The Business Council of Australia (BCA) represents Australia’s largest employers across all sectors, committed to building a stronger, more competitive, and more productive Australia. We welcome the opportunity to respond to the NSW Data Centre Consultation Paper.
Data centres are critical enabling infrastructure for Australia’s digital economy, underpinning sectors including finance, healthcare, mining, government services, retail and essentially every business. They also support the technology every person uses from their computer to their phone.
Artificial intelligence has added to the demand for compute power. Our ability to harness the potential benefits and the productivity gains will depend on having the digital infrastructure which enables this technology.
Australia has a competitive advantage in attracting this investment. Its access to renewable energy and its stable political and legal environment is extremely attractive to companies that seek to build data centres in Australia. This investment will be essential to supporting Australia’s own businesses and facilitating increased innovation in AI and strengthening Australia’s technological resilience and sovereign capability.
Both the NSW Government and the Commonwealth recognise their importance.
The NSW principles broadly align with the Commonwealth expectations for data centres and AI infrastructure developers. Maintaining consistency with the national approach is essential to provide the certainty that business requires to invest.
We are concerned the current policy discussions risk framing the sector primarily as a resource constraint (energy and water). We strongly recommend the NSW Government approaches the principles as an opportunity to make the most out of the economic multiplier and system enabler potential of data centres and the associated digital infrastructure ecosystem to deliver benefits across the economy.
Data centres can be a positive part of our transition to renewables. They are investing in renewable energy projects and meeting the cost of energy connections and water. Further requirements around these issues must be implemented in a technically and commercially sound way, which facilitates a win-win situation, rather than becoming a barrier that causes this investment to go elsewhere.
The implementation detail, including avoiding overly prescriptive regulations and requirements and ensuring timely approvals, will determine whether NSW remains nationally and globally competitive for this investment.