At a glance
- Treasury's advice to the Treasurer puts about two-thirds of what is spent on an Australian data centre on imports.
- Australian data centre construction is worth about A$150 billion by 2030 in the advice, the same estimate Commonwealth Bank published on 6 August 2026.
- Andrew Charlton put a related figure on it in August: a few cents of the AI dollar buys electricity and perhaps another ten cents buys the building.
- Reserve Bank Assistant Governor Sarah Hunter made the import argument in May 2026, three months before the advice.
- Research published by Data Centres Australia values selling AI computing to the region at up to A$4.1 billion a year in its narrow competition scenario.
Chalmers released Treasury's advice on artificial intelligence on 31 August 2026
Treasurer Jim Chalmers released advice from his department on artificial intelligence on 31 August 2026, and wrote an accompanying opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review.
The note itself was not on treasury.gov.au on 1 September 2026, and no media release on the department's ministerial site carried it. The figures below come from the published accounts of it, in the Financial Review and on the ABC.
Treasury puts about two-thirds of what is spent on a data centre on imports, so most of the money in Australia's A$150 billion build leaves the country. The Reserve Bank made the same argument in May 2026, and Andrew Charlton built the government's sovereign AI case on it in August.
The processors and servers are bought overseas
Commonwealth Bank set out where the money goes in August: specialised processors, AI chips, servers and networking equipment are typically imported and are most of what a facility costs, so "a significant share of the investment flows offshore".
Reserve Bank Assistant Governor Sarah Hunter put the same point in a May 2026 question and answer session: "we import the computers, the servers, and all the other equipment largely that gets placed in the data centre. We do have to build the 'shed'... but what goes in it, that comes from overseas." The bank's August Statement on Monetary Policy carried it into its forecasts, estimating that "much of this additional investment will be imported and so the effects on GDP growth are judged to be relatively modest".
Commonwealth Bank published the same A$150 billion by 2030 estimate in Australia's data centre boom: a $150 billion investment opportunity on 6 August 2026, 25 days before the advice reached the public. The bank puts data centre investment at about 0.2 percentage points of real GDP growth in both 2026 and 2027, and at about six percentage points of real business investment growth in 2026 and five in 2027.
Charlton put ten cents of the AI dollar on the building
Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy Andrew Charlton made the value-chain version of the argument at the Australian National University on 18 August 2026, in a speech in which he also asked hyperscalers and neoclouds to share compute with Australian companies.
"Only a few cents of the AI dollar buys electricity," he said. "Perhaps another ten cents buys the physical data centre." He put Australian AI spending as rising 20 to 40 per cent every quarter and doubling each year, and said that on that path it could reach twenty to forty billion dollars a year within a decade. "At that point it would rank among Australia's largest imports. We could easily spend more importing artificial intelligence than we currently earn exporting wheat."
Charlton said that is the express thinking behind Expectation 5 of the expectations the Commonwealth published for data centre developers on 23 March 2026. It asks providers of large-scale compute, hyperscalers and neoclouds among them, to enable access to compute for Australian start-ups, small businesses, researchers and not-for-profits on favourable terms, and to deploy engineers and researchers in Australia.
Anthropic ranks Australia first of 121 countries for Claude use, and the country rents almost all of it. The Australian AI companies running on capacity here bought their own processors and rented the space to put them in.
The buildings, the connections and the trades are bought here
NEXTDC told the market in August it will spend up to A$5.75 billion in FY27 to switch on 197MW. Cushman & Wakefield counts 2.44GW of Australian capacity already leased before it is built, which is capacity operators here have already contracted. Electricity, maintenance, security and engineering are bought here every year the facility runs.
| Where the money goes | What it buys | Who supplies it |
|---|---|---|
| About two-thirds | Processors, AI chips, servers, networking | Overseas manufacturers |
| The remainder | Land, buildings, grid connection and water | Australian developers and contractors |
Composition per Treasury's reported import share and Commonwealth Bank's August note on facility costs.
Jobs and Skills Australia, the Australian Government's labour market agency, rates refrigeration mechanics, electricians, linesworkers and data cablers in shortage in every state and territory, and technicians and trades workers filled 55.1 per cent of advertised vacancies in the March quarter, the lowest of the eight occupation groups. Mandala puts about 15 construction jobs behind every permanent operational role.
Treasury names competition for labour, concrete, copper and electrical equipment as what could hold the build back. Governor Michele Bullock told reporters on 11 August there is "some evidence that perhaps they're being drawn away from residential and non-residential construction into data center construction".
Data Centres Australia values regional compute sales at A$4.1 billion
Data Centres Australia published research by Mandala on 26 August 2026 valuing what Australia could earn selling AI computing to the rest of the region at up to A$4.1 billion a year, in the narrow competition scenario of the two the report models. The same research names how long planning approvals take and how long a project waits for a grid connection as the two brakes, and puts no figure on either.
Selling compute abroad earns export income from equipment that stays in Australia. Mandala puts it as Australia exporting its renewable energy through the compute it powers rather than over high-voltage transmission lines.
Treasury puts the productivity gain on business adoption
Treasury locates the productivity gain in how firms use the technology rather than in the build itself. On its figures, about two-thirds of Australian businesses report some AI use and fewer than one in ten report significant use. Realising the gains, it says, "requires investment in organisational capital, including changes to processes, business models, management practices and workforce skills".
Treasury puts the long-run productivity growth assumption of 1.2 per cent a year within reach, with an upside case of 1.5 to 2 per cent and a downside of 0.5 to 0.8 per cent, and says artificial intelligence is not a substitute for structural reform. National Australia Bank found about 40 per cent of small and medium enterprises using AI in August and a further 13 per cent planning to.
Chalmers called artificial intelligence the "biggest economic transformation in our lifetime" and said Australia cannot "just sit around and hope the benefits of AI fall into our lap".
What to watch
The Financial Review describes the advice as a 33-page briefing note dated 27 August 2026, overseen by deputy secretary Angelia Grant, previewing the artificial intelligence chapter of Treasury's Intergenerational Report. The note itself and that chapter would settle what the department says about interest rates, energy and sovereign capability, which the published accounts cover only in part.
National Cabinet agreed on 26 August 2026 to develop mandatory standards for data centre energy, water and land use and to legislate them in early 2027. The requirement that a data centre underwrite new renewable generation did not appear in the published statement, and the drafting will settle whether it returns.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Charlton flew to the United States on 31 August 2026 to meet Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and NVIDIA in San Francisco. Anthropic's Australian investment remains tied to how the government settles copyright for AI training.