Council backs AI push, framing moment as Melbourne’s “fork in the road”

The City of Melbourne has backed a new push to prepare the city for the workforce disruption and economic opportunities created by generative AI, after councillors supported a motion from Cr Andrew Rowse at the Future Melbourne Committee on May 5.

Describing the issue as a “fork in the road moment” for Melbourne, Cr Rowse said the city was uniquely exposed to the impacts of AI, but also better placed than most to seize the benefits if governments, industry and the education sector acted quickly and strategically.

The motion, which was seconded by Deputy Lord Mayor Roshena Campbell, starts from a stark premise: Melbourne’s status as a knowledge and innovation economy leaves it especially vulnerable to the structural changes now being driven by generative AI.

The motion noted that while the City of Melbourne accounts for 22.3 per cent of Greater Melbourne’s workforce, it contains a much larger share of workers in the sectors most exposed to AI, including 69.5 per cent of finance and insurance workers, 48.8 per cent of media and telecommunications workers, and 45 per cent of professional, scientific and technical services workers.

It also acknowledges that the rapid adoption of generative AI is creating both productivity gains and significant workforce transition risks, particularly for highly skilled professionals whose roles are being reshaped or displaced.

Speaking to the motion, Cr Rowse said the warning signs were already clear.

We’ve seen nearly 5000 tech jobs lost this year alone in Australia, and the quirk of this is this is not because companies are failing, this is the opposite. This is because companies are succeeding with fewer and fewer people because of things like AI, he said.

He argued that the debate should not only be about retraining the “average worker”, but about how Melbourne could turn a growing pool of displaced skilled workers into an engine for new start-ups, venture creation and higher-productivity jobs.

“This is Melbourne’s fork in the road moment and opportunity,” he said.

The motion asks the Lord Mayor to write to the Victorian Government seeking advice on how AI-related workforce transition and skills programs can be strengthened for Melbourne’s knowledge-intensive workers and adapted to encourage start-up formation.

It also calls for the City of Melbourne to jointly host a roundtable with the state government involving industry, business, start-ups and the education sector to help build a more coordinated response. In addition, it seeks engagement with the federal government on its Generative AI Capacity Study and on efforts to mitigate the employment impacts of AI.

Cr Campbell strongly supported the motion, calling AI “perhaps the most significant challenge facing industry, policy at the moment and policy more broadly”.

She said the issue for Melbourne was not only how to create employment pathways for workers whose roles were changing, but how to ensure the city captured the productivity gains and economic upside that AI could bring.

An amendment from Cr Rafael Camillo sought to go further by asking management to prepare its own report into strategies and frameworks to support small and micro-businesses in adopting AI. While there was broad sympathy for the intent, Cr Rowse did not support it, arguing the City of Melbourne’s comparative strength was in convening the right experts rather than attempting to answer such a fast-moving and technically complex issue alone.

“I would argue our area of expertise is convening and bringing people together,” he said.

The amendment was defeated, but the substantive motion then passed unanimously.

The result leaves Melbourne formally positioning itself not just as a city at risk from AI-led disruption, but as one trying to shape the response. And in a knowledge economy as concentrated as Melbourne’s, councillors made clear they believe that response cannot wait.  •