2026-09-24
The Victorian Greens have reiterated calls for data centre giants to compensate residents living with noise, pollution and falling property values, after the Greens-led Senate inquiry into AI and data centres heard directly from West Footscray residents yesterday.
Residents living metres from the NEXTDC facility gave harrowing testimony to the inquiry about constant noise and pollution and what it has done to their lives and their neighbourhood.
Now reports suggest the facility is deterring prospective homebuyers, raising fears that residents could also be losing tens of thousands of dollars from the value of their homes. A Westpac report from last month found 23 percent of Victorians viewed a property next door to a data centre as a deal breaker when it comes to buying a home. Meanwhile, research conducted by Primara Research earlier this year, found more than 80 percent of Australians would need an average discount of $35,163 to consider buying near a data centre.
Victorian Greens spokesperson for AI and data centres, Dr Sarah Mansfield, said:
“People worked and saved for years to buy their home in West Footscray. Then a massive, polluting industrial data centre was dumped on their doorstep without their consent and with barely any consultation.
“It is simply unfair. These families did nothing wrong. They shouldn’t be forced to personally pay the price for Labor’s desperate bid to court big tech billionaires.
“Data centre companies are making billions while the people living next door watch the value and enjoyment of the homes they spent years saving for disappear. Those companies should compensate them.
“Weeks ago, the Greens wrote to Labor’s AI Minister making clear that compensation for residents already living next to existing data centres was one of the bare minimum protections this government needed to deliver, in addition to a moratorium on new data centres.
“Labor ignored that demand and they’ll pay the price this election.
“Labor can’t be trusted. They rolled out the red carpet for big tech and voted down our moratorium. Now, weeks from an election, they’re scrambling to clean up the mess.”