MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (17:49): Our country is facing yet another crisis brought to us by the billionaires, and the Labor government doesn't seem interested at all in doing anything about it. In fact, they welcome it. How we deal with AI goes to the heart of who controls information, who controls resources and what kind of a society, an economy and a world we want to live in.

Things aren't looking good. The massive data centres used by AI corporations have an insatiable thirst for our water. They are energy vampires, and they will drive up carbon emissions and power prices.

It's no wonder communities across this country are organising to resist them. Even more than the environmental damage, it is the AI business model that seeks unprecedented control. It will only deepen the pockets of the so-called 'big five'—Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Meta.

They are tax dodgers who contribute virtually nothing to Australia while extracting billions from us. AI has powered up a new class of oligarchs. It sucks dry our water and energy, hollows out our jobs and steals from our artists, writers, thinkers and musicians.

What is hidden and what is amplified is entirely up to these billionaires. Do we really trust Elon Musk's Grok to tell us the truth about the far right trashing our democracy? Do we really trust OpenAI to tell us the truth about the wars its own technology is now fighting?

This economy is built on the billionaires' terms to transfer wealth upwards and smash the rest of us in the process. 'Wait and see' isn't good enough. We need a moratorium on data centres, and we need to properly regulate these capitalist nightmares.