STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator DAVID POCOCK (Australian Capital Territory—Independent ACT Whip) (13:53): A recent Knight Frank report ranked Australia second globally for data centre investment, yet our government is yet to put in place effective regulatory and tax settings to protect Australians from the risks and from demands on water and energy and to capture the benefits from tax to local content requirements and computing power.

While France and the UK now have digital services taxes in place that deliver roughly $1 billion to $1½ billion a year to their respective budgets, the Australian government seems content to let the global hyperscalers set up here but take their profits offshore. We looked ready to repeat exactly the same mistakes we made with gas: big multinationals are coming here and telling us how much they're investing and how great it's going to be for the future of our country, but at the end of the day we're paying international prices for our gas, we're constantly being told that we have a shortage of gas here in Australia despite being one of the biggest gas exporters in the world and we aren't getting a fair return.

We cannot allow this same mistake to be made when it comes to data centres. There's no plan, there's no coordination, and there's precious little transparency for this burgeoning new industry. As of the 31 March 2026, Australia had 162 operational data centres and 90 proposed data centres, but it seems like there's no information about where they're going to be, what sort of energy they'll use or where they'll get their water.

How can we have adequate oversight when this is the case? What is the government doing to ensure that local Australian businesses will have access to compute? What are they doing to ensure that these big multinationals, who are experts in profit shifting, will actually pay tax here in Australia, where they are benefiting from the use of our resources?

We cannot make the same mistakes. Unfortunately, it seems like the Albanese Labor government is heading in that direction.