Why the panic over data centres if golf courses use four times the water?

Hugh Hartigan’s August 2026 AFR column put a simple comparison on the table: Australia has more than 1,800 golf courses and facilities, against 162 operational data centres and another 90 in the pipeline. Golf uses around four times the water.

The piece is not an argument that water is free, or that data-centre siting should be unexamined. It is an argument that policy should start with magnitudes. If the public conversation treats data centres as an exceptional water crisis while leaving much larger uses off the page, the country will talk itself out of compute, capital, and the industrial capacity that sits behind AI.

Read the original column in the AFR. This site records the argument; it does not replace the published text.

Read the original: Australian Financial Review. Want to discuss the argument? Get in touch.