On Thursday 27 August 2026 I gave a speech to Queensland Parliament about both major parties' commitment to the AI data centre "boom", and the enormous impact this will have on our environment, energy security and communities. You can read my full speech below, or in the official parliamentary record of proceedings (Hansard).
This week we have learned that apparently Queensland is going it alone on data centres. The Premier has revealed that we are opting out of national rules requiring data centres to cover their energy use with renewables. Instead, we are saying to operators, ‘Come on, take as much of our coal and gas power as you like.’ The buzzword that he is using to justify this pillage of our power is data sovereignty. He clearly does not know what data sovereignty means. Until we regulate big tech there is no such thing as data sovereignty in Australia. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation's modelling tells us that the LNP Premier's tech bro fantasy is actually going to increase Queensland power prices by 13 per cent over the next 10 years.
He does not understand just how energy hungry these data centres are. Let us look at an example in Maroochydore. Tech company NEXTDC is proposing to use more energy annually than the entire suburb's homes combined. They are planning on expanding it to 7 megawatts of IT capacity which is equivalent to about 12,200 typical homes, which is more than the 11,500 homes that are in Maroochydore as it stands. That does not even include the energy for cooling pumps or lighting.
The fight this week over renewables obscures the real problem, which is that both of the major parties apparently still want the data centre boom. We are seeing the LNP going for open slather here in Queensland, Labor says they want more renewables, but they both still want to see this data centre boom happen. Meanwhile we have experts like Professor Toby Walsh saying that there is no way that renewables even could keep up with the current rate of data centre construction.
My conspiracy theory, for what it is worth, is that this manufactured fight is really all about shifting the focus and obscuring the fact that most people do not want the data centre boom at all. They take up huge amounts of space, including otherwise productive farmland, and huge amounts of energy and water. This technology will destroy more jobs than it creates. Just like past boom and bust cycles, the data centre bubble will burst. Experts are already predicting that future AI will not even require these enormous buildings full of GPUs. Albanese and Crisafulli are both missing the point: we do not want the data centre boom. We did not ask for data centres, we asked for homes, we asked for classrooms, we asked for hospitals and public health clinics.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Krause): Member for Maiwar, you need to refer to people by their proper titles in this place: the Premier or the member for Broadwater.
Mr BERKMAN: My apologies. The only people asking for data centres here in Queensland are the big tech bosses and the politicians they fund. AI is being foisted onto us from every angle in our lives. It is appearing in apps, invading every corner of life, whether it is Facebook community groups that are all full of the same posts or Google that does not even function properly anymore. For the privilege of this slop we pay with our land and electricity. Welcome to the data centre boom. I want to opt out. Where is the unsubscribe button?