Organising Meeting, Wednesday July 1, 6.30pm at the People’s Place Borderlands Cooperative
Data Centres are popping up everywhere in the Western Suburbs without anything approaching adequate public scrutiny.
Our State Government has drunk the AI Kool-Aid. It is overriding local democratic controls to position Victoria at the cutting edge of a big tech dystopia.
Data Centres consume vast amounts of electricity, potentially increasing consumer energy prices and, at a time when we should be rapidly decarbonising, giving a new lease of life to fossil fuel power generation.
Data Centres require massive amounts of potable water to cool their servers, threatening waterways and creating local ‘heat islands’.
Data Centre technology is built on minerals extracted under neocolonial conditions from global south countries.
There may be up-sides, but, if so, they need to be articulated and subject to public scrutiny.
Yet in place of public discussion, we’re getting outlandish claims for the economic benefits of Data Centres, opacity around their emissions, and power and water usage…and we’re ceding the future to the visions of what Naomi Klein calls the ‘end-times fascists’ of Silicon Valley, enabling them to destroy jobs and further undermine democracy.
Communities across the world are fighting back against something that’s being sold as both beneficial and inevitable.
We need to get organised.
Borderlands invites concerned citizens and local campaigns to come together to discuss how we can assert democratic control over our futures.
When: Wednesday 1 July 6:30-8:30
Where: The People’s Place, 30A Pickett Street, Footscray.
For more information contact Peter Gartside
peter@borderlandscooperative.net
In the news, Star Weekly June 22, 2026
Cade Lucas
Opposition to data centres in Melbourne’s west continues to grow with one campaign group demanding a moratorium on their construction.
Borderlands Collective, a social and environmental justice organisation based in Footscray, want the state government to immediately halt the roll-out data centres across Victoria, arguing the giant facilities needed to support AI are being imposed on communities without them having a say.
“There’s no democratic oversight,” Borderlands spokesperson and Kingsville resident Peter Gartside said of the state’s data centre boom.
“Decisions are being made on Springs Street without even councils being part of the discussion.”
Data centres operators can apply for planning permission through the state government’s fast-track approval system, resulting in some facilities being built with limited or no input from local residents and authorities.
But due to concerns about their environment impact, energy consumption and sheer size, that has begun to change, with both local residents and Maribyrnong council opposing the an application by data centre operator Next DC to double the size of its existing facility West Footscay to almost 10 hectares …