At TACSI, we’ve spent the last 15 years unlocking innovation to support people and communities realise their potential. We partner with communities, NGOs, philanthropy and government across Australia to bring innovation to areas including social cohesion, loneliness, housing, mental health, family domestic and sexual violence, and entrenched disadvantage.
We welcome the Albanese government’s bold and refreshing definition of productivity as something innovative, dynamic and ultimately concerned with making people better off over time. As Australia’s national centre for social innovation, we promote and engage in practices that are future focused, complexity aware and involve the active participation of all Australians (especially those experiencing marginalisation) in decision-making.
We commend the Albanese government's commitment to liberal democratic politics in the format of roundtables and the inclusion of voices from civil society, alongside experts, in these discussions. We know that their inclusion strengthens democracy.
In response to this, we have two recommendations for the Australian government:
Recommendation one
The Albanese government participates in the 2026 Future of Human–Machine Collaboration Network being facilitated by The Australian Centre for Social Innovation in order to inform national aspirations and guardrails for adopting AI in ways that address inequality.
AI presents a profound opportunity – and risk – for Australia’s productivity and wellbeing. Whether AI enhances wellbeing, lifts people out of disadvantage or puts more people into it will depend on how we, as a nation, engage with it. At the heart of this challenge is the way Australians choose to collaborate with machines: how we design, regulate, and embed AI in the lives of workers, children, and communities. Given the speed with which AI is advancing, and already being adopted the need for an informed conversation is urgent.
The future of human–machine collaboration in Australia must be shaped not solely by technology experts, but by society as a whole. This requires a careful process. Such a process would help define the infrastructure, policy, guidelines and experiments needed to create a future in which AI contributes positively to productivity and social outcomes. It would explore not just how machines serve us, but how we shape the norms, ethics, and institutions that govern their use.
In 2026, TACSI will run the Future of Human–Machine Collaboration Network, part of the National Futures Initiative, and funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation. Our recommendation is that the Albanese government participation in this network, which will be grounded in deliberative, imaginative, and just engagement processes – not limited to consultation with technology experts alone, but inclusive of civil society, community voices and lived experiences, including from groups often marginalised. As part of their participation, the government should consider how to support the take up of AI across Australia in a way that enhances cohesion, wellbeing and quality of life across Australian communities, rather than the opposite.
You can read more about the National Futures Initiative here
Recommendation two
The Albanese government adopts a social R&D approach to 1) break unproductive cycles of fail → review → reform → repeat in major issue areas including ageing, mental health and 2) develop innovative responses to new areas of focus, such as social cohesion and loneliness. This should be informed by the work done by the Social R&D Partnership to define what a Social R&D for Australia is.
Around 40% of Australia’s national budget is directed to welfare, social and community services – investments aimed at improving both wellbeing and economic participation. Yet many parts of the social sector remain trapped in cycles of fail → review → reform → repeat. We see this in areas like mental health, domestic and family violence, and child protection, where costly reforms often fail to leave people better off.
The Australian science and business community regularly laments the nation's low per-capita investment in R&D. However, lack of investment in R&D is even more dire in the social sector. There are no dedicated funding mechanisms, tax incentives, or long-term R&D strategies to support innovation in social services. This is a missed opportunity.
TACSI’s work – and that of our partners – suggests that systematic Social R&D could unlock transformative approaches to longstanding challenges, improving both wellbeing and economic outcomes. R&D systems could be developed to make progress on longstanding challenges such as ageing, mental health and new areas of focus such as social cohesion and loneliness.
International examples show what’s possible. In Canada, the government has embedded an R&D function within its Youth Employment and Skills Strategy, a multi-million-dollar fund to improve employment outcomes for young people. We believe a similar model could be adopted in Australia. This is explored in our Social R&D paper, developed with RMIT University, The Smith Family and Equity Trustees.
Our recommendation is that the Australian Government support the development of a coordinated national approach to Social R&D, enabling the social sector to systematically innovate, test and scale solutions that work—just as we do in other productivity-critical sectors.
You can read more about Social R&D and this document developed with the Social R&D Partnership White Paper here, which Cambridge University said described ‘the next phase of public service reform’.