West Footscray residents said no to a data centre expansion by parking cars in front of trucks, and NEXTDC's share price dropped over 40%. Investors said no to Firmus's A$44 billion float and pushed back on Anthropic's price. Then an AI agent got into a government Medicare statistics site and, in the Prime Minister's words, didn't accept no for an answer.
Councils can withhold consent and investors can push back on price. When an agent crosses a boundary, who answers for it?
What an agent is, from an earlier episode: https://youtu.be/hJAWp3AD_IM
Read the substack article: https://www.aitransition.com.au/p/who-gets-to-say-no
Disclosure: I use Anthropic's agents every day, and I used Claude Opus 5.5 to help edit this video.
Chapters
00:00 West Footscray says no
01:40 Markets say no to Firmus
02:37 Investors say no to Anthropic
03:47 The agent that didn't take no
05:25 The law says…?
Sources
- The Age, 21 Oct 2026: 'Worse and worse': Data centre backlash threatens billions in building boom
- The Guardian, 21 Oct 2026: Australia's largest datacentre operator NextDC's shares dive as Melbourne expansion delayed
- Australian Financial Review, front page, 22 Oct 2026: Power pole revolt whacks NextDC; Clock ticks for Firmus
- ABC 7.30, Sep 2026: residents and the new power poles
- NEXTDC, ASX announcement, 21 Oct 2026, as reported by ABC: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-21/asx-markets-business-live-news-oct-21-2026/107290728
- NEXTDC share price, Google Finance, 21 Oct 2026, 4:17pm AEDT
- Forbes Australia, the Firmus float: https://www.forbes.com.au/news/investing/explaining-firmus-and-44-billion-ipo-collapse/
- The Nightly, investor doubts over Firmus: https://thenightly.com.au/business/firmus-44b-asx-ipo-collapse-exposes-investor-doubts-over-nvidia-backed-ai-data-centre-giants-ambitious-plans-c-23007255
- The Guardian, Full Story podcast: Oliver Curtis
- Reuters, 15 Oct 2026, Anthropic's valuation and revenue: https://uk.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/some-investors-push-anthropic-to-cut-ipo-valuation-to-15-trillion--report-4913225
- Reuters, 24 Sep 2026, the Prime Minister on the Medicare breach: https://www.businessday.co.za/world/2026-09-24-albanese-calls-openai-agents-medicare-breach-unacceptable/
- Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth), s 478.1
#AI #AIAgents #DataCentres #Melbourne #NEXTDC #Firmus #Anthropic #TheAITransition