Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

The Senate will now consider the proposal under standing order 75, from Senator McKim, which is also shown at item 12 on today's Order of Business:

The Albanese government's failure to protect the Australian environment, water, jobs, data, and national interest from the march of US tech billionaire controlled artificial intelligence and data centres across the country.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the matter of public importance in Senator McKim's name. This particular matter is really important because it highlights the failure of the Albanese government to protect Australia's environment, water, jobs, data and national interests in the march towards allowing the United States to set up hyperscale, massive, big data centres here in Australia. They are rolling out the red carpet before they've even worked out what Australia is going to get back in return.

We know that the regulations are not there. We know that Australians are very suspicious of what these big tech companies—these big AI companies—want to do right here in Australia. What we do know is that they want to be able to mine the intellect, the knowledge and the culture of the Australian community and pay nothing for it. We know that. But we also know that they want to set up shop here because Australia's regulations are weak—virtually non-existent. Australia is one of the only countries in the world that are seen as good placement for these types of centres, because of our safety, a lack of regulation and, of course, the government's willingness to roll over as soon as the dollar signs start shining.

I say to the Albanese government: stop being so starry eyed about this. Australians deserve to know and to be assured about what the real implications of artificial intelligence mean for them—what they mean for our jobs, what they mean for our water and our environment, and what they mean for our intellectual property rights. What do they mean for our national security? At the moment, the government can't answer any of those questions. They are simply rolling out the red carpet for billionaire after billionaire. We need to make sure Australians are in the conversation.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) | Link to this | Hansard source

The issue here is really: what are we going to do to ensure that we can get the most from this revolution? These organisations probably have more power and control over our lives than any other organisation in the history of humanity. What are we going to do to ensure that we get a reasonable deal from them operating on our shores? This is going to be one of the great policy judgements over the next decade.

I would say that the case for having a role in the new world of artificial intelligence is a solid one. We're not going to become like Taiwan; we're not going to be manufacturing semiconductors here in Australia. It is important that we have some role in the value chain—in that ecosystem. If that is going to be data centres, then that is going to be a positive thing, because those, by definition, are going to bring investment, capability and employment into this country.

But these centres use a great deal of electricity. They use a great deal of water. And, generally speaking, these organisations in this technology space, the big tech space, have been negligent and criminal when it comes to the payment of taxes. I make the distinction that organisations like Anthropic or OpenAI are distinct from social media companies. But to bundle the technology sector together, perhaps in a crude way, these organisations have not been good taxpayers. They have created tax schemes through transfer pricing, which has allowed them to raise billions of dollars of revenue in this country and billions of dollars of profit and pay very low levels of taxation.

We must ensure that our tax systems and our regulatory systems move and adapt with changing technologies, so it is critical that the government and the parliament do consider the standards that should apply in relation to water, in relation to electricity and in relation to taxation and stewardship. These are all reasonable questions to raise. In relation to electricity, we should, by virtue of our solar capacity, be able to provide very high levels of computational capacity with the lowest level of environmental footprint. We should be able to do that. In relation to water, we should be able to provide reasonable levels of water, but we should be able to do it on the basis that it is sustainable.

These are the sorts of things that I don't think the government have really thought about. We have an incoherence from this government on the question of artificial intelligence. We have the former minister saying he wants to regulate it into oblivion. We have the current minister saying, 'Well, we're not really quite too sure.' It goes to this broader question of how we set Australia up as a country that is going to be able to avail itself of this new technology but is going to be smart about how we actually derive some public benefit from that.

One of the things that have frustrated the Australian people has been that we are a country which has great concentrations of power, which is not unusual. You can see concentrations of power in this government with the influence that the unions and the big super funds have over their day-to-day policy. We have huge concentrations of power in the finance sector, and we will have a huge concentration of power in the tech sector, just as we have today. The fact that the large technology companies are able to violate the principle of paying a large amount of tax where it is adjacent to the large amount of revenue and profit that they collect shows you that they are already in a very strong position, and so these are reasonable questions to raise. I think we want to avail ourselves of this technology, but we want to make sure that we get our pound of flesh along the way and that it's done in a sustainable fashion.

Varun Ghosh (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion once again reveals that the Greens really are a nuance-free zone when it comes to serious issues in this parliament. Australia and countries around the world will need to grapple with the various ways in which AI will impact our lives, not only in terms of our working lives and our social lives but in terms of the way we live as a society and interact. The attack in the motion is misguided on two levels. Firstly, it's misguided because it mischaracterises what's actually going on. Secondly, it's misguided because what it doesn't deal with is the nuance and the necessity to grasp with the fact that this is an emerging technology. There are lots of different uncertainties involved, and it's natural that we will evolve the way we regulate it to ensure not only that it serves the Australian people and it serves working people in this country but also that we don't get left behind and we don't get excluded from the capacity to develop sovereign capability in this space.

I'm very glad to have Senator Sheldon in the chamber here, because Senator Sheldon was the chair of a select committee into this in 2024, and its recommendations were nuanced. They were detailed. They reflected a concern on this side of the house from the Labor Party and from the trade union movement that as we adopt this technology we are protecting Australian workers and that we're ensuring that they have a say in the way that this technology gets rolled out. So I do want to congratulate Senator Sheldon in that respect for that work, but it's clear that the writer of this motion and those who spoke to it before didn't read that report, because, if they had, they couldn't have made those attacks. There was nothing starry-eyed in it. It was nuanced, and it reflected a deep concern about how AI was going to be rolled out, but it also reflected a recognition that Australia cannot block its eyes and ears to this new technology. It can't prevent its emergence as the rest of the world embraces it and as Australians adopt this technology. So we do need a regulatory framework that protects workers and protects the environment but also doesn't exclude us from sovereign capability and doesn't exclude us from the economic benefits that this technology will bring, here and around the world.

What does that mean from a policy perspective? The government has been very clear: it means we should be embedding AI into our economy and guiding it in a way that seeks to lift living standards rather than deepen inequality, and in such a way that it can be delivered sustainably. That means that we should be embedding AI literacy into our learning institutions, including TAFEs and universities. We must also ensure that workers have enforceable rights to consultation over how AI is used in workplaces. AI must never be a shield against accountability for hard-won workplace protections. I also commend the ACTU on the work they're doing in this space, as well as the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association, whose recent report into this was so valuable.

It's important to remember in this debate that AI is a tool, and responsibility must rest with those who design and benefit from the systems. There need to be strong regulatory frameworks. There need to be bodies that are capable of enforcing and dealing with the challenges of AI, and dealing with the speed of the development of this technology, which is, at stages, quite breathtaking.

There's also no doubt that the increased use of AI will present risks to our society and have significant impacts, but we cannot pretend that the technology doesn't exist or isn't going to be used, here and around the world.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

No-one is saying that.

Varun Ghosh (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, they are, Senator Faruqi. If you want to interject on this, look at this motion. It is barely credible in the way that you've framed it. It's incoherent. And the attack that was made earlier is deeply misguided.

But the principles that are at the core of the Albanese government's National AI Plan are that we will work to attract investment in the necessary infrastructure, both physical and digital; we will work to make sure that workers and public services share in the benefits that can be derived from artificial intelligence; and we will develop regulations and legislation that will mitigate the risks from emerging AI. Data centres will have to go through rigorous environmental and planning approvals, like other infrastructure, and our expectations around that are that the projects will meet the standards and needs of Australians and must be in our national interest. Such projects will need to demonstrate their ability to help Australians invest in skills and jobs, encouraging global operators to partner with local researchers and startups to encourage innovation and to develop sovereign capacity. They will need to use water sustainably and responsibly, and they will need to support Australia's energy transition by contributing to the cost of network infrastructure and helping bring new energy supplies—sustainable energy supplies—onto the grid. Projects that do not meet those expectations will not be supported by the federal government.

Overall, this government is conscious of the need to achieve balance here, in an uncertain and quickly evolving environment. We need regulation to harness this technology effectively and make sure we mitigate or minimise its impacts, and it needs to be used on behalf of working people.

Sean Bell (NSW, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I think we can all acknowledge that the world is going through an artificial intelligence revolution and that data centres will be a big part of this. What that means is that Australia is going to be faced with two choices: we can look at building and controlling our own critical infrastructure, or we can find ourselves dependent on data centres based overseas, controlled by foreign interests in countries like Communist China—that is just the reality, and that would be a risk to our sovereignty and our national security.

It does appear that the Albanese Labor government has been caught flat-footed here. I was listening carefully to Senator Ghosh's contribution, and I heard a lot of 'we have a plan' and 'we will do'. But there is a distinct lack of action here—and there needs to be action, because people are concerned.

On the issue of energy: you're not going to be able to power these with your solar factories or your wind farms. That's another critical issue here. You have hamstrung yourself, once again, with your net zero obsession. To hear that you are linking this to further renewable rollouts is concerning, and it will concern Australian landholders. That is why it's no surprise that we have local councils and communities and concerned members of the public coming to my office, and to our offices, because they're learning second-hand about what appear to be major land purchases being discussed or made, and proposed data centres in their area. Yet they do not know what's going on, because they are being bypassed because there is a lack of consultation. Councils do appear to have been ignored. Residents are being kept in the dark. Communities are only finding out about things later.

We've heard this story before, because it's the same blueprint that you, Labor and the Greens, used to force your industrial wind and solar on rural and regional communities. It's the same blueprint we have seen you use at the behest of your net zero billionaire mates. Labor and the Greens have already allowed multinational renewable companies to steamroll farmers and to divide communities—to rip them apart. So it is a bit rich to hear you talk about the concern you have for these communities because you've already done it to them. We don't want to see it happen again. There is an issue with consultation. Your record shows the exact opposite on this issue. You have not shown the due concern.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to associate myself with the comments of my colleague Senator Ghosh in relation to this MPI. It's not really a serious policy argument that's being brought here this afternoon; it's another one of the Greens political party's scare campaigns. It's from the same old playbook as usual: find a complex issue, strip out every practical detail, blame the Labor Party, frighten the public and then offer a slogan instead of a solution. The Greens political party wants Australians to believe that there are only two choices: hand over the country to American tech billionaires or shut the whole thing down. Well, it's absolute nonsense. Two things can actually be true at once. You can hold both of those ideas together in the light and assess them. That's exactly what the Albanese Labor government are doing.

We will not let tech companies write the rules or let communities carry the costs where private companies take the profits, but we will also not pretend that Australia can opt out of the emerging frontiers of AI, digital infrastructure, data security and the associated economic changes. That's not environmentalism—newsflash—that is retreating from the future. AI is growing, and so is the infrastructure behind it. The question is who shapes it. Is it Australia, under Australian laws, with workers and safeguards at the centre, or is it other countries building the capability while Australia continues to fall behind? This government's answer is clear. Australia should be shaping the new frontier with Australia's interests at the centre of it. The Greens bring an MPI here today, and their answer to that is just another stop sign. It makes a neat little media release, but it actually doesn't make a serious policy.

The Albanese Labor government has already released our national AI plan and our data centre expectations, sending a very, very clear message to developers that Australian communities come first. This means prioritising the national interest, supporting the energy transition, using water responsibly, investing in Australian skills and jobs, and strengthening local capability. That is the Albanese Labor government setting the terms. Our approach is practical. Data centres should bring new renewable energy supply online, pay their fair share of network costs and provide flexibility to strengthen the grid. This is a serious energy policy, not a stunt that sends investment offshore and leaves Australia weaker.

On water, communities have a right to ask questions. Water security matters, whether it's for households, farmers, First Nations communities, industries and the environment. That's why Labor requires sustainable water use, early engagement with communities and water utilities, efficient cooling technology and non-potable water where possible. Projects that don't meet our requirements, standards or national interests should not be waved through, but a blanket moratorium does not protect one river, save one wetland, build one recycled water system or deliver one extra renewable project.

So let's absolutely get the clarity of what this is about. Bringing this MPI may make the Greens political party feel pure, but actually it's telling us everything we need to know. Of course, as always, somebody else has to do the work. They can pretend to care about jobs. Their answer is to block infrastructure, but that is actually what supports good jobs in communities.

Labor expects fair, safe, secure and well-paid jobs and investment in local capability. On the issue of data and sovereignty, the Greens argument is a house of cards, as usual. You don't protect Australians' data by saying data centres just need to be somewhere else. When companies want to operate here, our government's position is very, very clear: they operate under Australian terms. That is sovereignty. It's not replacing policy with protest. You don't protect workers by blocking infrastructure that could and will support Australian jobs. You don't protect water by issuing a press release. You protect it by setting the standards, using the planning systems, requiring sustainable water use and rejecting those bad projects.

This MPI concerns the real issues that Australians should be asking about—energy, water, jobs, data—but it turns into another lazy lecture on purity. While they lecture us, Labor continue to deliver. Labor is setting national expectations, backing the energy transition, protecting water, supporting jobs and skills, and building safety capability through the AI Safety Institute. The Albanese Labor government will continue to build a stronger, safer and more sovereign Australia.

Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

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.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) | Link to this | Hansard source

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.

Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor is not taking the threat of AI-powered far-right extremism seriously. Worse than that, they're opening the door to it. Take American AI surveillance company Palantir. Palantir was founded by far-right billionaire Peter Thiel, an unhinged nutcase who thinks that Greta Thunberg could be the Antichrist, a man who has said that he doesn't believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

Palantir is now a central figure in the US military-industrial complex, enabling a massive expansion of the surveillance state, helping Israel generate kill lists in Gaza and supporting Donald Trump's ICE to track and deport immigrants. It was Palantir's AI targeting software that was responsible for the strike on the school in Iran that killed over a hundred children. This is a company whose CEO, Alex Karp, has lauded the West's 'superiority in applying organised violence'. This is a man who says that society needs to be willing to destroy millions of jobs to develop military AI.

You'd think that all of this would have made Labor think twice before getting into bed with Palantir. You might think that the government of a sovereign nation would be reluctant to let in, through the front door, a company that says it has a 'moral debt' to serve US military interests, but you'd be wrong. Labor is giving millions of dollars to Palantir in Defence contracts. The company has top-secret security clearance, embedding itself in the Australian Signals Directorate, AUSTRAC and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. How much of your data does Palantir have access to, and what are they doing with it? How can we be confident that our data is secure? Labor needs to get with the program before it's too late and kick out Palantir.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Against the odds, the people of Hazelmere, the Swan Valley and the wider Perth community stopped a $600 million data centre. They organised, they turned up to meetings, they got thousands of people to sign petitions, and they won. But here's the thing: this isn't just about one data centre. Around the world, AI is driving a new extractive industry. Some of the world's biggest tech companies want to use our electricity, our water and our land to power giant data centres. The Climate Council says that electricity demand from Australian data centres could triple by 2030. These facilities use a huge amount of power and water, and they put more pressure on our clean energy transition.

Governments still don't have rules in place to manage them properly. That is simply not good enough. No community should have to spend years taking on powerful corporations just to protect their neighbourhoods, their environment and their very future. That's why the Greens are calling for a moratorium on new data centres. Let's stop approving them until we have proper safeguards in place. Let's make sure every project proves that it is in the public interest and is not just for corporate profit. This is about more than one data centre in Perth. It's about who government works for: the people or the corporation.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Big corporations are surveilling us, and they are invading our privacy. Some of the biggest offenders are our giant supermarket corporations, Coles and Woolworths. For example, Coles has a multi-year commercial arrangement with Palantir, one of the world's most dangerous and unethical corporations. Picture this: you're wheeling your supermarket trolley down the aisle in Coles, and, thanks to facial recognition software, Coles knows exactly who you are.

Thanks to Palantir integrating their data systems, Coles knows exactly what you like to buy, when you like to buy it and whether you are tempted by discounts or specials or not. Thanks to their digital price tags, Coles can manipulate the price in real time as you come down the supermarket aisle. This is surge pricing brought to you by Coles and Woolworths in the supermarket sector and delivered by surveillance capitalist corporations like Palantir. Prices may quietly go up for you and quietly go down for someone else 10 seconds later, depending on who is walking through the aisle, and the Labor government has no plan to protect Australians from this exploitation.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) | Link to this | Hansard source

Get this: we put up a motion to say the Australian government should be protecting Australian jobs, our environment, our water and our national interests from the march of US controlled tech bros, with their AI centres and their data scraping, through our institutions. We put up a motion to say that, and the Albanese Labor government is coming together to say no, to oppose a motion talking about the core protections we should have for the national interest, for our jobs, for our future and for our ability to control our own future.

Get this clear: under the Albanese government, we've got this pressure from the global AI tech industry largely driven by US tech bros, billionaires like Elon Musk and others, and some of the bottom-feeders that run companies like Palantir and Anduril—really nasty types who have a direct political project to drive forward the interests of the United States military, the United States government and the Trump administration. And what does the Albanese government do? Does it say, 'Actually, we're the government for Australia, and we'll put in laws and controls and hard guardrails'? No, not this mob. The Albanese Labor government roll out the red carpet and give this lot contracts. They gave a $1.7 billion contract to Anduril, controlled by the kind of person you couldn't make up—the kind of cartoon-villain, right-wing US tech bro billionaire. They also roll the red carpet out to Palantir.

Australians are asking for a government that responds to the needs of the Australian people. Protect our jobs from this law. Don't put in place expectations that foreign multinational techs will roll over; put in place hard laws. And, for once, have this place, have this government, have this parliament, be on the side of Australians, Australian jobs and the Australian environment, not of whatever AI slop comes out of Washington.

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Women) | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for this discussion has expired.