NAB, Amazon ramp up AI as Canberra takes data-centre power fight to National Cabinet

National Australia Bank chief executive Andrew Irvine has urged the Federal Government work with business and move faster to lift productivity by embracing artificial intelligence — or risk entrenching low economic growth.

Mr Irvine on Monday said Australia risked falling behind other advanced economies unless it seized the opportunity, and could even remain entrenched in a “low-growth trap”.

“Without urgent action, we’ll be locked in a slow lane, sitting in the rear-view mirror of other advanced economies surging ahead,” he told NAB’s business summit in Melbourne, adding the country’s productivity growth had lagged for too long.

“When demand outpaces supply, inflation goes up and the RBA needs to raise rates to put a handbrake on demand and reduce growth. That is largely what has happened.

“The risk now is not that we are at the peak of the mountain – it’s that we slide down the other side, stuck in a low-productivity, low-growth trap that’s been slowly strangling Australia for decades.”

Appearing alongside Mr Irvine, Amazon Web Services chief executive Matt Garman said the pace of development was too fast to be left alone.

“This isn’t a technology organisations can ignore for five years and revisit later,” he said, emphasising he had had never seen technology develop as quickly during his two decades at the cloud computing giant.

Ahead of a National Cabinet meeting on Wednesday where the issue is expected to be discussed, Assistant Technology Minister Andrew Charlton at a separate event on Monday foreshadowed the government would require data centres to provide their own power.

“We are going to require these data centres to bring their own energy,” he said.

Dr Charlton said that without new generation, data centres would compete with households and businesses for the same electricity and “push up energy costs in Australia”.

Most of the extra supply would have to come from renewable generation, although gas, hydro and batteries could be used to firm the system when needed.

“They have to pay for their own transmission costs and contribute to grid stability,” Dr Charlton told the TechLeaders Summit in Bowral.

“These requirements will not be voluntary; they will be mandatory.”

Queensland and the Northern Territory are resisting renewable energy requirements for new data centres, while WA has backed the central principle that developers should bring additional renewable generation and firming to meet their demand rather than simply add more pressure to existing power supplies.

The debate over how to power that growth is gathering pace as big business moves quickly to put AI to work.

NAB spends about $2 billion a year on technology and innovation, with Mr Irvine saying agentic AI was already delivering substantial productivity gains inside the bank.

“Some engineers are 30 or 40 per cent more productive, but others are achieving ten-times greater productivity because they’ve fundamentally reimagined their role,” he said.

Mr Irvine cautioned against treating the technology as a cure-all calling AI “not a silver bullet” but an “amplifier”.

“In strong organisations with good cultures, processes and governance, it will accelerate productivity, trust and innovation.”

Mr Garman said idle business leaders should know the consequences of their inaction.

“Companies that refuse to embrace AI will be left behind,” he said. “This isn’t really an optional technology.”

While Dr Charlton championed the power of the technology, he also argued the speed of that investment made it more even more critical for governments to set the terms early, pointing to the rush of foreign capital into Australian gas during the resources boom as a warning.

“We’ve seen this movie before,” Dr Charlton said.

He said governments had welcomed the investment but had failed to secure as much benefit for Australians as they could have before the boom was under way.

“We want to learn the lessons of the mining boom … to make sure that right at the beginning, from the get-go, we guarantee that there are significant benefits to Australia.”