Professor Ian Langford

hub in the global spoke or the system that will effectively govern and distribute data traffic moving forward.

So Australia's geography is exquisite in terms of connecting the Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

We're also exquisite in connecting, you know, the most important economic region for the next 100 years, which will be Eastern Northern Asia to, you know, the US and to Europe.

So, you know, we're blessed with geography.

The three elements of any strategy, whether that be technology, national security, or what have you, are geography, the political system, and the economy.

Now, some would argue that we have what many have called a low complexity economy, which is to say that we dig stuff out of the ground and we sell it to others that are willing to then turn it into a high complexity technology.

I think there's an element of that is true and there's a bit of cultural cringe around it.

We shouldn't necessarily not be proud of what we've achieved in mining and engineering and other areas, but the fact is that can't be the only export commodity by which we measure value going forward.

And we need to move from low complexity to high complexity, which is to say that not only do we provide those raw and critical minerals to the world, but we also move further up the value chain to do things like add a technology dimension so that it is an additive technology that gets exported.

So turning a critical mineral into a product or a service is part of the solution.

Housing data and being able to distribute data, Australia is well placed to do that and we should take full advantage of the opportunity.

So the first element of a data center investment in Australia, I think, is what many would call a social contract.

In order to have a social license, you need a social contract.

So said Rousseau.

So a data center isn't there to steal power.

It's not there to drive up energy prices.

And it's not there to announce a global company that is there intentionally to drive in value and extract profit without doing things like paying income tax and so on and so forth.

And that tends to predominate the debate.

which is an important element of, again, as I said, the social licence that these technologies and these entities need to have if they're going to operate effectively in a democracy like ours.

So how do we make a data centre explainable in terms of its economic priority of significance, in terms of how we improve things like efficiency and productivity in this country and how we bring wealth to Australia in the years ahead?