔ Decision: Central Scenario Adopted as Operative Planning Baseline — 20 May 2026
In May 2026 COAD commissioned an independent stress-test of the funding model (the V-7 package) against the forecast published on 16 May 2026 by Mustafa Suleyman (CEO, Microsoft AI), that AI will reach human-level performance on most professional tasks within 18 months. On 20 May 2026, Greg Hopper, COAD Initiative Director, adopted the central displacement scenario as the operative planning baseline, on the basis of convergent evidence from seven independent senior forecasters. The low scenario is retained as the downside sensitivity. Documents updated: INI-004 v5.6, FIN-001 v2.6, PSR-001 v1.3, INI-002 v3.3, Ministerial Brief v5.9.
The Suleyman forecast is not an isolated view. Seven independent signals now converge on a 2027–2028 displacement-onset window:
This convergence does not mean the fastest scenario is certain. It means COAD can no longer be characterised as planning for a speculative future event. The displacement-onset window is now externally supported by the most senior named AI-corporate forecasters available.
| Scenario | Year 1 Recipients | Year 15 Buffer | First Breach | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central — Operative baseline ✔ Adopted 20 May 2026 |
~1.93M | −31.3% | Year 2 (2028) → trigger active |
Suleyman + Altman + Stanford + NY Fed + Mercer convergence; 2× Year 1 acceleration. Adopted as operative planning baseline 20 May 2026 (Greg Hopper, COAD Initiative Director). |
| Low — Downside sensitivity Formerly operative baseline |
962,500 | +11.6% | None | Productivity Commission; IMF/WEF; retained as downside sensitivity per INI-004 v5.6 |
| High — Boundary condition | ~3.85M | −42.3% | Year 1 (2027) | Suleyman literal; Mercer 1-in-5 applied to exposed sectors; no adoption lag |
The stress-test finding is not a reason to oppose COAD — it is a reason to strengthen its design. If anything, the central scenario validates the urgency of COAD more strongly: faster displacement means the need for an income floor is more acute, not less.
The COAD funding model (FIN-001 v2.6) includes a trigger-based recalibration mechanism, activated automatically if Year 1 enrolments reach 1.5 million:
The trigger does not require new legislation. It operates within existing Pillar 2 rate-band authority and the AOFM bond-issuance mandate.
COAD is a volunteer initiative with no commercial interest in the outcome. We are asking for three things from the Australian Government:
1. A substantive written response to the five policy gaps identified above — specifically whether any structural income-sharing or productivity-capture mechanism is under consideration within the National AI Plan or the AI Employment and Workplaces Forum's mandate.
2. A briefing opportunity — either with the relevant Minister or with departmental officers responsible for AI workforce policy — to present the COAD framework and its evidentiary basis for formal consideration.
3. Inclusion in the Forum's scope — that the AI Employment and Workplaces Forum explicitly examine structural productivity-sharing mechanisms, including sovereign wealth fund models, as part of its five-theme agenda.
The full COAD framework, evidence base, economic modelling, and policy proposals are available on our website. We welcome engagement from policymakers, researchers, unions, and community members.