By John Pane, EFA Chair.
July has been an interesting month in the digital rights space. In Australia the biggest thing to drop into our universe is the government’s response to the AI and data centre feeding frenzy being stoked by Big Tech, Silicon Valley and other vested interest parties who are jockeying to make bagfuls of cash from this latest technological great leap forward. And of course we “need to act now… and fast!!” Sound familiar?
On 15 July 2026, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a shift from voluntary technology guidelines to a mandatory legislative framework. The strategy introduces enforceable Australian AI Standards, establishes a centralized Office of AI within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, mandates “strict” energy and water self-sufficiency for large data centres, and explicitly “protects” the copyright of creative workers against unauthorized AI training pipelines.
EFA’s perspective on this announcement is mixed. There are a ton of motherhood statements to work through and if I hear Albo’s favourite word of the moment again (“opportunity”) I will find it hard to resist the urge to hit something.
Our initial thoughts are this: We are supportive of the proposed transition away from voluntary safety and security guidelines but are deeply skeptical about the lack of immediate enforcement details and whether they will be as strong as those currently in place in the EU, which are human rights preserving. From an environmental perspective it’s more vibe than a plan and pretty much feels like a vague “plan to make a plan” or a “concept of a plan”(borrowing the phrase from someone well known for their great intellectual capacity). From an intellectual property and copyright protection perspective, we support a strict anti-theft copyright stance but question its retrospective viability and the fairness of the proposed reimbursements remains unknown.
Big questions and hard problems remain: how to prioritise housing construction and the renewable energy build-out, while protecting water supplies on the world’s driest inhabited continent, especially after the UN declared a “global water bankruptcy.”
Something has to give, right? Affordable housing, dependable and affordable energy, renewables buildout and water are human rights. They must be our government’s first priority and not pandering to Big Tech interests fueled by pixie-dust-induced dreams of “opportunity, innovation, abundance, prosperity”.
EFA strongly supports a 12 month data centre build moratorium until we have more substantive research and evidence mapping out in detail the risks and harms of this AI and data centre tsunami on Australian society.
Let’s validate the government’s untested assumptions and weigh the risks vs the benefits with both transparency and hard evidence.
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Image credit: Unsplash/İsmail Enes Ayhan.