Right now the Premier is in the United States selling Queensland as the place to build AI data centres.

During a Washington DC press conference, he made a commitment: not in Queenslanders' backyards.

Good. We'll hold him to it.

Because back home at Swanbank, one of the biggest buildings ever proposed for Ipswich is being assessed as we speak. Application 12285/2026/MCU. Assessed under a planning scheme that's already been replaced. Categorised code assessable, which means no public notification, no submissions, no appeal. If you live in Swanbank, New Chum, Blackstone, Redbank Plains, Ripley, South Ripley, Deebing Heights or Yamanto, that's your backyard. Nobody asked you.

We've gone hard on this. Community consultation, emails to MPs and councillors, thousands of people sharing it within the community. It worked. The Ipswich City Council and the state government now knows exactly what Ipswich thinks about being the test case.

Attention was step one. Action is step two.

A commitment made at a press conference means nothing if the approvals keep rolling through code assessment while the Premier is overseas shaking hands. So we're asking for one thing, in writing:

A one-year moratorium on new data centre approvals in Queensland. Twelve months to:

Make every project of this scale impact assessable, so residents are notified and get a say. No exceptions, no superseded schemes that make an endless water and power consuming machine the same approval process as a warehouse. The two are not the same. 

Set the rules on power, water, backup generators, noise and koala habitat before approval, not after.
Decide as a state where these things belong, instead of leaving it to whoever has a paddock next to a substation.

Nobody here is against building things. Ipswich has always built things. We're against being told a shed the size of a suburb needs less sign-off than a granny flat, and then being told to trust a promise.

Premier, you've got the attention of the people you're asking to trust you. You said not in our backyards. Swanbank is the in-between of the suburbs and our CBD, the backyard for tens of thousands of Ipswich residents. This proposed data centre will be your first litmus test as to whether you keep your word and what precedence of transparency you intend to set for your Government.

Please sign, then send it to someone in one of those suburbs who still doesn't know. We got their attention. Now let's get them to act.

We need to act responsibly by ensuring any AI growth aligns with sustainable and equitable development goals.

Please sign this petition to call for a one-year moratorium on the development of new AI data centres in our community and across Queensland.