Motion - AI Data Centres
[4.53 p.m.]
Ms BURNET (Clark) - Thanks, honourable Deputy Speaker. I'll speak briefly to the second amendment of Labor's, which fundamentally guts the whole concept of what Ms Badger is doing in the Green's motion. I think it's a substantial change. But I'm very pleased to support the overall motion of the Greens, and I'll speak to that now, if I may, honourable Deputy Speaker.
We know that the issue of data AI data centres is white hot in the community. For many people, data centres are the physical manifestation of the greed, hubris and the power of the AI oligarchs, the richest, most powerful people in the world. Like a parasite drawing on your scarce water and energy supplies, and delivering only a handful of jobs, but making the richest people in the world even richer and enabling technology that is likely to put people out of work. So what's not to like about data centres? At least with the major industrials, although they might have left their fair share of environmental degradation and sometimes divided communities in their day, they delivered many jobs. People see data centres as actually taking away jobs. Of equal concern is the government's blind pursuit of these sorts of major projects, the newest great white hope that the government blithely follows, and we saw from Minister Ellis's contribution that the government has a tin ear on this. They have a tin ear on many things, but particularly in relation to AI data centres and to think that Tasmania is the best place for AI data centres is to be completely drawn in and taken as fools, really. I mean, AI data centres are being proposed for South Australia, one of the hottest places in Australia. So, I'm not understanding why they think that Tasmania is so special.
At the same time, the government has that blind faith in what they're doing and they're not giving sufficient regard to community sentiment. The community thinks‑ and we're hearing this loud and clear‑ that this project will have major problems in their communities. It is this disregard from the government about community concerns that drives voters to lose faith in politics and consider fringe parties like One Nation. We've seen the disaster unfolding in the US with unbridled AI data centre proliferation. We don't want to repeat those mistakes here in Tasmania and yet, what is apparent is that we don't have the regulations and rules in place to assess these projects, which suits these developers just fine and I'd say that that's across Australia and in most places, we just don't have the governance structures there to deal with these AI data centres.
We know from correspondence from the Office of the Coordinator‑General from 30 April last year that was tabled in response to a Greens motion earlier this year that Firmus wants certainty over the timing of approvals because, in the words of the coordinator‑general, 'Speed to market is so critical to this rapidly evolving area'. Concerns have been raised by George Town and Latrobe councils that these projects are not suitable to be assessed under the current state planning scheme. University of Tasmania professor of management, David Adams, told ABC that the Land Use Planning and Approvals Act was not fit for purpose to deal with the AI data centres. He said that that was because it did not require consideration of the broader cumulative impact of multiple AI data centres. He also said flow on state or national effects, like the centres impact on water, energy supply and pricing were beyond its scope.
I think, Honourable Deputy Speaker, it's telling that these data centre projects could be assessed under the major projects pathway, which I raised this morning in question time, and guess what? We heard this morning that there was no application by the proponents and the George Town Council didn't refer it to the Tasmanian Planning Commission (TPC) because the minister effectively said don't bother, and that was reported by the ABC. There must be a pathway which involves greater scrutiny, greater opportunity for public involvement and consideration of impacts at a statewide level, but the government is actively discouraging councils from using that pathway.
This is a catch‑22 situation. I think it's pretty clear from Minister Vincent's answer to my question this morning, he's using the spurious claim that these projects don't satisfy the criteria to be declared major projects and yet, we have seen letters and correspondence from his government acknowledging the importance of the project to the state's future. We know these projects are worth billions of dollars and the government is hoping they will kickstart more investment in installed renewable energy projects around the state and that's an important amendment that has been accepted from Labor's first amendment, which I wholeheartedly supported.
These are exactly the sort of projects the government intended to be assessed through the major projects pathway when it created that pathway back in 2020. It's clear that this government wants to wave through these projects as quickly as possible because that is what the developers want. They don't want the added scrutiny of a major projects assessment process and I urge Latrobe Council to instead make a proposal for the development assessment for the Wesley Vale AI data centre to be declared a major project. At the moment, honourable Speaker, we have two data centres that have received planning approval that will draw around 400 megawatts. This will be about a quarter of our state's total electricity consumption. The question the government refused to answer is: where is this electricity coming from? At the moment all we have is a vague commitment from Firmus to fully match its electricity consumption with new renewable energy generation, but these projects can take up to 10 years to get off the ground. This means that until the new renewable energy comes online, Firmus will be competing with established industries and Tasmanian residents for power, which is going to drive up electricity prices during a cost‑of‑living crisis. And yet we have been kept in the dark about this. The Energy minister was given the chance to answer the questions about where the energy will come from today during question time and his answer was the sort of weasel word non‑answer that leaves Tasmanians certain of one thing: this government has no idea where the energy is coming from.
I thank the Greens and Ms Badger for bringing this to the House for discussion and I'll leave with these words: the community does not trust this government and does not trust our planning system to protect our communities from the impacts of AI data centres. That is why a moratorium must occur until we have the regulatory guard rails in place.