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September 8, 2026 \u2014 11:35am<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n AI companies and data centre builders have approached the WA government with proposals to build data centres in WA\u2019s Mid West and North West regions, Premier Roger Cook has confirmed.<\/p>\n Speaking at a Committee for the Economic Development of Australia breakfast in Perth on Tuesday morning, Cook made the revelation when asked about the opportunities for data centres to be built in the state.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re getting a lot of proposals at the moment from data centre developers looking to develop in less populated areas such as the Mid West and the North West, because they still maintain that connection, that connectivity, but are less impugned by maybe population concerns,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo of the key ingredients for a data centre or an artificial intelligence centre are land and power, and we know we\u2019ve got a lot of those in the Mid West and the North West.<\/p>\n The Commonwealth has signed an in-principle agreement on Labor\u2019s new AI standards, which will allow a deal with AI giant Anthropic to establish itself in Australia as its second home to train its AI models.<\/p>\n Cook said he was open to data centres built in WA but that there were challenges from a social licence point of view.<\/p>\n \u201cIt represents a significant opportunity for Western Australia, understanding that it has difficulty being developed in higher-populated areas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things we have a lot of in Western Australia is land, and we have a lot of data connection and we have a huge opportunity to be part of that.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are one of the most connected locations in the world when it comes to optic fibre cable capability.<\/p>\n \u201cSomeone once described Perth as the Dubai airport of data in the Southeast Asian region because data comes in and out of Perth as part of this trans-global transfer.\u201d<\/p>\n Related He also claimed WA\u2019s regional areas were abundant in natural resources, downplaying the impact on water availability.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do have a plentiful supply of water, but water is going to continue to be a challenge for Western Australia\u2019s economy from length to breadth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI always tease the water minister by saying that that\u2019s going to be our leading manufacturing base into the future because we\u2019re going to be the manufacturers of water from Esperence right through to the Pilbara.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will need desalination plants in Albany. We\u2019ll probably need desalination plants in Esperance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re developing desalination plants in West Pilbara. We need it in the East Pilbara as well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"WA](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fa35b01ed490ec7381561a436b898cbc1e11558c.jpeg\")
WA Premier Roger Cook says companies have expressed interest in building data centres in WA\u2019s regional areas. Trevor Collens<\/p>\n![\"Data](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/d386fadb2f630e84552c73f5a61a1a797d1417f31e5e715c13ef1f9e0fb1fad3.gif\")
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Hamish Hastie<\/a> is WAtoday’s state political reporter and the winner of five WA Media Awards, including the 2023 Beck Prize for best political journalism.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"September 8, 2026 \u2014 11:35am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-884062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}