At a glance
- IREN has promised a community grants program worth $250,000 a year at Bundey, an uninhabited South Australian locality where it plans an 800MW campus.
- Goodman Group has offered $1.1 million to the plant nursery beside its proposed 90MW data centre at Lane Cove West in Sydney.
- Canberra has been weighing a mandatory community payment since July 2026 and has published no decision, so both offers are voluntary.
- Lane Cove Council runs that nursery, and it lodged a submission opposing the project in April.
- Four other IREN sites, in Canada and Texas, award up to $250,000 a year.
IREN promised $250,000 a year and Goodman $1.1 million
Since July 2026 the Australian government has been weighing a mandatory payment from data centre developers to the communities that host them. It has published no decision, and two developers have now named figures of their own.
Capital Brief reported on 2 September 2026 that IREN has promised a community grants program worth $250,000 a year at Bundey in South Australia, where the Sydney-founded, Nasdaq-listed AI compute provider plans an 800MW campus energising from 2028. The same report has Goodman Group offering $1.1 million to the plant nursery beside its proposed 90MW data centre at Lane Cove West in Sydney.
Both projects already have organised opponents, which is the pattern we mapped in data centres and social licence. Riverland water groups have objected to Bundey over the water it would draw, and the Lane Cove proposal drew 374 public submissions, 365 of them objections and nine in support.
In July we wrote that an operator publishing what it spends in each place it builds would be the sector's own answer to a mandate, and that none had done it. IREN's $250,000 and Goodman's $1.1 million are both voluntary, and both arrive while the Australian government weighs whether to make payments like them compulsory. Neither has been paid, neither company has published the figure attributed to it, and nothing says whether Goodman's $1.1 million is a one-off or paid every year.
Four other IREN sites award up to $250,000 a year
IREN runs the same grants program at four North American sites. Its community grants page says that "in the fall, up to $250,000 is awarded in each community as part of our social impact commitment", and reports more than US$900,000 awarded to over 150 recipients.
| Program | Available each year | Grant round |
|---|---|---|
| Mackenzie, British Columbia | Up to CAD$250,000, capped at CAD$10,000 a grant | 1 April to 30 June |
| Prince George, British Columbia | Up to CAD$250,000 | 1 May to 31 July |
| Childress, Texas | Up to US$250,000, capped at US$10,000 a grant | 1 June to 31 August |
| Fisher County, Texas | Up to US$250,000 | 15 July to 30 September |
Source: IREN's individual community grants program pages, read 2 September 2026. The per-grant cap is published on the Mackenzie and Childress pages.
IREN awards up to $250,000 a year at every site in the table, Canadian dollars in British Columbia and US dollars in Texas, and Capital Brief reports $250,000 for Bundey. The Mackenzie and Childress pages cap a single grant at $10,000 and pay organisations and community groups inside the surrounding district or county. Bundey itself has no residents, so the equivalent catchment would be the Regional Council of Goyder, which runs from Burra to Eudunda. IREN's site lists Bundey among its locations but has no Bundey program page, and the reported figure arrives without a currency.
Capital Brief reports the project advancing with the support of the Regional Council of Goyder and of One Nation's David Paton, who won the state seat of Ngadjuri in March 2026. The council's notice on the project, published on 10 July 2026, says "Council is not sharing this information as an endorsement or otherwise of the proposal", and records no vote either way.
Goodman's $1.1 million would go to a council nursery
Lane Cove Council runs the nursery, and it opposed the project in April. Its submission of 20 April 2026 objected to the clause 4.6 variation that would allow a 28.3-metre building, 57 per cent above the local height limit. It said the visual impact assessment was misleading about how much screening the existing trees provide. It also said no documentation addressed the cumulative impact of the data centres proposed for the Lane Cove industrial area.
Where IREN's money would be a pool local groups apply to, Goodman's has a named recipient. The Community Nursery and Eco Gardens on Lloyd Rees Drive, Lane Cove West, has been a council facility since 2005, and its volunteers propagate more than 10,000 seedlings a year for the council's bush regeneration work.
The engagement outcomes report Urbis prepared for Goodman, filed with the environmental impact statement, states: "Contact with the Lane Cove community nursery and garden has included two emails and a phone call. At the time of writing, a response has not yet been received from the Lane Cove community nursery and garden." The public record ends with that sentence. The application sits at the response to submissions stage, and Goodman's reply has not been filed.
The rules, state by state
New South Wales published its data centre guidelines on 17 August 2026. The fourth of their six principles covers what a data centre gives the town or suburb around it, and rather than write a test the state points developers to the principles already used for wind and solar farms. Benefit-sharing should be "designed in partnership with councils", and proportionate, so "the distribution of community benefits should reflect the scale of the project". Then the line that matters: "Benefit-sharing arrangements with local communities are matters outside the development assessment process and should not be included in any development application associated with data centres."
Following the guidelines is voluntary, and a developer that skips them keeps the ordinary approval route while giving up the state's promise to finish its assessment inside 75 days. A promise that binds has to sit elsewhere, usually a voluntary planning agreement, the contract a council or the state signs to hold a developer to a commitment.
Since 18 July 2025 Queensland has required wind farms of any size and solar farms of 1MW or more to reach a community benefit agreement with the host council. Batteries of 50MW or more joined on 12 December 2025. The planning department calls it a legally binding agreement with the local government that "must be executed before it is submitted as part of the development application", and four councils publish minimum rates. The head of the state planning department can waive it, and Pinsent Masons lawyer Matthew Thornton-Dibb estimated in May 2026 that two or three had been executed in the regime's first ten months.
Data centres sit outside that list, which covers generation and storage, and no published rate prices a load. Premier David Crisafulli has said Queensland would develop a framework for them, and the ABC reported in August 2026 that it would require the same agreement with the local council before lodging. Nothing has been published, a gap we set out in Queensland's Western Downs application.
Neither offer falls under either regime. The NSW guidelines have no force in South Australia, which has published nothing equivalent. And nothing the Commonwealth has published asks for a payment to a host community, from the March 2026 national expectations to the National Cabinet statement of 26 August 2026.
What to watch
Goodman's response to submissions. Whether the $1.1 million appears in it, and in what form. A promise that binds will sit in a voluntary planning agreement, filed separately from the application.
A Bundey grants page. IREN's four existing pages each publish an annual total and a grant round, and two of them a $10,000 cap on a single grant. A Bundey page would show which of those carry over, and in which currency.
The Regional Council of Goyder. A resolution at a council meeting would replace the 10 July notice with a recorded vote.
Queensland's data centre framework. Crisafulli has promised one and published nothing. If it extends the existing regime, a benefit agreement with the host council becomes a condition of lodging in one state while staying voluntary in another.
The Commonwealth standards. National Cabinet committed on 26 August 2026 to work with the states on mandatory standards for data centre energy, water and land use, with no date attached. If a payment to the host community joins them, the $250,000 and the $1.1 million stop being two companies' choices and become the floor everyone builds to.