The Greens are calling for an immediate moratorium on new data centre developments until Federal Parliament has properly scrutinised and legislated rules for Australia’s rapidly expanding AI industry, as several major proposals progress through planning in the Hunter.
Greens Communications spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said a growing split between states showed the industry was already exploiting governments’ desperation to attract investment.
“Big AI is sitting back and laughing as governments fall over themselves in a race to the bottom to accommodate its every whim,” she said.
The Hunter has become a focal point for the sector, with three major data centre proposals emerging over the past year. Chief among them is a 540-megawatt facility proposed for the former Hydro Aluminium smelter site at Kurri Kurri, being assessed as a State Significant Development. The project has cleared an early planning milestone, with the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure issuing Secretary’s Environmental Assessment Requirements, meaning the proponent must now prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement covering traffic, noise, flooding, biodiversity and visual impacts before a development application goes on public exhibition. The project is also expected to require upgrades to the Hunter Expressway and Hart Road interchange.
Separately, AGL is exploring data centre options as part of its Liddell industrial precinct near Muswellbrook, on the site of the former Liddell power station, while an international consortium has also lodged planning documents for a data centre in Muswellbrook itself.
Senator Hanson-Young said Australia needed a pause while Parliament established national rules.
“We should not be rubber-stamping massive new data centres while Parliament is still working out how to regulate the AI industry,” she said.
“If we don’t get this right, we risk handing over our energy, water, land and natural environment to some of the world’s biggest corporations without getting a fair deal in return.”
She said data centres needed to be powered by genuinely additional renewable energy and should not become a “backdoor for new fossil fuel extraction.”
