"Controversial former Coalition minister Stuart Robert has been leveraging his work as Australia’s inaugural digital minister as part of a $500 million venture to build a giant data centre to store defence secrets and other sensitive government information.
Leaked documents reveal that Robert has spruiked his stewardship of Australia’s data onshoring policy to help him negotiate a private business proposal for a data centre on private land owned by an ex-Defence official next
door to the HMAS Harman military base in Canberra.
In the confidential documents, Robert argued the need for a data centre in Canberra was “being driven” by the policy he introduced as minister that “all Australian government data is housed on-shore”.
The deal, if realised, could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and deliver a windfall to Robert and his backers.
According to one of Robert’s confidants, the venture also involves figures in ex-prime minister Scott Morrison’s inner circle, including lobbyists David Gazard and Scott Briggs.
Robert’s new business venture is a case study of what integrity advocates describe as the “revolving door” phenomenon involving former politicians joining the corporate sector in areas over which they previously wielded significant policy and political influence.
But it also comes with Robert still embroiled in a major scandal – first exposed by this masthead in late 2022 – over allegations he used his political influence to help his friends win consulting work with government contractors who specialise in IT, data and national security, and whom Robert was dealing with as a minister or MP.
The scandal prompted a parliamentary referral to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) and dragged in several large federal government contractors, including Salesforce and Oracle, over allegations they enjoyed privileged access to Robert after hiring one of his friends as their consultant.
This masthead can confirm that Robert has claimed that both contractors engaged with his firm this year as part of the data centre proposal.
