DUC, Dr Jacqueline, Member, Stop the Gas Plant Southern Highlands; and Member, Doctors for the Environment Australia [by video link] McKAY, Mrs Kirstine, Committee Member, WinZero [by video link] RYALL, Mrs Jessica, Committee Member, Stop the Gas Plant Southern Highlands SWAINSTON, Ms Nathalie, Volunteer, Stop the Gas Plant [by video link] WHITE, Mrs Gaye, Deputy Chair, WinZero [11:10] CHAIR: Welcome. A number of our representatives for this session are appearing online because they're in communities that are not based here in the metropolitan area. I invite you to make opening statements. Mrs White : Thanks for the opportunity to appear today. WinZero is a community organisation in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. I want to make one central point: communities need a genuine say before the big decisions about data centres are made. We hear extraordinary numbers attached to data centres—billions of dollars of investment and thousands of construction jobs—but, once built, these are highly automated industrial facilities filled largely with imported computing equipment, consuming enormous amounts of energy, and sometimes water, while creating relatively few permanent local jobs. Much of the economic value and control can then flow to multinational technology companies overseas. At the same time, AI is already changing work and, in some cases, replacing jobs. So Australia should be asking: what lasting value does the host community actually receive in return? In the Southern Highlands, we are piloting what we believe is an Australian-first participatory process called A Better Model for Data Centres: A Community Counter Offer. We're bringing people with different views together, providing independent information and asking: are data centres appropriate for our region and, if so, under what conditions? On 15 July, the federal government said large data centres should be built in the most appropriate locations, with input from state and local communities. And that's exactly what has to happen, but AI is moving far faster than our political system can respond and major proposals are arriving now while national rules are still being developed. If the government is serious about getting the location right and giving communities a genuine say, there must be a moratorium on new approvals—or, as you said, retrospective application of the rules—because our political system moves at human speed but AI does not. CHAIR: Mrs Ryall. Mrs Ryall : There's an old saying that NSW actually stands for 'Newcastle, Sydney, Wollongong' when it comes to the legislative frameworks, funding and even attention from our federal government. While it's critical to understand the implications for metropolitan data centre proposals, we have to also ask: what do these facilities look like outside of our cities when the industrial zoned lots swell to 67 hectares and the power from the grid dwindles to a single 33-kilovolt line? How do our overworked and underresourced regional councils advocate for their communities and the environment when big tech comes to a small town? What happens when the state planning systems fail and there are no national standards in place? That scenario is no longer a hypothetical. The Southern Highlands Data Campus is a rural industrial block the size of 134 football fields on the outskirts of Moss Vale. Proposed on bushfire-prone riparian land that drains directly into Warragamba Dam is a combination of hungry data centres and gas fired power plants to feed them. The master plan for this site has been revealed to us in stages—one data centre approved in 2021, a gas fired power plant approved three years later, on and on—five separate development applications all leading us to the monster: a 673 megawatt gas fired power plant larger than the Hunter Power Project at Kurri Kurri, clearing the early stages of the state significant development process with no agency advice or engagement with traditional owners and no grid connection. This is a private BYO power station operating outside the national energy market rules. It will power an unknown number of data centres that will fill out the rest of the site over time. This is what we end up with when legislation aims to fast-track speculative investment rather than prevent a nightmare: dozens of exhaust stacks emitting two million tonnes of carbon a year from one facility. An accident here could spell disaster. Our farms are your food bowl and your weekend getaway. Our forests are the clean air you breathe. Our rivers are the water in your tap. We cannot be your dumping ground too. CHAIR: Dr Duc? Dr Duc : Primum non nocere. First do no harm. Doctors for the Environment Australia recently released [inaudible], which I would like to specifically reference to the committee today. The health impact of a data centre depends on how it is powered, where it is positioned and how it is cooled. Current frameworks assess emissions against numerical criteria one project at a time, as Jess has stated, but do not currently require a health impact assessment of the data centre and how it is powered. The proposed gas plant and data [inaudible] own air quality report describes a continuous gas fired power generation facility that would emit carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides and fine particulate matter into the local environment, where the nearest residential homes are just 500 metres away. These airborne pollutants are associated with significant increased health risks—particularly amongst children, older people and individuals with pre-existing heart and lung conditions. The developer's assessment for the current 16 megawatt stage predicts compliance with emissions criteria. However, the final proposed plan is 673 megawatts across 19 generator halls and no health impact assessment of all the stages of that proposal together has been made public to date. Meeting a criterion one stage at a time does not tell us what the whole would mean for a child growing up next to 30 Douglas Road, Moss Vale. The site also sits within Sydney's drinking water catchment, with more than 25,000 litres of oil, diesel and AdBlue to be stored on site along key riparian waterways leading directly to Warragamba Dam. Safe drinking water starts by protecting its source. The proposed gas plant and data centre at 30 Douglas Road, Moss Vale highlights significant potential risks to the environment, health and wellbeing of our community and communities well beyond. It's a case study exemplar of how and why we urgently need stronger regulatory frameworks to ensure that poorly conceived proposals like this one do not proceed. I ask the committee to recommend a mandatory health impact assessment for data centre proposals to include assessment of their power supply source, involvement of health agencies from inception of a proposal to prohibit data centres from enabling new or expanded fossil fuel generation, and a moratorium on all AI data centre approvals until acceptable standards are in place. Primum non nocere. First, do no harm. Thank you. CHAIR: Thank you. Ms Swainston, are you there? Ms Swainston : Yes, I'm here. Thank you. I'm here representing Stop the Gas Plant and as a proud member of Parents for Climate. I would like to use my two minutes today to speak to you as a parent. I have two young boys growing up in a country that acknowledges that we're living through a climate crisis, yet where a 673-megawatt gas plant can still be proposed to power a single man's data centre. When my kids ask what I'm doing on the laptop after bedtime, the honest answer is, 'Defending your future, again,' and I am one of thousands. Parents and grandparents across the country are spending time that belongs to our families reading environmental impact statements and drafting objections at the kitchen table. I'll be honest; I'm tired. I am tired of a system that makes people like us the last line of scrutiny and seems to outsource regulation to volunteers. Decisions about places like Moss Vale are too often made without genuine partnership with the people who live there and love them. Data centres and AI risk rolling out exactly like the extractive industries before them, where land and energy are secured first and community trust becomes a problem to manage, and so often the benefits flow elsewhere. I understand that data centres and AI are part of our future, but we do have a narrow window to do this differently. These companies need our land, our energy, our water and our political stability, but their urgency to build is not a reason for us to accommodate them quickly. It should be used as our leverage. Last Friday, the government opened consultation on mandatory AI standards for energy, water and land, and I do welcome that, but communities appear in those standards as something to be protected, not as participants in the decisions. It doesn't have to be that way. Gaye White already mentioned earlier the deliberative process running in the Highlands to design what community-first data centre development could look like. Communities across Australia are watching because they're tired of feeling powerless too. I ask that community deliberation become the fourth standard alongside energy, water and land and that the children who'll live longest with these decisions become the measure of whether they're actually good ones. Thank you. CHAIR: Thank you. Mrs McKay, are you there? Mrs McKay : Yes, I am. I'm here today as a resident of the Southern Highlands and as a committee member for a local organisation, WinZero, with Gaye. I'm calling for a moratorium for all data centre developments around Australia until we have clear and very strong legislation that's in place that ensures that our health, our communities, the environment and our livelihoods are protected and enhanced through data centre developments, not destroyed because of them. Our community currently have a massive gas fired power plant proposal before us to run a private data centre in Moss Vale. If this goes ahead, my family and my community are going to be so greatly impacted. We live, exercise and work, and our children study and play, all within very close proximity to this proposed gas plant that will be sending harmful particulates into our air. Its impact on our health is going to be significant. We're also concerned, for our family, that two of our businesses are going to be significantly impacted as they rely on tourists coming for wellness experiences that are clean, environmentally friendly and connected to nature. Having a gas-fired power plant only a few kilometres away totally destroys that experience. There are so many locals in our area who rely on tourism and who are going to be similarly impacted. As a community, we have done so much in the past six years in the face of the climate catastrophe we are experiencing. WinZero has supported our community to transition to renewable energy through 'FOSSIL OFF!' campaigns. We've set up a community sharing virtual energy network. We promote regenerative communities and food systems. We even have the government stopping residential gas connections. But then we have a proposal for an absolutely huge private gas plant to be built here that will produce massive amounts of emissions. It's devastating to think that that might become a reality. I think the whole world needs to be doing whatever it can to reduce the impact of climate change, and building gas plants to power private data centres is just going in the opposite direction. Thank you for my time. CHAIR: Thank you. To all three of our online witnesses: if you've got copies of your opening statements, please send them through—we missed a little bit, though not much, of what you said—so we can make sure the Hansard is up to date. Mrs White, where is this facility up to? Has ground already been broken? Is it already happening, or is it still in the planning stage? Mrs White : Jess is the expert on that particular question. Mrs Ryall : The approvals have been split up over half a dozen different development applications. At the moment, on the site, there is a data centre that is constructed, and we're not sure whether it's operating or not. It's connected to mains with, I think, diesel backup. There's an approved 14-megawatt gas-fired power plant, which, I think, based on phone calls to me from neighbours, they've started doing some preliminary site works on. That's approved, but we don't know whether they're actually building it or whether they're just doing some preliminary things. There's a second data centre that's also approved for the block and that hasn't been built yet. Everything else—the second gas plant and the big state significant development, a 673-megawatt gas-fired power plant—are still in planning. CHAIR: Okay. I'm hearing the frustration about the various different elements being broken up so that they're not really being caught in one big assessment. The impacts therefore are not being measured properly. Mrs Ryall : That's right. The facility has never been assessed as a precinct-wide master plan; it's just been done in pieces so far. CHAIR: Piecemeal—yes. The impact on Sydney's drinking water has been mentioned a number of times in relation to the catchment there. Could you go to that in a bit more detail for us. Why is that a major concern for you? Mrs Ryall : The block itself is mapped as bushfire-prone land, and it has, I think, a category-3 riparian watercourse that crosses it and drains into the Wingecarribee River, which then ends up in the Wollondilly River and then, eventually, in Warragamba Dam. We can't do basic residential alterations and additions without acknowledging Sydney Water, because everything that drains off even of residential blocks ends up in that river and, ultimately, ends up in Sydney's drinking water. It's a big concern because we know that there are a variety of different fuels and processes that are going on on that site, and there hasn't really been anyone looking at what impacts they will have downriver. There's also some remodelling of the block itself. They're building a really large—it's called a BESS pad, which is kind of a grid-scale battery up on a built pad. That's right near where the water flows, so there's a lot of bank remodelling happening that we're not sure has the right oversight as well. CHAIR: In terms of community consultation, have you had an experience similar to what the other witnesses this morning said they have had—that is, virtually zero? Mrs Ryall : There was one event on 12 March. The proponent, Cloud Carrier, hosted a community group called 'Silicon Highlands' for one evening, but that's the only community event we know about. We actually found out about this development by mistake; we weren't informed about it. There was a different SSD, state significant development, proposal happening across town. We contacted a local councillor to find out what was going on with that and what the address was, because the council had posted about it on their social media but not really said where it was going in. When the council wrote back to us, they gave us information about this other SSD but then linked to this one by accident. And that's how we found out about the development. CHAIR: Okay—interesting! Is there a lack of transparency with all of this? It's not just about the consultation; it's also about not understanding what modelling is being done in terms of the impact on the groundwater, on the water supply and on the emissions or on the broader environmental impact, let alone what it means for the community. I take the point about local tourism. Is the lack of transparency a concern for you? Mrs Ryall : Absolutely. Because it's been split into different developments, the whole facility hasn't been assessed, so we don't really know what the final build-out of the site will even look like. They've probably filled close to half the block now with power plants and two data centres, but there's probably room for another dozen data centres. The lack of transparency in what the eventual master planned facility will look like is of extreme concern, I would say. CHAIR: Senator Henderson. Senator HENDERSON: I don't have any questions, Chair. Thanks. CHAIR: No worries. We have asked Cloud Carrier to appear before us at our Canberra hearing, so, if there are specific issues that you think need to be raised directly with them, we'd be keen to know what they are. The federal government has made some commitments around trying to have some national standards. They're obviously not in place yet, despite the fact that these facilities are rolling ahead. Do you think that there is a lack of consistency between this particular facility in Moss Vale and what the Prime Minister has promised so far? Mrs White : Well, Chris Bowen has said there are going to be no gas-fired power stations, and yet here we've got one in our backyard. I just question why we're not prepared for all of this. We've known for years that this has been coming, yet here we are, playing complete catch-up, and this is just galloping away from us. Can I make a point about community consultation. This notion that they have to tick a box of community consultation—it usually is a PowerPoint presentation and a few post-it notes. We're over it. For years now, we've been fighting coalmines and the largest plastic-recycling plants without the regulations in place to control them. As Nathalie said, it shouldn't be up to us to be the last level of resistance to these things. CHAIR: How widespread do you think the feeling is now in the community that this facility is being pushed on the community? Mrs Ryall : Our little mums' WhatsApp group accidentally found out about it. From there, we went straight to a letterboxing campaign so that there were people turning up at the conciliation conference for the power plant that was already in the planning process, once the developer escalated that to court under deemed-refusal rights. At that event, I think we had over a hundred people—probably close to 200—and it was a weekday. It was raining and it was winter in the Southern Highlands, which was not ideal, so that was a really amazing turnout. Then, on 9 August, which was probably a couple of months later, we had over 400 residents attend a major town hall event in the Moss Vale Services Club. That event was addressed by Senator Shoebridge and our local member, Carol Berry. Judy Hannan was also there, as were Gundungurra elders. That was an excellent turnout. I think a lot of people learnt about this from that event. The problem is, because we have other major state significant developments happening in the shire at the same time, a lot of people will say, 'Yes, I've heard about that development,' but they've actually heard about the plastics plant or the grid-scale battery, and they haven't heard about this one. It's kind of difficult to keep it straight, what's going on where, because there are so many hyperscale proposals happening at the moment in our shire, being just outside of Sydney with very, very large industrial blocks. CHAIR: That's interesting. Mrs White, you talked about a better model for how data centres could work with the community and be established from the beginning. Is part of that vision about ensuring that the community gets something back from this—that they're not just hosting these things and that there is an actual community benefit? Mrs White : Well, yes—actual value left in the community and continual value left in the community, not just coming to use our land, our water and our energy. You mentioned AirTrunk. That's possibly a model that others should follow, in terms of community value that's left there. But we've fundraised this process. We've got four partners: Regen Labs, BWD Strategic and RadicalxChange. We're doing a pilot now in the Southern Highlands to understand from people what conditions one could have in our area. And we're fundraising to make that a toolkit that other communities around the Australia can use. We're on the front foot. We're ready. If you want to come here, these are the parameters if you want to come to our shire. You have to partner with the community and put value back into the community, because we're going to lose a lot of jobs with this. In our region, a lot of people moved to the Southern Highlands in COVID and they're self-employed. We're already hearing from these people that their income is being affected by AI. This is going to redefine the whole income stream for the government and for the whole of Australia. Mrs Ryall : A massive fossil fuel industrial precinct in the heart of a tourism and agricultural region is going to sterilise that region for future growth. CHAIR: What type of engagement have you had with the state government about this? If it's the state government that's making these approvals without considering the cumulative impact or the flow-on effects so far, do you think the state government's just been asleep at the wheel? Do they understand what's going on? What's the community's sense of how engaged the state government actually is in these facilities? Mrs Ryall : There was a regulation in the state government's arsenal where, for large state-significant developments that fit certain criteria, they had to engage with relevant agencies before they were able to issue the rule book for the development, called the SEARs document. That did not happen in the case of the big state-significant development here, and when we questioned it, we did get clarification on that from the council planner about why. I've got the email here actually: 'We didn't consult with agencies or Wingecarribee shire on this occasion. That is because, when we asked the proponent for further information to clarify the nature and scope of the proposal to inform agency advice and targeted SEARs, we were required to issue the SEARs quickly and without consultation because the proponent threatened legal action.' Shortly after that, the SEARs were issued without any agency advice. So, for this large state-significant development, the EPA has not yet been consulted, Sydney Water hasn't been consulted, the gas company hasn't been consulted, council, Indigenous landholders—nobody. That rule book was published by the department without any of those consultations. We started asking questions about that. We submitted a GIPA. Then that regulation was repealed. It's section 175(2) of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation, and it was repealed on 1 July. I assume Minister Scully signed off on it, but now it's no longer a requirement to consult with those agencies. CHAIR: We might get you to table that email exchange so that we've got that. Mrs Ryall : I'm happy to. CHAIR: So that I'm clear, there was a regulation in place that said that before approval is given there's this process that needs to be undertaken to talk across agencies about the impact that this would have. That didn't occur, and now the regulation has been repealed, so those rules don't exist anyway. Mrs Ryall : That's right. It's really hard to advocate for ourselves when the rules are changing on the fly like that. It is just for the SEARs rule book, which is a custom document that the developer gets that gives them the rules that they have to stick to in order to do the development. Had those agencies been consulted, perhaps that rule book would not have changed. There's no way to know that, but my understanding of the legislation is that this fitted the definition of the kind of development that needed that early consultation with agencies. Now that that's been repealed, any future developments that come through won't need to have that. So we feel a little bit blindsided by the state government because we've had rules changed on us on the fly, and now we're not sure whether this was issued in error, or maybe there's a reason why they were allowed to go around those rules. Also, there was this theoretical legal threat that Rose-Anne Hawkeswood, the department of planning duty planner, wrote down and told us about, and we wonder whether that SEARs was issued under some kind of duress within the department. CHAIR: Interesting. You can forward to us whatever evidence you've got in relation to that. Do you feel that there needs to be clear rules around where these facilities are able to be built in relation to water supply? I'm listening to you and I'm looking at your submission. It's not just the impact of the water used. What we're hearing is the run-off from some of these facilities, particularly the gas-fired power plant—it's not just the use of water; it's contamination of water. Is that correct? Mrs Ryall : Yes. I'm not sure that a facility like this, with gas-fired generation to power a private data centre, is an appropriate development to have in this country. I don't know that this kind of thing should be happening. I think we can do better than this. CHAIR: Are you worried about the fact that this is happening and yet what we're hearing from Minister Bowen is that these facilities wouldn't be powered by these kinds of private gas-fired plants. Obviously, they're going to be doing that in the Northern Territory. Queensland said they're going to be doing that. It feels as though there is a gap here in New South Wales because of the timeframe. Mrs White : Well, there's clearly a gap. We shouldn't even be here talking about it. It's just inappropriate. Kirstine mentioned how, for six years, after the bushfires and the climate emergency, WinZero have been asking residents of the Southern Highlands to fork out a lot of money to reduce their personal carbon footprint, not only in the home but in transport. We started with changing light bulbs. Remember the old days? You could save the world by changing a light bulb. We can't ask people to support what the government wants us to do with the left hand and then the right hand completely wipe out all of that work. It's just insulting to allow something like this when we have tried so hard. We are one of the leading shires for EV use and battery installation. We're personally putting in all the effort we can to reduce carbon emissions, but the government has to stop anything like this. It's just out of the question. Can I just make a point about PFAS, which was brought up before? CHAIR: Yes. Mrs White : We have a hot spot of PFAS very close to this facility and we don't know where it's come from. PFAS will be in data centres and, if there is runoff, nobody is screening for it. You won't know it's there. It's like Donald Trump said, 'Don't test for Covid because we don't want to know it's there.' We have no facility in the Southern Highlands to test for it. So the EPA is not making them meet any standards because there's no way to test for it. CHAIR: Okay. We can ask some of those questions of the proponent as well—and we will. Thank you both very much, and thank you to our online witnesses. We appreciate your time. As I said, if there are specific things that you think need to be asked, beyond what you've already given us, when Cloud Carrier does appear before us, I'll be very keen to hear it. Mrs White : Can I ask your advice? How do we get the moratorium? CHAIR: Well, I think the work of this committee, and asking members from across the parliament to consider a pause while the rules are put in place. It seems pretty basic to me, but part of this inquiry is to try to work out what we should be doing. So thank you for your time and contribution. Mrs White : It needs to be bipartisan too. We can't be playing political games with this; this is very serious. CHAIR: Absolutely. Thank you..