A federal member of parliament has invited Australia’s smart home and integration industry to bring him its positions on standards and certification, opening the door to formal collaboration between the sector and government for the first time.

Federal Member for Casey and Shadow Minister for Cyber Security, for the Digital Economy, and for Science, Technology and Innovation, Aaron Violo, made the invitation on the Master Integrator podcast this month. He’s the first sitting member of federal parliament to appear on the program.

Aaron says he prefers to work from the ground up rather than the top down and would rather the industry come to him with roundtables and consider positions than have rules written about the sector without it. He extended the invitation twice during the interview, once on standards and responsibility, and once on the difficulty of bringing a new product into Australia.

The opening matters because the groundwork has yet to be laid. Asked who’s accountable when a connected home is breached, the home owner, the installer or the supplier, Aaron says the question had been sitting on the periphery of his thinking and that Australia was probably not defining what correct looks like at the moment.

He’s direct about what he didn’t yet know and equally direct about wanting the industry to help him work it out.

Host Paul Skelton says the appearance followed approaches to dozens of federal members and senators across every major party and the crossbench over the past year. Aaron was the only one to accept.

Aaron also warns that connected technology risks following the path of social media, which he says swept over the country before anyone had worked out how to respond.

The conversation covers AI and where regulation should land, the skills pipeline for technically advanced trades and the blurring line between electricians, network technicians and integrators.

“For years this industry has said that nobody in Canberra is listening. This week, one of them was, and more than that, he asked us in. Aaron was open about what he didn’t yet know, which is worth far more to us than a set of announcements,” Paul says.

“He asked the industry to come to him with a position. That’s an opportunity we’ve never had before and now it’s on us to turn up with one.”