From firefighter to policy architect: how AI frees government affairs to shape better public policy for Australia

Three weeks ago I had lunch with a Government Relations Director at a Top 20 ASX resources company.

Brilliant guy. Fulbright Scholar. Twenty years navigating Canberra. The works.

Something wasn't right though. He looked exhausted. Not normal tired. The kind of tired that comes from months of grinding.

"How's it going?" I asked.

"Honestly? Drowning. I'm working till midnight most nights just to keep up."

Then I asked what he was working on.

His answer gutted me: "Stakeholder updates. Briefing packs. Monitoring reports. The usual."

"What about the Future Made in Australia policy? Your company could shape that."

Long pause.

"Yeah... I know. Just haven't had the bandwidth to get strategic on it yet."

That's when it hit me: Australia's policy outcomes aren't being shaped by who has the best ideas. They're being shaped by who's not too busy to show up.

Australia's policy deficit problem

Australia faces a policy development crisis that few recognise.

Major resource project approval times have blown out from an average of 18 months in 2005 to over 5 years today - and the delay has nothing to do with project complexity. Our policy-making machinery has become paralysed by process without substance.

Australia has fallen from 2nd to 14th in the Fraser Institute's mining investment attractiveness rankings over the past fifteen years, despite having the world's best critical minerals endowments.

Government Affairs leaders in resources hold exactly the expertise Australia needs to fix this: deep technical knowledge on energy transition pathways, practical insights on critical minerals development, real-world understanding of what policies actually enable responsible resource development. But that expertise never makes it into policy design because the current system buries these professionals in reactive work. The number of consultation processes has tripled since 2010, yet each one arrives as a short-deadline response task rather than an opportunity for proactive engagement.

As global competition for critical minerals investment intensifies, Australia is developing policy at exactly the moment when we need our most experienced industry voices at the table from day one, not scrambling to respond at day 89 of a 90-day consultation period.

What 20+ functional transformations have taught us

I've helped transform government affairs functions across Australian resources and energy companies, and led one myself. Five patterns keep appearing.

The reactive trap feeds itself. Government affairs leaders spend 70-80% of their time on reactive tasks, leaving 20-30% for strategic work. When I've mapped what "strategic work" actually means, it is often just "slightly more important reactive work." True policy development (scenario planning, coalition building, crafting proactive positions) was happening less than 5% of the time. The resources sector has deep expertise on Australia's critical policy challenges, but that expertise can't get into policy development when the people who have it are managing their inboxes.

The resistance to AI comes from professional identity. When we introduce AI solutions, we hear: "But stakeholders expect a personal touch," or "My value is in the relationships, AI completely misses that nuance so I can't trust it." Many government relations professionals have built their identity around being the person who knows everything and handles everything. AI threatens that self-concept, even when it would make them more effective. Australia's most experienced government relations professionals risk having their expertise become irrelevant before they deploy it on the policy challenges that matter most.

Small AI wins (particularly automation of manual, low value work) create momentum fast. Skeptical teams implement one small AI solution (usually automated media monitoring or regulatory tracking), it saves 3-4 hours per week, and suddenly the floodgates open. Within 60 days, those same skeptics identify five more automation opportunities. Australian resources companies that move first on AI-enabled government relations will have 12-18 months where they can shape policy conversations their competitors literally don't have time to engage in. One Queensland-based government affairs leader at a Top 30 resources company was spending 4 hours weekly manually monitoring Hansard and departmental consultation websites. Within three weeks of implementing automated monitoring, that reduced to 30 minutes. She used the freed time to systematically engage State Shadow Ministers over six months. After the election and change of government, her company had strategic access while competitors were still requesting introductory meetings, a four-month advantage on approval strategy that the CEO directly attributed to early ministerial relationships.

Freed-up time exposes an uncomfortable truth. When we create 15-20 hours per week through AI automation, many government relations leaders initially struggle to use that time strategically. They've spent years in reactive mode and have forgotten what proactive policy engagement looks like. Australia's government affairs capability has been atrophying under the weight of reactive work and the preparation of mundane briefings, pointless CRM updates and unscientific stakeholder maps all designed to placate more senior executives. But once that time gets freed up and strategic muscles get rebuilt, we see functions that can genuinely shape better policy outcomes. They move from policy recipients to policy architects.

Time savings matter less than new possibilities. Six months into transformation, leaders never cite efficiency as the real value. They talk about opportunities they can now say "yes" to: leading industry coalitions on critical minerals policy, participating in multi-month consultation processes, developing proactive positions on energy transition. Australia faces complex, long-timeline policy challenges that require sustained, sophisticated engagement from industry. These challenges demand the kind of multi-year, multi-stakeholder strategic engagement that only happens when government relations leaders have the capacity for it.

The transformation sequence matters: eliminate work that shouldn't exist first, creating breathing room. Then automate what remains, compounding capacity gains. Only then can strategic frameworks take hold, because trying to add strategic work on top of maxed capacity fails every time. Most transformation approaches try to add the new without removing the old. That's why they fail. The government affairs leaders who've successfully shifted from firefighting to strategic architecture removed work first, automated second, and elevated third. That sequence - eliminate, automate, elevate - addresses the structural problem that prevents strategic positioning: lack of capacity.

The path forward

The practical applications are straightforward: AI can automate regulatory monitoring, draft briefing packs, handle routine correspondence, analyse media coverage, and track meeting actions - typically freeing up 15-20 hours per week. But the strategic implication is profound: this isn't about working less or cutting jobs, it's about finally having the capacity to do the work that matters.

Australia needs better resources sector policy. We need sophisticated input on critical minerals development that balances economic opportunity with environmental stewardship. We need practical pathways for energy transition that protect regional jobs while meeting climate commitments. We need Indigenous partnership models that create genuine economic participation.

The expertise to shape these outcomes exists in government affairs teams across Australian resources companies. The question is whether these leaders will embrace the tools that let them finally deploy that expertise where it matters most, or whether Australia's policy will continue being shaped by whoever's not too exhausted to show up.