Federation Chamber
13 October 2026
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Federation Chamber Australian Parliament
10:02 - 10:07
Speaker 1
Are there any constituency statements by honorable members? And I give the call to the member for Farrer.
10:07 - 10:22
Speaker 3
Thank you, honorable Deputy Speaker. Australia faces a test of governance that has received far too little attention. It's not a test of ambition. Our ambitions are aspirational. It's a test of whether anyone is actually doing the planning.
10:22 - 10:52
Speaker 4
The nation has set itself a series of goals. Stronger GDP growth, we're committed to population growth, and with that, with all the demands of housing and food production that come with it. We have embraced with considerable enthusiasm the rise of artificial intelligence and the data centers that sustain it. Defensible goals, yet each draws on the same two finite resources: water and electricity. That is the policy problem that is not being confronted.
10:52 - 11:48
Speaker 3
AEMO forecasts that data centers will rise from about 3% of grid demand today to 13% by 2036, totaling 34 terawatt hours a year. That is roughly the consumption of every household in New South Wales and Victoria combined. Meeting it will clearly require 10 to 18 gigawatts of new generation and storage at a cost of 20 to 30 billion before the substantial investment in transition lines, estimated at circa 150 billion of total capital requirement. Sydney Water warns that under evaporative cooling, data centers' demands could reach 90 billion liters a year by 2035, between 15 and 20% of Sydney's drinking supply. These figures raise three questions that go to the heart of national policy.
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