MRC Report: Build or be left behind

Community support, sovereignty and energy in australia’s ai and data centre boom

Published: November 2026

Author: Jarryd Williamson

The world’s biggest technology companies are choosing where to build the data centres that will power the next decade of AI. The Commonwealth Bank estimates up to $150 billion will flow into Australian data centres by 2030. After a decade of flat productivity and declining living standards, this is the investment the country desperately needs.

Whether the investment comes here or goes is going to be down to a few key decisions. This report looks at three of those.

1. Community support. We will miss AI’s economic and national security opportunities if public opposition to new data centre developments keeps growing, leading to more project cancellations. Trust has to be earned early, with benefits people can see. Public awareness and education on the positive aspects of AI is lacking, creating a vacuum that dissent is filling.

2. Sovereignty. The data centres that power AI can also train the frontier models that will shape the next decade of national security. If we set the terms and encourage the investment, that training can happen here, under Australian law and oversight, rather than leaving us dependent on models built abroad.

3. Energy. A data centre needs cheap and reliable power. Existing coal assets are aging, gas is tightening and nuclear remains ideologically banned. Higher energy costs are a real risk being factored into investment decisions. The answer is to build reliable supply, not to ration demand or require technology companies to fund all of their generation needs.

On each of these policy challenges, the easy instinct for governments is to overrestrict, ration or leave the hard part to others. The better course is to build more, set clear rules and strengthen community support. If we can do that, Australia will go a long way to securing the investment our nation desperately needs.