MEDIA RELEASE: AFSA Urges An End To Fast-tracking Data Centre Approvals

For a shorter version read here.

For immediate release — 16th July 2026

The Federal and State Governments have ultimately sold Australia as the “leading destination for data centre investment”, allowing the installation of over 160 operational data centres, with 90 others in the pipeline, in a bid to make the Australian economy “more competitive, productive and resilient”. Interestingly, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS, the bank of central banks), thinks differently and warns about the sustainability of AI-related investments and a risk to labour markets.

As Open AI, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Anthropic empires have been given the green light to use Country as a data centre hub, development approvals are booming, whether in metropolitan areas such as Sydney and Melbourne’s west, or in rural and regional areas: hectares of agricultural land in NSW and Victoria could be developed, and Melbourne has now become the second largest data centre market in Australia. This is putting even more pressure on housing and land prices and on an already aging, decreasing and climate-stressed farming population. Early this year, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) received a submission for a 350-hectares hyperscaler with its own on-site gas turbines in a green wedge in Victoria: a hub that could potentially heat surrounding areas. Sobering, as we patiently expect for an ENSO to break records in the coming months.

Ironically, the Victorian Government already recognised the need to protect the state’s food-producing land, and is committing to stronger safeguards across all agricultural areas through the Planning for Melbourne’s Green Wedges and Agricultural Land, Action Plan 2024. Action 15 of the Plan makes it clear: new data centres should be prohibited in Green Wedge, Green Wedge A, and Rural Conservation Zones, reinforcing that food security and farmland protection must come before inappropriate industrial expansion. So why is this 350-hectares mega-hub being designed on a green wedge zone, counter to the action plan? 

Data centres need energy, and lots of it. 

As the International Energy Agency and the Australian Climate Council‘s work shows, increasing AI workloads indicate a clear shift toward large facilities such as hyperscalers, which often need dedicated gas turbines. This exponential growth could shape our energy system and its pricing. As data centres’ energy use could triple by 2030, prices could also surge by up to 26% in NSW and 23% in Victoria by 2035. We now also know that renewables alone cannot power the AI data centre boom. Another recent report warns how data centres’ overdevelopment could further derail the continent’s energy transition. If data centres consume the newly added renewable energy, its availability for our growing population needs will reduce, including for heating and transport, delaying the retirement of coal stations while increasing the country’s reliance on gas, propping up our carbon emissions. Not surprisingly, fossil fuel corporations are quietly joining the data centres lobby group and participating in events attended by Federal and State government representatives.

It is not only electricity, high-intensity computing systems need to be cooled by water: data centres can consume up to the equivalent of the daily water use of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people. If that wasn’t enough, data centres use PFAS in their cooling systems and in most of their electronic equipment. “Forever Chemicals”, as they are often called, are then either released into the atmosphere or end up poisoning our soils and water, undermining our ability to produce healthy and ecologically sound food. With droughts and heatwaves expected to be longer, more intense and more frequent by all climate models, why should we allow multinational companies, led and supported by techno-optimists, to buy their way into building more polluting, energy-intensive and water-hungry systems?

Reining in corporate power 

Litigation against these companies is already on the way in many countries in the world and we hope for a wake up call in our communities, such as in Miners Rest, Victoria, where the community reached out to their MP for better transparency and consultation. In the international space, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism to the Committee on World Food Security, convened a High Level Forum on AI, joining a growing call for a moratorium on new data centres, being echoed around the world.

Disposable plastic packaging, DDT, PFAS, GMOs, lab-meat: technologies once sold as progress have caused ecocide, cancers and farmer suicides. Techno-optimism; the belief that technology alone will solve humanity’s problems, seduces our desire for a better future while ignoring who builds it, who owns it, and who benefits. Data centres are no different: without strict standards, we’re giving them license to artificialise land, disrupt ecosystems, burn fossil fuels and drain water from our dry, warming continent. The real question isn’t whether technology is good or bad, but how it’s developed, controlled, and accessed. In the food sovereignty movement, technology shaped by local communities and equitable access can empower people. But when driven by profit and controlled by a few, it erodes food sovereignty through technological lock-ins, concentrating power over food production and marginalising small-scale producers and their communities. When assessing any technological innovations, we ask the following questions: Who decided we needed the technology? Who designed it and for whom? Who profits from the technology and what practices did it alter or displace? Who has access to the technology and who doesn’t? Who gathered the raw materials needed to build it, under what conditions, and to what benefit for them and their families? What was the ecological impact of gathering the parts to build the technology? Who owns the intellectual property rights? 

Country is a living system that supports culture, health and Indigenous food systems. Large-scale development threatens Indigenous food sovereignty, cultural practice and the ability of future generations to care for Country. Data centre developments should not move forward without Free, Prior and Informed Consent from Traditional Owners in line with the UNDRIP. Mass use of generative AI is not going to solve the social, environmental, geopolitical and economic crises we are facing today, but will likely accelerate them. We urgently call for a moratorium on data centre development approvals until tighter control, community consultation mechanisms and environmental assessments are in place; we cannot afford fossil-fuelled and corporate-controlled data centres. 

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For article related enquiries please contact Antoine Lenique, AFSA General Coordinator, at coordinator@afsa.org.au or call 0468443292