The Pearcey Oration is presented each year by an eminent expert.
The oration is an opportunity to explore, in depth, critical contemporary issues arising from the introduction and adoption of new and advanced technologies into our society.
On Wednesday 8th September at Melbourne Connect, 700 Swanston Street, Carlton, the 2026 Pearcey Oration, the most significant technology oration in the nation, was delivered by Aidan Tudehope.
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Creating Sovereign Capability: Why Australia Must Lead, Not Inherit, AI
In his 2026 Pearcey Oration, Aidan Tudehope highlighted Australia’s critical inflection point as artificial intelligence shifts from basic text chat to autonomous agentic systems driving real economic transformation. Drawing on macroeconomic data showing AI investments sustaining national GDP growth, Tudehope argued that Australia must build sovereign compute infrastructure, secure domestic data control, and actively shape AI policy rather than remaining a passive offshore consumer.
Inspired by Dr. Trevor Pearcey, who boldly drove Australia to the global forefront of computing with CSIRAC in 1949, Aidan's address made the case for national ambition over passive adoption.
Every major industrial shift has presented Australia with a choice: remain a passive consumer or step up as an active architect of our future. As Artificial Intelligence redefines the global economy, we have arrived at another pivotal moment - where today’s decisions will echo for generations.
Beyond personal productivity gains, forward-thinking Australian industries are already leveraging AI to redefine what is possible and reshape traditional sectors. While we must address the essential social considerations and guardrails of transformative tech, caution alone cannot be our strategy. Backed by world-class talent, cutting-edge R&D, and an unshakeable pioneering spirit, Australia is primed to innovate rather than merely consume - to shape AI rather than simply inherit AI.
An uplifting, forward-looking oration on why Australia must claim its place as a global leader in the AI age.
Key Insights:
- Evolution to Agentic AI: AI is transitioning from conversational chat interfaces (e.g. ChatGPT) to autonomous agentic systems that break down multi-step tasks, interact across enterprise software, and execute complex workflows independently.
- Macroeconomic & Productivity Driver: Australian quarterly GDP growth (+0.3%) would have been negative without the +0.5% economic contribution from AI compute and data center investments, which offset a -1.8% contraction in non-tech private business investment.
- Sovereign Capability & Geopolitical Risk: Relying exclusively on offshore models exposes Australia to international trade frictions, GPU export controls, rare earth constraints, and sudden unilateral withdrawals of frontier AI models.
- Three Pillars of Sovereignty: National tech sovereignty requires domestic data and IP jurisdiction, local physical infrastructure (data centers, GPUs, storage), and resilient supply chains.
- Niche Focus over Mega-LLMs: Australia does not need to build expensive mega-LLMs to achieve sovereignty; instead, it should target high-value, domain-specific AI capabilities across university and commercial sectors.
- Inverting Operational Efficiency: In Macquarie Technology Group's cyber security operations, an AI digital twin processing 10 million events per minute inverted analyst time from spending 80% on data gathering to spending 80% on decision-making and action.
- Infrastructure & Energy Imperative: High-density AI racks drawing up to 200kW require rapid renewable power integration, positioning data centers and compute capacity as critical national utility infrastructure.
- Balanced Regulatory Guardrails: Governments must establish guardrails to manage systemic risks without creating overly burdensome regulations that smother local start-up innovation and drive capital offshore.
- Preserving Foundational Education: University education remains vital not for teaching prompt syntax, but for instilling structured discipline, problem-solving, and analytical thinking.
About the Orator
The 2026 Pearcey Oration was delivered by Aidan Tudehope. Aidan co-founded the Macquarie Technology Group with his brother David, and has served on its board since 16 July 1992, a tenure of more than three decades that few people in Australian technology can match.
As Managing Director of the Hosting Group (Cloud Services & Government and Data Centres), he drives growth, operational excellence, cyber security leadership and an uncompromising standard of customer satisfaction. He heads the Government business unit, where Macquarie's Secure Government Cloud and Cyber Security offerings have set the benchmark for protecting the nation's most sensitive data.
Previously, as Chief Operating Officer of the Macquarie Technology Group, Aidan shaped the strategy and direction of the Hosting business from the ground up — beginning with the opening of Intelli-centre 1 in 2001, the Group's first data centre and one of Australia's most established — and he was the architect of Macquarie Technology's data networking strategy.
In 2023, his contribution was recognised with the Pearcey Medal,
the Australian ICT industry’s most prestigious individual accolade for lifetime achievement.
The 2026 Pearcey Oration and the 2026 Victorian Pearcey Entrepreneur Award are a flagship event of Innovation Week.
The 2026 Pearcey Oration and the 2026 Victorian Pearcey Entrepreneur Award were supported by Melbourne Connect.