Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automated Decision Making (ADM) are quietly shaping decisions across New Zealand’s public sector - from healthcare spending to social welfare decisions to triaging grant applications to supporting policing and justice processes.
New Zealand only scored 27.33 out of 100 in the Global Index on Responsible AI. 81% of New Zealanders believe that AI regulation is required. Our current safeguards are mostly voluntary, and most of us don't have time to file Official Information Act requests for details.
We deserve to know when AI is being used, how well these systems work, and how to challenge unfair decisions. Sign the petition now to demand mandatory transparency registers, independent ethical oversight, and public input to acceptable use cases of AI in government.
That the House of Representatives legislate to require:
1. a public register of government AI systems’ function, performance, and impacts;
2. formal oversight mechanisms for government AI use, proportional to risk; and
3. involvement of the public in a deliberation process to define acceptable risk and use of AI in government systems.
It turns out when you file a petition with Parliament, the petition itself can only be 300 characters long! So on this website, we are sharing the rest of our thinking about the what and the why.
We can't ask questions about these AI systems if we don't know they exist! A centralised, plain-language public register means that we can know when and how AI is affecting our lives. If a machine informs a decision about our welfare, tax, or legal rights, that system's functionality and performance should be a matter of public record. See this page for more detail about this idea.
Decisions made by government agencies matter because they can have a big impact on our lives. We need to understand how AI will affect these decisions before the systems are launched. We also need ongoing monitoring after the systems are launched.
New Zealand has some frameworks and toolkits already, but these are voluntary and very few completed assessments have been published. We are okay with the strength of the oversight being proportional to the level of risk - no one is worried about spellcheck, but we are definitely worried about biometrics and automated decision making. See this page for more details about this idea.
What uses of AI are the New Zealand public okay with? What risks are people most worried about, and what trade-offs are people willing to make to get the public services they want?
We don't know, because the government hasn't asked us. We haven't had the sort of national conversation needed to understand what New Zealanders really want. We need dedicated resources for public engagement and consultation. This will help to align our use of AI with our Aotearoa New Zealand context.
If AI is the defining technology of our time, then all of us should have a say in how it is used. See this page for more details about this idea.
This petition is not calling for a ban on the use of AI by the public sector. AI is a powerful technology, but it's not perfect today (and it may never be). We want trustworthy use of AI - that is AI built responsibly and used in safe ways. It must be AI that is proven to be worthy of our trust. Having the right transparency and oversight mechanisms in place, informed by the public's views about AI, gives the public sector the right boundaries to use AI with confidence and public support.
Get 10,000 signatures before the petition closes on 30 September
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Present the petition to Parliament in early 2027
Achieve legislative change and funding to build trust in government use of AI
New Zealand government agencies are rapidly adopting automated decision-making (ADM) and artificial intelligence (AI) tools. They are mostly doing this to improve efficiency. While technology can enhance public services, the use of these tools without robust safeguards creates risks. It could bake in bias, compromise privacy, and erode the fundamental trust between the people and the state.
Overseas experiments with these technologies have shown what can go wrong when it is not implemented well. The Robodebt scheme in Australia caused 470,000 incorrect debt notices to be sent by a computer system. This led to severe distress and even a few deaths. The Dutch Tax Authority used AI to detect fraud in childcare allowances. This disproportionately targeted low-income households and individuals with a foreign or dual nationality. Over 35,000 parents saw their subsidies abruptly and incorrectly cut. Here in New Zealand, systems like Novopay demonstrate how our government's use of automation can go wrong.
Currently, the public sector relies on voluntary frameworks like the Algorithm Charter for Aotearoa New Zealand. These are well-intentioned, but voluntary guidelines are no longer enough to manage the complex, high-stakes realities of modern machine learning and generative AI models. We need new laws with enforceable accountability to ensure that AI is working for us, not happening to us.
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