MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Senator DAVID POCOCK (Australian Capital Territory—Independent ACT Whip) (17:51): Well, the Labor government tells us that we should just open our arms to these big multinationals with some statements of expectations on a website because, if we don't, we won't be shaping the future of AI. But the problem with that is that the government seems to have no actual intent to shape the future of AI.

After years of work on AI Safety Act, it was scrapped. After months of work setting up an expert body to advise on AI, it was scrapped. We have this hands-off approach—no safeguards on AI—and, when it comes to data centres, a statement of expectations on a website about which the CEO of one of the biggest data centre companies in Australia told Alan Kirkland on a podcast that those are basically just the rules as they currently stand and as they exist at the moment and that there's nothing new in there.

I'm concerned we're not planning for this. We're not talking about the difference between sovereign Australian owned data centres that keep the data here and that are servicing Australian banks, government and researchers and these big multinational hyperscalers who want to come here on their terms, use our resources and not pay tax. We're not hearing anything from the government about something like a digital services tax.

We're not hearing anything about the need for some sort of compute reservation policy. It's not like gas where we're paying international prices to access compute in our own data centres. These are the things that we need to plan for.

I welcome this from the Greens. This is something we should be talking about because there are hundreds of billions of dollars of investment flowing towards Australia. We hold some cards here.

We should be setting the terms and ensuring that Australians now and future generations of Australians do benefit from this, rather than just saying, 'Well, if we don't just roll over for them, they'll go elsewhere.' That doesn't cut it.