🔊 1. The Echo You Can’t Un-Hear
In 1983, BHP closed its Newcastle steelworks. 4,000 men lost jobs overnight. The nation’s op-ed pages shrugged: “Adapt or die.”
Fast-forward forty years. Same script, different pronouns. AI is gutting compliance, HR, media and university-admin layers that Australia imported from the US after 2008.
📊 2. The Numbers, Stripped of Romance
(2024 ABS, DEWR, NTEU unless stated)
- 🏛 Federal Public Service: 165,000 “policy, program & corporate” roles → 61% female
- 🎓 Higher-Ed Admin Bloat: 82,000 FTEs (↑110% since 2008) → 67% female
- 🏢 Corporate HR/ESG: ASX-200 employs ~19,000 “People & Culture” FTEs → 71% female
AI replacement scoreboard (pilot data – Atlassian, CBA, WooliesX):
- 🗂 HR policy drafts → 94% auto-complete accuracy
- 🌱 ESG reports → 97% accuracy
- 🏫 University “student experience” memos → 95% accuracy
💬 Translation: The same algorithmic axe that levelled American assembly lines is now aimed at Australia’s pink-collar towers.
🐊 3. Déjà Vu, With a Croc-Tear Soundtrack
1980–2010:
- ⚙️ Male-dominated manufacturing collapses.
- 📢 National response: “Move to the mines, learn a trade.”
2025:
- 🗃 Female-dominated compliance-media complex collapses.
- 🏛 National response: Senate inquiry into “AI-driven gendered displacement.”
📈 Google Trends AU:
- Searches for “women losing jobs to AI” → ↑ 470% since Jan.
⚔️ 4. What the Axe Will Look Like
Phase 1 (now): ASX-200 CFOs quietly freezing HR headcount.
Phase 2 (Budget 2026): Treasury’s razor-gang “re-aligns” APS corporate roles → 12–15k redundancies.
Phase 3 (2027): Unis adopt UK’s “2:1 student-staff ratio” → 18k positions gone.
💵 Total bill: ~AUD $5.9B in annual salary savings.
📈 The market calls it productivity gain.
🩸 Markets are amnesiac sociopaths. They levelled male factory towns without a tear; they will level female compliance towers the same way.
