David Pocock is pressing Australia to tax the fast-growing AI datacentre industry, arguing that companies drawing on the country’s land, energy and water should pay their fair share. He said the government should not repeat what he sees as the mistakes made on gas exports, after Microsoft and Amazon Web Services committed a combined $45bn to Australian datacentres in the past year.
The push comes as Pocock says more than 2,200 Australians chipped in their own money to fund billboards backing a 25% tax on gas exports, a sign he believes voters are ready for tougher treatment of multinationals using national resources. He has framed the datacentre argument in the same terms, warning that Australia could be heading into the same kind of policy failure with AI that it allowed on gas.
“If tech companies are going to use our land, energy and water for AI, they must pay their fair share of tax,” Pocock said. “I’m concerned we’re about to make the same mistake again. This time, with AI and datacentres.” That message lands while the prime minister has been posing for photos with the CEOs of Microsoft and Amazon Web Services and welcoming the investment, even as the scale of the build-out keeps growing.
By 2030, Australian datacentres are expected to consume as much electricity as every household in Victoria combined, and their water consumption is forecast to more than triple. That puts the issue squarely in the path of households and communities already worried about power bills, water demand and construction near where the facilities are rising. Governments of both persuasions have spent decades getting the settings wrong on gas, Pocock said, and he is arguing that this time the mistake could be even harder to unwind because the build-out is moving so quickly.
There is also a practical obstacle that complicates the politics. Pocock said the lag in corporate reporting makes it difficult to get a complete picture of datacentre revenues and profits, which means any tax or pricing response could be slower than the investment wave itself. Australia is welcoming billions of dollars into the sector now, but the question left hanging is whether Canberra will decide the companies behind the build will pay more for the land, power and water they are using.
