At a glance
- IREN's head of business development, Boris Dangubic, told the AFR Property Summit that most of the processing in the data centres being rolled out here will be for American technology giants, and argued that makes it an export business like mining.
- Land runs about 10 per cent of what a data centre costs to build, and mechanical and electrical equipment about 70 per cent, on Macquarie Data Centres' figures.
- Treasury attributed about two-thirds of Australian data centre spending to imports a week before the summit.
- HMC Capital's Victoria Hardie said the social licence question has "ramped up significantly in the last three months".
- Accenture calls access to power a binding constraint, and forecasts a year's delay on a 100MW build could cost the customer more than US$1 billion in revenue.
The AFR Property Summit ran its commercial day at Hilton Sydney on Monday 7 September 2026.
Boris Dangubic, head of business development, strategy and M&A at IREN, a Sydney-headquartered cloud computing operator listed on Nasdaq, told the summit that the vast majority of the processing in the data centres being rolled out around the country will be for American technology giants. His argument is that this makes the industry an export earner rather than a domestic cost. Research by Mandala for Data Centres Australia, the industry body for the country's operators, makes the same case: Australia would "export its renewable energy via the compute it powers, rather than directly over high-voltage transmission lines". Mandala values that trade at up to A$4.1 billion a year in its narrow competition scenario.
Macquarie Data Centres chief executive David Hirst broke the build cost into mechanical and electrical equipment at about 70 per cent and land at about 10 per cent. Treasury's advice to the Treasurer, released on 31 August, attributes about two-thirds of what is spent on an Australian data centre to imports.
| Speaker | Subject | What they told the summit |
|---|---|---|
| Boris Dangubic, IREN | Demand | "The vast majority would be going offshore" |
| David Hirst, Macquarie Data Centres | Capital | A circa A$3 billion site would hold A$15 billion of computers |
| Victoria Hardie, HMC Capital | Social licence | "Ramped up significantly in the last three months" |
| Tim Robinson, Equinix | Land | Expects campuses to gravitate outwards from the city fringe |
| Meg Redwin, Multiplex | Delivery | Mechanical and electrical subcontracts alone could be worth A$160 million |
Source: The Australian Financial Review and Commercial Real Estate, 7 September 2026.
IREN argues the export case for Australian compute
IREN is behind a A$10 billion, 800MW campus at Bundey, a South Australian town of about 250 people two hours from Adelaide. On the number of data centres being built and the volume of tokens they will generate, the units of output an AI model produces, Dangubic said "the vast majority would be going offshore, and will effectively be exporting intelligence". Australia has the renewable energy capacity and the engineering to build "a real export business in the same way that we've done in mining", he said.
Dangubic named the local return as rates and tax revenue for the region, and the chance to upskill local employees, on a A$10 billion project next to a town of 250 people. IREN plans more projects in country South Australia and is in talks with other state governments.
The case the export argument answers is on the public record. University of Sydney researchers told the Senate inquiry into AI and data centres that without deliberate government intervention, Australia "risks becoming a mere 'resource provider' for the global digital economy, supplying the land, energy, and water, while the vast economic value and governance benefits are extracted offshore". The same researchers, Kurt Iveson and Riki Scanlan, made a version of that argument to the New South Wales inquiry in March 2026, and universities filed five of the 54 Senate submissions. Treasurer Jim Chalmers wants hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Meta and Google, along with model providers OpenAI and Anthropic, to process data locally.
Hirst says the computers cost five times the data centre
David Hirst is chief executive of Macquarie Data Centres, the data centre arm of ASX-listed Macquarie Technology Group. He told the summit the company cannot build infrastructure fast enough and that "speed gets you deals". The computing equipment that goes inside an AI data centre costs about five times as much as the entire facility, he said. "If you've got a circa $3 billion site, you've got $15 billion worth of computer equipment inside the site." The figures are in Australian dollars.
Commercial Real Estate reports him making the five-times comparison about Macquarie Technology's own proposed 200MW Macquarie Park campus in Sydney, costed at A$2.5 billion to A$3 billion to build, excluding land. Hirst also said a data centre has to stay fit for purpose across a 30-year life while microchips change every quarter.
Multiplex sees the same equipment from the contractor's side. Most of the data centres it builds are modularised so they can be delivered quickly, global general counsel Meg Redwin said, and mechanical and electrical subcontracts alone could be worth A$160 million. "You can build a lot of [residential] or commercial for that sort of money."
Accenture calls access to power a binding constraint
Access to power has become "a binding constraint" for developers and their customers, Accenture's data centre industry services leader Simon Abela told the Financial Review before the summit. "There's a bit of a phrase going around the data centre industry, which is: 'We used to take the power to the land, and now we take the land to the power.'"
Accenture has forecast that a one-year delay in delivering a 100MW facility could cost an AI services provider more than US$1 billion in lost revenue. More than 100 new projects are under development across Australia's five biggest states, alongside the 137 data centres in Australia that data firm RenewMap counts as already operating. AEMO counted 9GW of maximum connection capacity across 17 data centre projects in the National Electricity Market connection process at 30 June 2026. It estimates the wait from application to switch-on at about two years.
The Clean Energy Council says many developers are signing power purchase agreements with existing renewable projects rather than building new generation. That practice is the additionality question energy ministers have been working through since July. In Tasmania, Firmus holds a 104MW contract for its Launceston site through government-owned retailer Aurora Energy, and is seeking a direct 450MW agreement over ten years from generator Hydro Tasmania. Firmus chose the state for three data centres on what co-founder Oliver Curtis called its "amazing abundance of renewable energy".
Robinson expects campuses to gravitate out from the city fringe
"The cost of land is now a huge consideration for us, and we'll see centres gravitate outwards over time, away from the city fringe," Tim Robinson, Equinix's Asia Pacific senior director for real estate, told the summit. Zoning land for data centres, including specifying sites for projects with a particular power capacity, would help developers, he said, and Equinix expects to move new development into regional areas as competition for land increases.
Commercial Real Estate reports that Equinix has invested in a A$3 billion wind farm 60 kilometres north-west of Geelong to supply its data centres. "There's now a lot more transparency around reporting links to renewables, and we're committed to being 100 per cent renewable by 2030," Robinson said.
Hardie dates the social licence shift to the last three months
Victoria Hardie, group operating officer of HMC Capital, which owns just over 20 per cent of ASX-listed DigiCo Infrastructure REIT, said developing new sites is becoming "increasingly difficult" despite the demand for capacity. "The social licence aspect has really ramped up significantly in the last three months," she said, using the industry's term for the community consent a developer needs to build.
National cabinet agreed on 26 August to develop consistent mandatory standards for data centre energy, water and land use, the Senate inquiry closed submissions on 1 September, and the New South Wales Premier asked IPART to build a framework where data centres fund their own water. All three fall inside the window Hardie named, and all three turn on what a project gives back to the community hosting it.
What to watch
Hydro Tasmania has yet to decide on the 450MW request. It has said the request would be "a significant increase in demand", could require private developers to build new wind or solar, and would have to return a profit to Tasmanians on top of operational costs. Firmus wants to list on the ASX by the end of the year.
The Senate committee hears evidence on 22 and 23 September and 1 October, and reports on 16 November. The University of Sydney submission is on the record ahead of it, and Dangubic made the export argument from the stage a fortnight before the first hearing.
IPART's water pricing submissions close on 2 October. The framework the New South Wales government asked for would shift the upfront and ongoing cost of data centre water onto operators.
Day two of the summit turns to residential property.