National AI Plan the current Commonwealth AI policy frame

Why it matters for NETEVO

Australia's National AI Plan, released on 2 December 2025, is the Commonwealth's overarching statement of AI policy direction — and the natural anchor point for any NETEVO citation to where AU national AI policy is heading.

The current Commonwealth policy frame. The Plan is organised around three goals: capture the opportunities, spread the benefits, and keep Australians safe. It sits above the National AI Centre's Guidance for AI Adoption — the Plan sets the policy direction, and the six essential practices are how organisations deliver against it. For boards, it is the most authoritative single statement of the Government's intended trajectory.

A signal of returning regulatory intent. After the Government confirmed it would not proceed with the proposed mandatory AI guardrails, the "keep Australians safe" goal recommits to legislative and regulatory frameworks to mitigate AI harms, and funds a new AI Safety Institute (AUD 29.9 million, to be established in early 2026) to monitor, test and share information on AI capabilities, risks and harms. NETEVO surfaces citing the AU regulatory direction now anchor to this Plan rather than to the discontinued guardrails proposal.

Where it sits in the AU stack. The Plan is the policy frame above the National Framework for the Assurance of AI in Government and the National AI Centre's essential-practices guidance, and it completes the lineage running from the 2019 AI Ethics Principles through the 2024 Voluntary AI Safety Standard. Citing the Plan as the policy frame and the Guidance for AI Adoption as the operational form gives a single, current AU policy-to-practice pairing.