Australian Greens Leader David Shoebridge has used a visit to Tasmania to call for an urgent moratorium on AI data centres, as the state faces a growing number of proposals.
Speaking in Hobart today, Shoebridge accused state and federal governments of “literally inviting in these US vampire tech bros” to take Australians’ water, power, data and jobs.
He said governments should be “protecting Australian jobs and water and energy from what is a clearly extractive industry”.
“The Greens are the party saying across this country no to the rollout of these AI data centres and a moratorium, an urgent moratorium,” he said.
Shoebridge said a moratorium would also help ease inflation, saying the Reserve Bank had pointed to heavy spending on AI data centres as a driver.
“Put a moratorium on it. Put downward pressure on inflation,” he said.
He said voters in the United States, which he described as “two or three years ahead of the curve”, had rejected large data centres in some 34 state ballots at this week’s midterm elections.
Tasmanian Greens Leader Rosalie Woodruff said the state was “very vulnerable” if it did not stand up to AI data centres “exploiting” its electricity and water.
“Tasmanians have spoken very, very strongly. They don’t want data centres here in Tasmania,” she said.
She said Tasmanians wanted “very strong guardrails” if any data centres were to go ahead, but Premier Jeremy Rockliff had “just waved them forward”.
“There is nothing substantial in place to protect Tasmanians’ resources, to protect their local places from AI data centres,” she said.
Woodruff said a proposed data centre site at Sheffield had only come to light through Greens questioning at the parliamentary inquiry into data centres and there was speculation in the community about other sites.
“There are untold numbers sitting there that we still don’t know about,” she said.
A document tabled in parliament in September revealed six confidential data centre proposals working with the Office of the Coordinator-General, including two of 200 to 300 megawatts each.
She also said it seemed data centre company Firmus “weren’t as forthcoming with the EPA in their initial proposal” about its plans for power generation.
Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said today data centres were “a real opportunity for the country”, but the government wanted to get the “social licence” right.
He said companies building data centres should bring their own power and water.
“If you do that, they can actually contribute to the power grid, not take power out of the power grid,” Marles said.
He said the federal government was working on standards and laws so data centres were built “in the right places, not the wrong places”.
Innovation and Science Minister Felix Ellis said the government welcomed “responsible investment in data centres and AI infrastructure”.
He said such investment “contributes to economic growth, creates skilled jobs and strengthens Tasmania’s digital capability”.
“Projects are submitted to rigorous existing planning, environmental and regulatory frameworks,” he said in a statement.
“Communities that host major AI data centre developments will share directly in the economic benefits generated by these projects.”
Ellis said details of the local community benefit Fund and the final statement of expectations for data centres and AI infrastructure developers would be released “in coming weeks”.
The government released a draft of the statement on September 7 and announced the community benefit fund on October 14.
