Last updated: April 2026
Every piece here is drafted by a human editor first. AI turns up afterwards for the copy edit, and only for the copy edit. The editor reads the primary source, pulls the verified facts, writes the piece, and puts their name to it. That sequence is fixed.
How we work a story
We cover things that actually move household budgets and daily life in Australia. A Reserve Bank of Australia decision, a Services Australia or Centrelink eligibility change, a Fair Work ruling, an Australian Energy Regulator pricing step, an ATO tax calendar update, a Medicare bulk-billing change. The editor finds the story, opens the underlying release or legislation, and works from that.
The draft is written by hand against that source. Quotes are verbatim. Numbers and effective dates are exact. State names are exact. If a figure only appears in a secondary summary and we cannot find it in the primary document, the figure is cut or the paragraph is rewritten around what we can verify.
The sources we rely on are the gov.au domains (RBA, ABS, ATO, Services Australia, Fair Work Ombudsman, AER, state regulators such as ESC and IPART) and tier-1 Australian wire and mastheads (ABC News, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, AAP, Guardian Australia, SBS News, Sky News Australia, 9News). A story that cannot attach to one of these does not run.
Where AI comes in
After the editor finishes the draft, an AI copy editor runs a pass for grammar, flow, and obvious tightening. The editor accepts or rejects each suggestion. If a suggestion changes what a sentence means, it is rejected on principle. A copy edit is a copy edit.
The header image beside each story is generated by an image model, because we do not have staff photographers on every doorstep across the country. Every prompt we write forbids readable signage, storefront names, street-level logos, and faces that could be mistaken for a real person. The image is there to set a scene. It is not a record of the scene.
Our YouTube short version of a story uses a text-to-speech voice that reads the article itself. Before the clip goes live we diff the voice transcript against the article so nothing the voice says strays from what the editor wrote. Anything off gets re-generated or pulled.
What AI is not allowed to do here
- Write the article.That is the editor’s job, and it stays that way.
- Decide what we cover. Story selection, framing, attribution, balance, and sign-off are all human calls.
- Verify facts. Facts are verified by an editor against a named primary source before the piece is approved.
- Generate opinion or market calls. When we reference an analyst forecast, a market expectation, or a consensus estimate, it is attributed and labelled as a forecast. There is no AI-generated commentary or editorial on this site.
- Sign off on sensitive areas. Anything involving health, tax, superannuation, Centrelink, family payments, or legal thresholds is checked line by line against the authoritative source before it publishes.
The audit on every video
Video clips are put through an automated audit before release. Frames are sampled at regular intervals for visual review, the narration transcript is compared against the source script to catch any drift, and the on-screen hook text is checked for presence and timing. Anything that fails a check is held back. Our upload tool requires a passing audit file to exist before it will publish, so the check is a hard gate rather than a reminder.
Getting things wrong, and fixing them
We will get things wrong occasionally. When we do, the editor who wrote the piece is the one who fixes it. Email contact@trendingsheetau.com and we will correct the article, add a correction note with the date, and keep the original publication timestamp so readers can see what changed.
The short version
Human editors do the reporting. AI tightens the copy, illustrates the story, and narrates the video. Responsibility for every word on this site sits with a named editor, and any machine assistance is restricted to parts of production that do not require judgement.
The full editorial policy and source hierarchy live on the Editorial Standards page.