Amazon's Record Payment to Labor After the $20 Billion Datacentre Plan
Amazon paid $46,500 to Labor's federal branch on 28 June 2025, a fortnight after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Amazon Web Services headquarters in Seattle alongside chief executive Matt Garman.
Garman used the 14 June visit to outline a $20 billion plan to build datacentres in Melbourne and Sydney. The payment was described as Amazon's largest to an Australian political party on record. The Guardian
Albanese held a press conference in Seattle on Saturday 14 June 2025. His office then published a media release welcoming the AUD$20 billion investment in datacentre infrastructure. Prime Minister's Office The plan was structured as a five-year program. Reuters reported on 14 June 2025 that Amazon would invest A$20 billion in Australian data-centre infrastructure. Reuters That figure covered 2025 to 2029, or $US12.97 billion, earmarked for expansion, operation and maintenance of its datacentres in Australia.
Amazon framed the commitment in similar terms. It stated its AU$20 billion plan would expand datacentre infrastructure by 2029 and aims to strengthen Australia's cloud and AI capabilities. Cloud here means rented computing power delivered over the internet, rather than computers owned by each customer. About Amazon
That Seattle announcement was not the first AWS deal on Albanese's watch. In 2024 the Albanese government announced a $2 billion deal with Amazon Web Services to build three top-secret datacentres to store sensitive intelligence information. Electoral Commission filings show Amazon disclosed a $33,000 payment to Labor on 26 June, eight days before the $2 billion deal was announced, and another $33,000 payment less than six weeks later. The Guardian
The payments were not booked as donations in the everyday sense. They were membership fees for Labor's fundraising vehicle, the Labor Business Forum, which gives paying businesses access to ministers and MPs. Amazon has paid more than $200,000 in membership fees to the Forum since mid-2021. Over a six-year period, Amazon made 34 payments totalling $538,000 to Labor and Liberal branches.
Between mid-2021 and mid-2025 Amazon paid $38,100 to NSW Labor and $37,400 to the Liberals while pursuing new datacentres on Sydney's outskirts. At least one former premier is among political operatives paid to lobby governments on behalf of datacentre companies. A separate disclosure had Macquarie Technology Group disclosing a $3,000 donation to the NSW Liberal party three days before Morrison's 25 March speech. The Guardian
The broader context here is familiar to anyone who covers donations. The Labor Business Forum and its Coalition equivalents do not sell votes. They sell proximity. For a company chasing planning approvals, energy connections and, in AWS's case, classified cloud contracts, proximity is rational. The talk in Seattle was the usual mix - investment, jobs, sovereign capability. That is not a one-off. It is a system.
Looking at what this means for the policy debate, the datacentre story cuts across three live files. Procurement, or how the government buys services. Planning and energy. And disclosure reform. A $2 billion intelligence cloud deal invites scrutiny of process and sovereign control. A $20 billion commercial rollout across Melbourne and Sydney invites scrutiny of grid load, water use and state planning calls. And $538,000 across 34 transactions invites scrutiny of thresholds, timeliness and what counts as a donation. The filings are the starting point, not the verdict.
