Australia is asking the right question. What it needs next is the governance layer to answer it.
We have formally submitted evidence to the Australian Senate Environment and Communications References Committee's Inquiry into Artificial Intelligence and Data Centres, which examines whether existing regulatory frameworks can manage the growth of AI infrastructure, and what that growth means for communities, industries, the environment, water and energy.
Our formal submission (see attached) makes one central argument: these are, at their core, enterprise-wide AI risk management and governance questions.
Australia currently regulates the inputs to data centres (land, energy, water) and guides the AI inside them through voluntary instruments. What is missing is the connective layer in between: an enforceable, proportionate requirement that the organisations building this infrastructure, and the counterparties to government agreements with global AI companies, manage AI risk on an enterprise-wide basis.
Applying Enterprise-wide AI Risk Management® (EW-AiRM®) ewairm.com we recommend, among eight measures:
🔸 The Five Non-Negotiables as auditable conditions in government agreements with global AI companies, including residual risk accepted by a named senior official, not a committee
🔸 Mandatory facility-level water and energy measurement with defined thresholds, because "a risk appetite statement without specific thresholds is a press release, not a governance instrument"
🔸 Treating foundation model and compute concentration as a systemic national risk, with resilience obligations to match
We have also offered to give evidence to the Committee.
Submissions will be published by the Parliament of Australia; the Committee reports on 16 November 2026, four days after Enterprise-Wide AI Risk Management publishes with Wiley.
Explore the framework: www.ewairm.com
https://enterprisewideairiskmanagement.grigora.app/ausaidatacentershtml/