NOT ONE LITRE OF MURRAY WATER FOR DATA CENTRES

Right now in South Australia a $10 billion data centre is being lined up at Bundey in the Mid North, sitting beside the pipeline that carries River Murray water from Morgan to Whyalla. In the same breath, Riverland irrigators have copped a 20 per cent cut to their water allocation from July. Farmers lose a fifth of their water while a shed full of computers gets a seat at the pipe.

Data centres are important and the country needs them. They are also thirsty. In Sydney, single data centres are lodging applications for up to 40 million litres a day, and there are 162 of them running across the country with another 90 in the pipeline. The Commonwealth has spent $1.5 billion of our taxpayer dollars buying 270 billion litres of water off Basin farmers, telling us every drop was needed for the environment, and now the same governments are opening the door to a brand new industry that wants to cool its machines with the water our food is grown on.

The Albanese government's water rules for data centres are voluntary. They are not law and nobody has to follow them. There is no rule anywhere, in Canberra or in Macquarie Street, that says the Murray-Darling Basin is off limits.

So I am asking both the NSW Government and the Commonwealth for a straight commitment that not one litre of Murray-Darling Basin water goes to cooling a data centre. Build them where there is desalinated or recycled water, build them on the coast, but leave the water that grows Australia's rice, fruit, grain and wine on the farms that feed the nation.

We have watched buybacks empty out our towns for a decade. Handing what is left to the next industry that comes knocking would finish the job.