QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator HANSON-YOUNG (South Australia—Manager of Australian Greens Business in the Senate) (14:30): My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Wong. New York and Texas have imposed moratoriums on building new AI data centres. Meanwhile, leading tech CEOs Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk are now calling for urgent action to regulate artificial intelligence because of its potentially catastrophic risks to humanity.

With American communities strongly rejecting data centres, Australia has now become a destination of choice for these big tech companies, because of—guess what?—our lack of regulation. When will the Albanese government introduce a moratorium on the construction of new AI data centres or ensure that its forthcoming AI legislation applies retrospectively so that Australians can be confident that the government is doing everything it can to protect them?