On: Chris Bowen vows to override Queensland and NT to force renewables-powered AI...

The minister speaks of overriding states as if it were a matter of flipping a switch - as if governance were a circuit board to be rewired at will. One admires the confidence, if not the wisdom. The dynamo of centralized authority hums louder these days, drowning out the older, slower rhythms of federalism. But what strikes me is not the assertion of power - that is as old as Rome - but the quaint faith that legislation can command the very forces it seeks to harness.

These datacentres, these temples of computation, demand energy at a scale that would have seemed apocalyptic in my youth. And now we are to decree that they must draw only from the sun and wind, as though the laws of Parliament could bend thermodynamics to their will. The Virgin of medieval faith has been replaced by the Virgin of policy certainty - both equally devout, equally blind to the dynamo’s indifference.

Queensland resists, as it should. Not because gas is sacred, but because the illusion of control is the most dangerous fiction of all. The gap between the velocity of technological demand and the crawl of institutional response is where crises breed. We legislate for the datacentre of 2026 while the engineers are already building the machine that will make it obsolete.

The tragedy is not that they will fail - but that they will succeed just enough to believe their own incantations.