MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Ms STEGGALL (Warringah) (15:16): AI data centres are not just warehouses full of servers. They are the physical infrastructure of the future economy. Like all transformative technology, AI presents extraordinary opportunities alongside significant risks that must be managed.
Data centres draw on our energy system, water resources and local communities. If global hyperscalers want access to Australian resources, they must help build the clean energy, transmission and water infrastructure their projects depend upon. The government's data centre voluntary expectations document is a start, but expectations are simply not enough.
They should be mandatory, enforceable and transparent. AI is often viewed as software, but the technology that enables it has profound impacts on the physical world. Demand is accelerating rapidly as generative AI expands and more advanced, agentic systems emerge.
This presents a genuine opportunity for Australia. We have abundant renewable resources and world-class research institutions. If AI infrastructure is built here, we gain a seat at the table where the rules, standards and governance frameworks of the AI age are being written, rather than leaving those decisions to others in other nations.
The risks are equally real. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has warned data centres could account for up to 11 per cent of Australia's electricity consumption by 2035. Without matching investment in new generation, storage and transmission, households and businesses will face higher costs and our net zero ambitions will become harder to achieve.
Communities are also raising legitimate concerns about land use, noise and environmental impacts. The key question is whether Australia is prepared to set the rules before the concrete is poured on new centres and the cables are laid. There currently are simply insufficient protections in place for Australian communities.
The government's expectations document points in the right direction, but it is an expectations document. It has no bite and no real strength to it. It doesn't actually provide any protections to the Australian people.
Major AI data centres should proceed only where developers can demonstrate they will bring the necessary infrastructure with them. Households should not subsidise hyperscalers. This debate is also about more than just energy, water and planning approvals.
The other question is of sovereignty and the right to scrape public data and make sure that appropriate remuneration and sovereign control over our Australian data is ensured. Foreign laws such as the US CLOUD Act can extend beyond national borders. Australia should welcome AI investment, but critical data and infrastructure must remain governed by Australian law.
This means stronger standards, audit rights and encryption controls. AI is also built on data, much of it created through human effort—journalism, writing, creative, music, film, image and culture. A practical licensing or levy framework can support innovation while ensuring that creators share in the value they help generate.
We cannot let this become another situation where an Australian resource—our public data—is used for profit by others without proper remuneration domestically. So, that practical licensing or levy framework must be established. As a high-skill, service based economy, Australia is particularly exposed to AI-driven disruption across professional industries.
If we get this wrong—and this is on the Albanese government—productivity gains will flow to a smaller number of global technology companies while Australian workers carry the disruption. The challenge of AI is that, by the time regulators understand today's technology, tomorrow's technology has already arrived. We should be honest that the social impacts of AI are not yet fully knowable.
AI will affect more than productivity. It will shape how people learn, work, trust, form relationships and participate in civic life. The lesson from social media is that a non-independent AI Safety Institute with inadequate separation from the department of industry and far less technical expertise than its US and UK counterparts leaves Australia dangerously exposed.
That is why Australia must ensure that the AI age is built on our terms, with safeguards and for our people, not just focusing, as I understand the minister has, in roundtables, on seeking to ensure investment but not the protections necessary for the Australian people.