Over the past few months, tens of thousands of Australians have emailed their local MP calling for a 25% tax on gas exports. More than 2,200 people have even chipped in their own money to fund billboards promoting the idea.

Why?

Because Australians can see what’s happening.

We see multinational gas companies posting enormous profits from exporting a finite resource while paying less in Petroleum Resource Rent Tax than Australians collectively pay in beer excise. We know our gas belongs to all of us, and we rightly believe we deserve a fair return for it.

That money could help pay down debt, fund aged care, build more affordable housing, invest in protecting and managing the incredible landscapes and species that make this continent so unique or go into a sovereign wealth fund.

Australians are also asking a simple question: why are we one of the world’s largest gas exporters, yet Australian households and businesses pay international prices for our own gas?

Governments of both persuasions have spent decades getting the settings wrong. They’ve put vested interests ahead of the national interest, and Australians have missed out on wealth that should belong to all of us.

I’m concerned we’re about to make the same mistake again. This time, with AI and datacentres.

Huge investment in this space is pouring into Australia. In the past year, Microsoft has announced $25bn will go into Australian datacentres and Amazon Web Services has committed another $20bn.

The prime minister has posed for photos with the CEOs of both companies, welcoming the investment with open arms despite a growing backlash by communities against AI and datacentre construction. At a time when economic growth is sluggish, the government sees billions of dollars in investment as making for a good headline.

But we need to ask a bigger question:

What is this all for and how do the Australian people benefit from it?

We’ve watched foreign-owned companies extract enormous value from Australian resources before while finding ways to minimise the tax they pay here. We can’t afford to repeat that experience.

The lag in corporate reporting makes it difficult to get a complete picture, but the available data should give us pause.

As datacentre revenues continue to grow, will Australians see a fair share of the benefits? Or will profits continue to simply flow offshore while communities bear the costs?

By 2030, Australian datacentres are expected to consume as much electricity as every household in Victoria combined.

Water consumption is forecast to more than triple.

The Climate Council has warned that, without significant new renewable generation and storage, growing demand from datacentres could push wholesale electricity prices more than 20% higher by 2035. There are also concerns about noise and air quality as a result of huge back-up diesel generation capacity and the use of gas to power datacentres.

Yet the Albanese government’s response so far has largely been around setting voluntary “national expectations” of AI datacentres and infrastructure – a remarkably weak approach for a voracious industry with such enormous economic, environmental and social impacts.

There are other questions too.

While datacentres generate employment in the construction phase, their ongoing direct employment benefits are minimal, which is a huge concern given that every time I’ve questioned the responsible cabinet minister about AI job losses he has pointed to investment in datacentres.

We also need to ask the question – what is this all for? There are undoubtedly many exciting applications of AI. But it’s also a technology that has the potential to totally disrupt society – one that could even pose an “existential risk” to us as a species.

AI job losses in Australia have already topped the tens of thousands and the Jobs and Skills Australia commissioner, Barney Glover, has said job losses are expected to be more than 600,000.

The AI boosters will say that these hundreds of thousands of unemployed Australians will quickly find other newly created jobs in the new AI-powered economy. But from what I’ve heard from listening to experts, this may be wishful thinking, as AI and robotics combine to replace human labour.

Why are we rushing to embrace datacentres and the AI future they enable without answering these questions and ensuring we will actually benefit from them?

Australia should embrace new technology that improves our lives and helps us live within the bounds of ecological limits. We should welcome investment that creates value and helps build our future economy, but we should also learn from our past.

If multinational tech companies are going to use Australian land, Australian energy, Australian water and Australian workers to build the infrastructure that powers the AI revolution, then Australians deserve a fair return.

That’s the lesson we failed to learn with gas. We shouldn’t wait another generation to learn it again.

• David Pocock is an independent senator for the ACT