Today in Parliament, Abigail gave a speech about yet another Labor climate bomb - this time a double whammy.
Abigail said:
This week we have had two concurrent and concerning announcements. The first and most explicitly alarming is the belated release, forced by The Greens in the Senate, of the Federal Government's National Climate Risk Assessment. That report is laden with chilling revelations and devastating predictions of the impact of a heating climate on this continent. The second announcement that raises alarm but is perhaps shrouded in greater secrecy and a better public relations team is the Treasurer's announced commencement of the new Investment Delivery Authority, also known as the "free pass for mega data centres" program. On the face of it, those two events may seem unrelated, but they are actually deeply intertwined, with issues of our future prosperity and safety and the fate of the climate and natural environment that sustains us.
The Climate Risk Assessment outlines scenarios that would see significant potential for loss of life and strain on health systems. If global heating rises above three degrees, heat-related deaths could surge over 400 per cent in Sydney and Darwin. Sea levels rising by half a metre would leave over three million people, or one-third of Australia's coastal population, at high risk of coastal inundation. Brisbane could flood 300 days a year, and Fremantle 200 days a year. The report details cumulative wealth loss at $4.2 trillion by the end of the century, with over $600 billion wiped from the property market. Australia and New South Wales are not on track to meet our existing climate targets, and even more ambitious targets are necessary to avoid these outcomes. The report was in the Government's hands in 2024 and should have been released, long before the Albanese Labor Government approved the North West Shelf gas project through to 2070 in May this year. The North West Shelf Project is the Albanese Government's most polluting fossil fuel project so far, and that is saying something. It will contribute the equivalent of 10 years of Australia's total pollution to the atmosphere over its lifetime.
In this context comes our feckless State Labor Government, led by Premier Chris Minns and Treasurer Daniel Mookhey. Those two unimaginative leaders have been busying themselves becoming the toadies of international mega-capital and dodgy local property developers alike. Just look at the Treasurer's diary disclosures: BHP, Blackstone, BlackRock, KKR, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Schroders Investment Management, Capital Group, Bank of America—and that is just in one single week! On 27 March this year the Premier and the Treasurer met with Blackstone, apparently to discuss the New South Wales economy and investment. Blackstone is one of the world's largest asset managers, with major investment holdings in artificial intelligence, data centres and large-scale residential housing overseas.
In September last year, Blackstone acquired Australian data centre company AirTrunk for over $24 billion, with intentions, of course, to expand and build more data centres. Blackstone has also been publicly whinging about land and property taxes as an impediment to build‑to‑rent projects, which it sees as "an opportunity to generate rental income growth that outstrips rising inflation". Less than a fortnight after that 27 March meeting with Blackstone, the Premier and Treasurer met with the newly Blackstone-owned AirTrunk. Less than two months later, the free pass for data centre expansion from the Investment Delivery Authority was announced in the New South Wales budget. The Devil works hard, but it seems the New South Wales Labor Government works harder when it comes to handouts to billionaires and global capital. The global tech industry has been lobbying hard for countries around the world to embrace data centres, as demand increases along with the rise of artificial intelligence.
The Treasurer's public statements read like they are lifted directly from one of the investor brochures left behind on his coffee table after a cosy lobbying session. "We want major investment in things like data centres, which are the key to powering innovation," the Treasurer said. Everyone seems to be very enamoured with this idea of innovation while they are incapable of having an original thought. I will give members one example of the sort of project the Treasurer has planned for New South Wales. Meta is building a mega data centre in Northern Louisiana to support its AI venture. It will be powered by three new gas-fuelled electrical plants, costing in excess of US$10 billion, and will use roughly three times the amount of electricity that the city of New Orleans uses in a year. It will take up 2,250 acres, with buildings totalling four million square feet, and only create 500 permanent jobs, or about one job per 8,000 square feet. That is before one considers the jobs that will be lost by cost-cutting companies looking to replace human workers with AI agents. So much for the party of labour!
It is fascinating that the only form of economic growth that anybody seems capable of imagining right now is data centres, which provide next to nothing in terms of jobs while consuming a breathtaking amount of resources. In the context of the National Climate Risk Assessment, those projects have vanishingly little social licence. Public opposition will only grow when the public's access to plentiful water is subsumed by the needs of those data centres, which, through their operations, are directly contributing to the ecological breakdown that is creating that same resource scarcity. It is a vicious cycle that our Government seems hell-bent on running straight into.