August 31, 2026 — 10:30pm
The boom in AI-related data centres across the country could push up interest rates as companies compete against each other and governments for workers and resources, new Treasury analysis reveals, showing an improvement in Australians’ living standards will depend on the technology.
The work, which will form part of the upcoming federal intergenerational report, finds the $US1 trillion ($1.39 trillion) effort by tech companies to build data centres just as governments ramp up their spending on everything from roads to defence systems may force central banks into tightening monetary policy.
And it warns AI-initiated cyberattacks could cruel any potential economic benefits before they can be realised.
Australia is in the midst of a data centre-building boom that Treasury estimates could be worth $150 billion, or 5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), by the end of the decade. There are 162 data centres already in Australia, with another 130, including some worth tens of billions of dollars, at the planning stage.
