National

'Red hot' with anger: city residents face AI inquiry

By Noah Secomb

Sep 22, 2026

Data centre construction — Calls are growing for a national framework to address the location and impacts of data centres. -AAP Image

The impending impact of artificial intelligence infrastructure on Australian communities will be laid bare as metropolitan residents advocate to push data centres out of town.

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Community groups, local councils and AI experts will take to the leafy northern Sydney suburb of Lane Cove to raise their concerns at the first hearing of a Senate inquiry into AI and data centres.

A local advocacy group will be among those first up to give evidence.

Voices of Bennelong has called for a holistic approach to development approvals as the northern suburbs of Sydney are set to host two major data centres.

"The issue is no longer a single project. It is the cumulative impact of an emerging data centre cluster," the group said in a submission.

"The projected water demand of the broader Lane Cove and Ryde data centre corridor is estimated to exceed 15,000ML annually, dwarfing the water consumption of the entire Lane Cove residential community several times over."

Voices of Bennelong is calling for a National Data Centre Framework to address location, environmental, fire and community impacts.

Representatives from the City of Sydney will front the hearing later to urge future AI developments are not focused in major urban centres.

"Depending on the use case, (data centres) do not always need to be in urban centres with competing land uses and community impacts," the local council said in a submission to the inquiry.

Communities were "red hot" with anger about how AI developers have treated them, Greens senator and committee chair Sarah Hanson-Young said.

"They feel like they've been ignored," she told reporters on Monday.

"They feel like these big data centres have just been imposed on them ... and the prime minister's job is to put that message to (the AI companies) while he's in the United States, and then to come home and do something about it."

It echoes comments from experts such as Toby Walsh from the University of NSW AI Institute.

"There's absolutely no need for them to be built there, because the speed of light is actually quite great," he told AAP in August.

He suggested former coal-fired power stations could host data centres and be linked to major cities with fibre optic cables along railway lines.