WHO GETS A SAY IN QUEENSLAND?

We'd like to invite you to an afternoon strategy session for Queensland community, environment and civil society groups. It's on straight after the SEQCA Community Conference.

Saturday 31 October, 1.30–3.30pm
Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, South Bank [room TBC]
If you're at the conference in the morning, just stay on after lunch.

Why now

Each law the State Government passes can look technical when you read it on its own. Put them side by side and a pattern shows up: big business first, community last.

• The existing threat: fast-tracking development and shutting communities out. The Critical Minerals Act passed in August. It expands fast-track powers and allows compulsory acquisition of land for private projects. Now a new Bill would limit mining objections to people within 125km. It would also let the Minister decide which objections get heard in the Land Court at all. On top of that, call-ins and planning interventions keep closing the door on local voices. Step by step, communities are losing the say before a decision, the right to challenge it afterwards, and the independent umpire.

• The emerging threat: AI and data centres. Giant data centres are arriving in regional Queensland before Australia has any enforceable rules on AI. The proposed Western Downs Digital Park at Kogan could use around a quarter of Queensland's average daily electricity. Communities are being asked to carry the risks of a technology that is moving faster than the rules meant to protect us.

These are two versions of one problem. Power is moving into fewer hands, and community voices are being treated as a delay.

What the afternoon is for

This is the first part of a longer conversation. It isn't a pitch for a campaign that's already been decided. Together we'll:

1. Share how our different organisations read the political moment in Queensland, especially the loss of community objection rights and the proposed data centres

2. Look at where we could work together

3. Map what we need to learn, discuss and work through so we can act together

Questions we'll work through

• How can we build a broad, grassroots movement around community objection rights?

• How can we build one around AI and data centres?

• How closely are these issues linked, and how do we connect them without losing anyone?

We'll finish by gathering your steers on next steps and on ways to collaborate. These will feed into the next meeting in late November. There we'll bring in groups who couldn't make it on the 31st and start shaping scope, structure, resourcing and roles.

Please pass this on to anyone you think should be in the room. We especially want farmers, residents' groups, unions, faith communities and local leaders, as well as the environment movement.