Australian PM wants to ban data centres near schools

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese plans to ban large data centres from being constructed near schools, homes, and farms, according to sources. His government aims to set minimum water and energy standards for these facilities, as well as rules to minimize their impact on communities. This decision comes as Australia's largest state, New South Wales, assesses 26 new data centre projects worth A$100 billion (US$71.7 billion), with 90 currently operating.

A proposal to build a data centre near a school in the Blue Mountains World Heritage-listed area was withdrawn in June due to community opposition. Albanese is set to announce these measures during a meeting with state leaders, emphasizing the need for the data centre boom to respect community support. He will argue that attracting investment in frontier AI training data centres can help Australia gain more economic value, technical capability, and strategic influence from AI.

Albanese expects to address conditions for investing in AI training, ensuring its development is safe, secure, copyright-compliant, and provides benefits to the creative sector. US startup Anthropic has pushed for changes in copyright laws to support AI model training, but this has sparked resistance from media companies, musicians, and other creators.