Tuesday, 2 June 2026

 Richard WELCH (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (22:32): (2535) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Economic Growth and Jobs, and it concerns how Victoria decides which data centres and AI investments succeed in our state. Victoria needs this investment. We want data centres coming to Victoria. We want the high-skilled jobs and the value of the secondary industries that will come off the back of them. In recent days there has been a run of reporting that presents the three or four one-off deals as some kind of triumph of strategy, but on closer examination this is evidence of the absence of a strategy.

In the first three months of the year former minister Danny Pearson held 12 meetings with data centre and AI firms. Thanks to reporting in the Age, we saw the nature of those meetings – wining and dining, going to the tennis, giving handshakes and smiling and nodding. But what is painfully clear is that the entire strategy for a critical part of our future infrastructure is being done by the former minister making phone calls and personal interventions and sending precisely the wrong signal to investors in that we do not actually have a system, we have a person doing personal interventions. It is not scalable, and it certainly is not optimal for maximising the benefit of investment or securing the right deals for Victoria.

There are clear jurisdictional differences in data centre attraction between Victoria and the rest of the nation. What the data centre industry tell us is they want clear planning rules, transparent approval pathways and certainty on power and water. New South Wales has published exactly that. Victoria offers hospitality and access to a select few. It is because of this that we are losing out on potential investment. A system built on relationships with individuals rather than rules and a system is fragile. It changes the moment the minister changes, and they just have. It leaves Victorians with no way of knowing whether these deals are being struck in the interests of someone else or of the state itself. The action I seek from the minister is to publish a transparent rules-based framework for data centres and AI investment so that investment in this state is won on its merits and published rules and not on who you know.