On 3 June 2026, I gave a Speech on AI Regulation and a Gas Tax
Transcript:
Ms WATSON-BROWN (Ryan)
Thank you Deputy Speaker.
The new proposed AI data centre in Victoria would be Australia’s largest ever, demanding more power than Victoria’s biggest coal plant. Data centres like this one consume obscene amounts of land, obscene amounts of energy and water, and threaten our energy transition. They take away jobs, and degrade our environment.
What would these data centres do for us? It is really difficult to imagine any good, when they destroy far more jobs than they create, increase energy prices and reliance on fossil fuels due to their excessive demand, degrade our precious water and the surrounding environment, and they're privately owned by foreign corporations that don’t pay tax.
I don’t know about you, but I think that's a very bad deal.
Unfortunately it appears the government thinks that’s a good deal. I was shocked to read the government’s AusTrade website, which proudly proclaims “Australia is becoming a regional data centre hub”, where it is “cheaper to build and operate data centres” than in Asia. For big tech companies, the government rolls out the red carpet and says “step right up, we’re a cheap date”. It’s a pretty sweet deal for the multinational corporations, but it’s a betrayal of ordinary people and our environment.
It’s not a mystery why the major parties are so friendly to the big AI companies. Technology companies donated over 13 million dollars to political parties at the last federal election. Just last week, Anthropic visited Canberra to sign a Memorandum of Understanding, involving exclusive contracts to investigate AI safety. Can you believe it? The government is asking an AI company worth half a trillion dollars to investigate its own industry. What a joke.
Meanwhile, the Victorian Government has been so desperate to approve a huge new data centre that they hosted international AI executives at the Australian Open. Regular people don’t get that kind of access to our governments, but big AI companies do.
Has the government put any safeguards in place for data centres? No. Instead, all they’ve produced are non-binding “expectations”– not laws, just “expectations”. The government will ask nicely, cross their fingers, and hope that big tech companies do the right thing. Wishful thinking? Clearly, and it’s a stunning failure to regulate this emerging threat to our jobs, environment, and energy security.
The Greens have established an inquiry into AI data centres. The government must learn from past mistakes in being slow to regulate new technologies, and pass comprehensive legislation to safeguard Australians from AI risks.
The government is representing gas corporations, not the Australian people.
Yesterday, I moved a simple amendment calling for a 25% tax on gas exports. Labor MPs voted to defeat it - and One Nation and the LNP didn’t bother to show up.
Australians are fed up with the gas companies ripping us off.
They know that many gas corporations, like Santos, are paying no company tax. They know that the PRRT scheme is completely ineffective. We’re raising more tax from beer than PRRT. Japan is raising more tax from our gas exports than we are. And PRRT revenue is predicted to go down over the next few years.
They know that a 25% tax on gas exports is a simple and effective way to make gas corporations pay their fair share for our gas: gas that belongs to the Australian people.
And people are sick of the gas corporations having more of a say than them. They are sick of the donations, the cash for access meetings, the revolving door between gas lobbyists, MPs and senior staffers.
People know that our health system, our education system, other public services are underfunded and the $17 billion raised from taxing our gas would help fix that.
Instead, gas corporations are making huge profits from our gas, and using that money to continue to lobby against paying their fair share. It’s a great big self-perpetuating circle of influence over our democracy.
So I hope that Labor MPs, and the Minister, who voted against a gas tax are prepared to answer the Australian people, who overwhelmingly support a tax on gas exports, about why they have once again put the gas corporations first.