Reports today [12 October 2024] in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald (among others publications) describe the proposal to build a giant data centre to store defence secrets and other sensitive government information as part of a $500 million venture proposed by Stuart Robert. Among a number of Ministerial roles over the course of Coalition Governments between 2013 and 2022, Robert served as Australia’s first digital transformation minister from 2018 to May 2022. The reports quoted are based on “leaked documents”.
Robert introduced the then Government’s policy to house all Australian government data on-shore and according to the quoted documents has justified the Canberra project on those grounds. The data centre it is reported would be built on private land owned by an ex-Defence official next door to the HMAS Harman military base in Canberra.
If it happens, the deal could be worth a considerable amount of money to investors, said to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. There is some discomfort at what integrity advocates describe as the “revolving door” phenomenon whereby former politicians join the corporate sector in areas over which they previously wielded significant policy and political influence.
The current reported state of progress of the proposal indicates that Robert has prepared and circulated briefings in financial circles and has described discussions with global SaaS providers in terms of additional data centre capacity for their Government operations. He is said to be seeking to raise $500 million in capital in order to fund the data centre project via his company, Coram Deo Capital Pty Ltd and has mentioned also discussions with investment management companies.
