{"id":71212,"date":"2026-08-13T10:54:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T10:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/71212\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T10:54:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T10:54:38","slug":"im-scared-for-me-and-my-kids-nt-residents-call-for-moratorium-on-data-centres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/71212\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I’m scared for me and my kids’: NT residents call for moratorium on data centres"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fears about water use, noise and gas-powered energy have fuelled calls for a moratorium on plans for a wave of data centres in the Northern Territory, with Darwin residents voicing strong opposition at a community meeting last night.<\/p>\n

Harvey Jupp was among the dozens of people who turned up to the information session, held by Independent Member for Johnston, Justine Davis, questioning the rapid expansion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“These data centres basically work for big tech corporations,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Harvey Jupp was among the locals to voice his concerns in Nightcliff. (ABC News: Roxanne Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n

“They do absolutely nothing for the communities that they sit in other than extract vast amounts of resources and export our data.<\/p>\n

“They don’t create any long-term jobs, and my fear is if they start popping up in the NT, we’re going to see multiple centres in the near future and they’re going to completely destroy the environment that we live in.”<\/p>\n

What is a data centre?<\/p>\n

A data centre is a large building that houses infrastructure that keeps the online world functioning.<\/p>\n

They require massive computing power and as a result, need a lot of land and consume large amounts of water<\/a> and electricity.<\/p>\n

Last month, NT Trade, Business and Asian Relations Minister Robyn Cahill said she wanted to make the Territory “the data centre capital of the globe”, powered by gas from the Beetaloo Basin, which could start producing gas for the first time within weeks.<\/p>\n

\"Workers<\/p>\n

Next DC announced plans for its first data centre in the Darwin CBD in 2021, with a second facility now under construction. (ABC News: Marcus Kennedy)<\/p>\n

She said 12 data centre proponents were already eyeing the NT and had the government’s full support.<\/p>\n

Next DC is building the second of two small data centres in the middle of Darwin city.<\/p>\n

Most recently, the territory government threw its support behind a $40 billion proposal by a Beetaloo Energy subsidiary to build a hyper-scale AI data centre at Weddell<\/a>, on Darwin’s outskirts.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

The project is fiercely opposed by nearby resident and Litchfield councillor Pauline Cass, who said she worried about the potential noise and how much water the facility might guzzle up.<\/p>\n

“There’s no benefit for myself, my family or anybody that I know really,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Pauline Cass says she worries about “hyper-scale, thirsty, noisy, polluting” data centres “sucking us dry”. (ABC News: Roxanne Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n

“Most of the rural area, we rely heavily on our groundwater, on our bore water.<\/p>\n

“I feel quite anxious about the possibility of having these giant AI, hyper-scale, thirsty, noisy, polluting data centres that don’t benefit us, sucking us dry across the territory.”<\/p>\n

Despite the federal government’s pledge to require data centres to run on renewable energy<\/a>, during the meeting, residents raised concerns that the NT government was promoting gas from the Beetaloo Basin as a power source for the industry.<\/p>\n

One resident questioned whether there were “any benefits for NT residents at all”, while another said she was becoming increasingly anxious about the rapid pace of the industry’s expansion.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

One mother told the forum she was concerned about what the AI data centre boom would mean for her children. (ABC News: Roxanne Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n

“I’m scared for me and I’m scared for my kids,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It’s terrifying and it’s in our backyard \u2014 it’s bigger than all of us.”<\/p>\n

Is the NT ready for an AI boom?<\/a><\/p>\n

The NT’s sunny skies, natural gas reserves and proximity to Asia have caught the attention of a dozen data centre developers.<\/p>\n

While the meeting highlighted the unknowns around data centres and how they will operate, Environment Centre NT senior climate campaigner Bree Ahrens used the meeting to call for minimum standards to be established before the industry grows any further.<\/p>\n

“We have a clear opportunity here to ensure that the federal regulations are robust enough to ensure things like a clear exclusion for fracked gas and a clear commitment to free, prior and informed consent from traditional owners,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Ms Cahill said she could not comment on whether the NT government would commit to a moratorium because she was overseas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moratoriums on data centres on the rise<\/p>\n

Accela Research chief executive Shu Ling said global backlash against data centres was growing and agreed now was the time to get ahead of the boom by putting regulations in place to ensure the industry benefited both the economy and the public before “we’re too far down the track”.<\/p>\n

“People don’t want to live next to data centres,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Shu Ling says now is the time to ensure the right regulations are in place before “we’re too far down the track”. (ABC News: Charlotte Wilkes)<\/p>\n

“We’re seeing moratoriums [on data centres] happen increasingly globally.<\/p>\n

“And without clear guardrails, I think this is something we’ll probably see more of.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fears about water use, noise and gas-powered energy have fuelled calls for a moratorium on plans for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[68068,1132,22,21,9876,1403,12262,11758,13160],"class_list":["post-71212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-ai-data-centres","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-electricity","tag-hyperscale","tag-moratorium","tag-opposition","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}