Labor to set terms for datacentre and AI growth as it vows not to repeat mistakes of resources boom

Assistant minister agrees concerns over resource usage are legitimate but argues Australia cannot ignore ‘consequential’ economic wave Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Australia should learn from the mistakes of the resources boom and set the terms for the AI and datacentres boom, the assistant minister for the digital economy, Andrew Charlton says. Growth in datacentres has exploded in the past two years, Charlton told the Sydney Institute on Wednesday night, with 44 projects in the pipeline in New South Wales alone seeking 11GW of capacity on the electricity grid. Datacentres currently use about 2% of the national electricity market – the equivalent of 700,000 homes – but that is rising, he said, with demand doubling in Victoria and rising 18% in NSW in the past year. Against that meteoric rise, Charlton said, datacentres have become “one of the most contested pieces of infrastructure in the world”. Advocates say they could bring a new wave of economic value while critics say they are “giant sheds … creating few jobs and risking some of the same mistakes we made in the resources boom”. Charlton said