On August 25th 2026, 30 community members attended a community meeting at Red Hot Arts in Alice Springs.
Below is a summary of our meeting. This opened up discussion in what these AI hyperscale data centres mean for us here in the NT and support people to make submissions into Senate Inquiry into AI and Data Centre 

If you want to make a submission
Please find the ecnt/lock the gate submission writing guide here for the Senate Inquiry into AI and Data Centres, as well as a copy of Hannah’s Presentation here.

The sumary includes some points you may want to attach in your submission as well. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with any questions and ideas!

Make your submissions here Submissions close Tuesday 1st September.

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Summaries of AI Data Centre Community Meeting 25 August 2026 -

• The CLP’s aim is to create a market for Beetaloo gas and secure the future  of the gas industry here in the NT, by backing hyperscale AI datacentre developments.
  

• Community members mapped these developments as a whole supply chain with adverse material impacts for the health and wellbeing of people and country here in the NT.
  

• Many of you spoke about grief, feeling hopeless and about what we can do, and what solidarity could look like here, regionally and nationally.
  

• Hyperscale AI Data centers are not the type of development that we want to see in the NT. These developments unjustly prioritise the interests of big tech and gas companies over the structural issues confronting the NT at the expense of the environment and social wellbeing.

Impacts of building hyperscale data centres in the NT:

The scale of the AI datacentres will have broad, adverse environmental, social and economic impacts for the territory:

Climate and Energy: The extreme amounts of fracked gas power required, eroding the energy transition, entrenching gas in the NT and contributing a worsening climate globally. Climate impacts that we are already seeing here in Central Australia.

Water extraction and land clearing: Proposed land clearing of tens of thousands of hectares, and enormous water usage of many billions of litres of groundwater every year.

Impacts on Traditional Custodians: These development proposals are moving so quickly. The interests of the gas lobby are prioritised in thedecision making process. We are concerned that First Nations communities are yet to be provided with information to make a free, prior and informed decision about what developments are happening on their land.

Unsustainable development: The impacts of a boom bust construction phase of jobs on remote NT without the civic infrastructure to support FIFO workers.

What are these AI Datacentres being used for and what does that mean for us living in the NT?

The expansion of AI permeates all our lives, is very easy to use, and the environmental and social cost of building and maintaining hyperscale AI data centres is hidden from consumers. These are some ways AI expansion is affecting us

Erosion of trust: AI is eroding the information landscape - destroying trust in information sources and making it difficult to find reliable information, and authentic stories.

Impacts to workers, artists, and Intellectual Property:
The AI expansion has led to a loss of jobs in information, cultural, media and arts sectors, and the theft of work. There are concerns about what this means for workers protections,  copyright and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property.

Surveillance, militarisation, gendered and racialised violence:
AI is key in surveillance, carceral and military technological expansion. Concerns include that AI data centres are used to erode our rights to privacy and expand surveillance technologies. Surveillance technologies have a racist bias and are used to target and criminalise marginalised communities particularly black and first nations communities.
AI is used to enact violence of deep fakes and data theft. This overwhelmingly perpetuates misogyny, and gendered violence.

What is needed, what can we do together and what can ALEC do?

Education: ALEC will continue to supply public education that focuses on the scale of this problem and draws the links with beetaloo and  the ai data centres.

Public Sphere: Keep putting our voices into the public space, collate concerns and enhance media cut through and media presence - holding the government and industry accountable

People power, community organising and engagement strategies: Alliance building as a key strategy as the whole of the supply chain adversely affects many people and groups in many different ways. Petitions and other engagement tools. Finding pathways and active advocacy steps.