Australians risk paying the price for the artificial intelligence boom unless the federal government taxes data centres, independent senator David Pocock warns.
After leading calls to impose a 25 per cent tax on gas exports ahead of the May budget, Senator Pocock has turned his attention to AI.
He's flagged concerns about the government's handling of the technology, saying Australians deserve a fair return if multinational tech giants are going to use the nation's land, energy, water and infrastructure.
It comes after Australia attracted the second-highest data centre investment globally in 2025.
But the independent senator is also questioning why Australia needs to become an AI investment hub at all, pointing out the impact it has on water usage, electricity and the potential job losses for thousands of workers.
"It just seems like we're not asking the bigger question: what's this all for? Is this to accelerate development of AI that will lead to job losses?
"And how does this actually benefit us?" Senator Pocock told AAP.
"We have to actually have the leadership that says if we decide this is a good thing for our country, you can come here, you can use our resources, but you can actually pay us and benefit us."
Senator Pocock took aim at Amazon and Microsoft, which are spearheading the data centre boom in Australia as they strive to meet demand for AI technology.
"I just have real concerns that we're potentially repeating the mistakes that we've made for industries like gas, where we welcome all this investment and then in a decade or two, we turn around, go and say, well, what have we benefited from?" he said.
"It's not hard to imagine a future where Australians are paying the cost of hosting this sort of infrastructure, and Australian businesses are paying international prices to access data processing here in Australia."
The call comes after the Climate Council previously reported that 162 data centres across Australia had been established, with another 90 planned.
The adoption of AI is expected to boost productivity growth as already reflected by $8.7 billion invested in the data centre build-out in the March quarter, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
But Senator Pocock doesn't believe a tax would reduce the incentive for businesses to invest in building data centres in Australia.
That's despite a Productivity Commission submission by Google in 2025 which said uncertain tax policies would lead to "not merely a loss of investment but potentially a critical misstep at a crucial time".
"We'll no doubt hear the same lines that we hear from the gas industry and from the government that are 'if we put too many conditions on these companies, they'll just go elsewhere'," he said.
"We know that that is not the case ... Australia has a stable investment environment."
