Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Senator Pocock. In terms of the labour market impact, I think there is a report from Jobs and Skills Australia that goes, in fact, squarely to those issues. I don't have it at hand, but it's been publicly released and has been the subject of discussion with all of the stakeholders in the labour market, the business community, trade unions and the tech sector itself—principally, the Australian tech sector. You'll have seen that, in addition to the National AI Plan that was released at the end of the year—that is about making sure that we capture the opportunities of this technology in Australia, that we spread the benefits through our suburbs and regions, not just our CBDs and inner cities, and that we keep Australia safe—we announced our data centre expectations earlier this year. That has been matched with a series of commitments from some data centre proponents that go, in particular, to energy additionality, and I'm very pleased with the progress that Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, is making with his state counterparts on those questions to make sure that new development in this area is driving additional electricity generation and transmission to drive costs down for Australians, rather than what we're seeing in some of the other jurisdictions around the world, where it's putting pressure on energy and water systems.

So we are focused on the interests of Australians here and on making sure that this works for Australia. (Time expired)