At a glance
A Treasury brief to Treasurer Jim Chalmers, released under FOI, says Anthropic’s US$15 billion (A$21.6 billion) Australian investment is contingent on clarity of copyright settings.
The brief states Anthropic did not seek an exemption, but certainty over its liability to a “long tail” of small rights holders it cannot practically license.
The same brief reveals the government is folding its data centre statement of expectations, covering electricity and water, into the foreign investment review process.
Treasury disputed Anthropic’s claim that AI training is highly transformative and covered by US fair use, noting 81 US AI-copyright suits as of February 2026.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese delivers an “AI in Australia’s interests” speech in Sydney on Wednesday 15 July, signalling a more interventionist posture.
The brief that set out Anthropic’s price
A Treasury meeting brief prepared for Chalmers, released under freedom of information laws and reported by the Australian Financial Review on 13 July, records that Anthropic told the government its Australian investment is conditional on the copyright question being settled. In the brief’s words, Anthropic’s investment in AI model development and associated infrastructure, “like data centres, is contingent on clarity of copyright settings,” driven by a desire for certainty over its liability to rights holders. The investment corresponds to the US$15 billion (A$21.6 billion) cost of the 1.4GW of Australian data centre capacity Anthropic is tendering for.
The brief sharpens what Anthropic is actually asking for. Our earlier reporting, drawn from the AFR’s account of the copyright talks, described a reported trade involving a text-and-data-mining exemption. The Treasury document is more specific: Anthropic did not push for an exemption, the option the government ruled out in October 2025, but sought certainty over its existing obligations. The company’s concern, as the brief puts it, is that while it can negotiate with larger rights holders, a “long tail” of smaller ones impedes efforts to identify and buy licensing rights. That is a narrower ask than a free-use carve-out, and it sits closer to the licensing path the government has favoured.
Treasury’s advice in response was procedural. It recommended Chalmers direct Anthropic to the Attorney-General’s Department, which leads AI and copyright reform, and to keep negotiating licences with large rights holders under the current regime. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei met Chalmers and Albanese in April, when the company launched locally and hosted a symposium at Parliament House.
Canberra is folding its expectations into the foreign investment test
The brief also records that the government is working its data centre statement of expectations, which sets standards around electricity and water use, into the foreign investment review process.
Those expectations, published in March 2026, set five benchmarks: national interest, energy, water, skills and local capability. Until now they operated as a prioritisation signal, with the government stating that proposals aligned to them would be favoured in Commonwealth assessments and those poorly aligned would not be prioritised. Routed through the foreign investment review, the expectations would shift from a preference to a condition weighed as capital enters the country. Much of the sector’s balance sheet is offshore, from AirTrunk’s Blackstone-led ownership to Infratil-backed CDC and US-headquartered developers, so the expectations would reach a large share of new projects at the investment gate, not only at planning. We set out where these obligations sit against an operator’s own control in our analysis of data centres and social licence.
Treasury pushed back on the fair-use argument
The brief also shows Treasury declining to accept Anthropic’s legal framing. The company’s claim that AI training is highly transformative and covered by the US doctrine of fair use was, in the brief’s assessment, not accurate and not settled, with extensive US litigation still running on the use of copyright material to train models. The brief noted 81 US lawsuits on AI and copyright were underway as of February 2026, and that Anthropic itself has an ongoing case.
That history is recent and expensive. In 2025 Anthropic agreed a US$1.5 billion settlement, reported as the largest in a US copyright case, to resolve a class action by authors over roughly 500,000 pirated books used to build training datasets, about US$3,000 a book. A US court found that training on the books was fair use, and that the liability arose from how the copies were acquired. Australia has no equivalent fair-use defence, which is why the question here turns on a licence or a statutory mechanism rather than on how the data was sourced. Attorney-General Michelle Rowland is weighing three models: statutory licences with set payments, collective licensing through agencies such as the Copyright Agency, and the existing voluntary system, alongside a new enforcement regime to help small rights holders pursue technology firms. Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy Andrew Charlton has said copyright laws are not working in the age of AI.
What the prime minister’s speech signals
The brief surfaces the day before Albanese delivers a speech titled “AI in Australia’s interests” in Sydney. Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy has confirmed the address will set out the government’s broader approach to AI, including in Defence. The government is not expected to announce immediate copyright changes.
The direction of travel is a firmer hand. At the NSW Labor Conference on 5 July, Albanese said the world is “queuing up to invest in Australia” and that the country could set the ground rules for AI “without undercutting conditions, dividing communities, or damaging our environment.” The pitch keeps the investment welcome open while attaching conditions to it, which is the same logic the foreign investment move applies to the sector’s capital. That framing arrives as Labor MPs field local pushback against suburban data centre expansion, and as the government weighs whether host communities should be paid directly, a proposal we examine in Australia weighs a community benefit fund for data centres.
What it means for operators
For operators, the brief turns two soft signals into contract-relevant terms. Copyright certainty gates the training workload behind Anthropic’s tender, since a build financed and powered here still needs a legal basis before Claude can be trained on Australian data, a point that also sits behind the company’s National AI Plan memorandum with the government. Routing the expectations through the foreign investment review raises the bar earlier for any proposal that cannot show its energy and water position, and rewards those that can.
What to watch: the content of Albanese’s Wednesday speech and whether it names foreign investment or copyright directly; how Treasury translates the expectations into foreign investment screening in practice; whether the Attorney-General’s Department moves from three canvassed models to a chosen licensing mechanism; and whether Anthropic signs its first Australian contracts while the copyright question is unresolved. The NSW data centre inquiry, which reports by 30 September, is the next fixed marker on the regulatory side.