Ms BADGER (Lyons) – Honourable Speaker, I move‑
That the House take note of the following matter: AI data centres.
Well here we are again, continually asking questions of the Premier and this Liberal government to provide Tasmanians any form of transparency about the future of AI factories, AI facilities, data centres in this state and the implications that they are going to have. Yet again, as we had at the start of this year, the Premier has chosen political attacks instead of providing information, and we know that means there is information that Tasmanians need to know.
It is very clear that there is a lack of trust from the community in this industry simply because they do not have the information at hand that they need, because the guardrails that should be in place to give them the confidence that Tasmanian’s communities and our public resources will be protected are simply not there. We put a motion to this place last week to get information out, but we got nearly nothing. It is so disappointing what was not provided to this place.
To be clear, what we did get was a bit of information from the Office of the Coordinator-General, and I’m going to get to that, but there was also a heap of detail and definitions of what the government would be asking, things that Labor asked in that vicinity as well. There was absolutely nothing that was put forward. In fact, the response said that we should look at the information that was provided to the House last time because that’s all been made public, but that is all redacted. Put it out unredacted in the public sphere and then see if the claims that you are currently making actually stack up.
It is so disappointing. What we did get was information from the Office of the Coordinator-General, who’s been working with proponents for quite some time to bring AI factories and data centres to Tasmania, and it clearly shows an additional six projects that were not public before that they have been providing information to. There’s one that’s already got a proposed location in the north-west that’s around 200 to 300 megawatts. The OCG has already been working with them, with energy suppliers, the utility providers, and talking about the planning pathway so they could have introductions to the appropriate planning authority. Who actually is that at the moment? The councils are under serious pressure from the community to do things, we’ve got multiple different pathways undergoing and there is nothing that is in place that is fit and appropriate for these distinct types of developments.
There’s another one for 200‑300 megawatts, another one for around 50, and that one, it notes, expressed interest in Liberty Bell Bay, so what is actually happening? What does all of this mean? This is not helping Tasmanians at all. You’ve released this statement of expectations, which says:
These expectations are a non‑statutory statement of government policy. These do not create new approval or regulatory process.
It’s absolutely baseless. What actually are those expectations?
It goes on to say:
Expectation 2, early engagement with community and stakeholders. [TBC?]
How’s that going for you? We’re going to be ‘building an understanding of trust and supporting project outcomes’, but we don’t even know what the projects are, let alone what their actual outcomes are. It says ‘ensuring projects go to the appropriate development approval pathways’. What is it? We don’t know; it’s still an open conversation at this point, when we’ve got one proponent, Firmus, 30 per cent of our state’s energy and we’ve got absolutely nothing in place and we’re just expected to trust the Liberals and trust Firmus.
Come on, seriously. I was so excited to be supporting the Tasmanian Devils and now, with the Firmus backing, I’m like, ‘What does that actually mean?’. It’s like we’ve gone from greenwashing to Tasmania-washing and trying to buy a social licence because we haven’t got the information that Tasmanians need. The nonsensical answer from the Premier was that the federal regulations have to be in place. No, we need state guardrails to be in place. Hydro Tasmania is state-owned. We are the ones with the legislated 200 per cent renewable target. It is Tasmania’s reputation that Firmus is selling green AI tokens. It is our state’s reputation. It is future investment in our state that, if we get this wrong, we will not have. We do welcome the page Hydro put up on their website to help the community understand how their decision-making process will actually happen for Firmus. That is welcome transparency. In fact, I think there would almost be broad agreement that we need that sort of thing when it comes to any major industrial investment of Tasmania’s energy resources, but ultimately if Hydro make a decision by the end of this year, nothing is going to be in place. We’re still not going to have answers. They need to hold off until we do have things in place.
Tasmania’s advantage as a place for AI infrastructure and data centres will still be there in a year’s time, but we can make sure that there are guardrails in place and that Tasmanians finally actually have an opportunity to have their say on how they want these centres to be put up in Tasmania and to make sure that the Tasmanian community gets the benefits that they deserve.
