From corporate boxes to tech billionaires: Inside the Allan government’s data centre courtship

Data centres are vast warehouses that house computing infrastructure needed to store, process and manage digital data. They support everything from streaming movies to artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

Earlier in the year, on January 28, Pearson used the Australian Open to wine and dine tech giants, with a guest list made up entirely of heavy-hitting tech and data centre bosses including people from CDC Data Centres, Amazon, NextDC and AirTrunk. Pearson stepped down from cabinet in April after announcing he would not contest November’s election. The meetings also came at the same time as one major data centre player made a donation to the Victorian Labor Party, according to separate political disclosure logs. Documents published before the High Court’s landmark April ruling which struck down the state’s strict donation caps and reporting requirements and left a transparency black hole, reveal the party accepted a $4430 donation from Canberra-based CDC Data Centres in February.