Hey, Scott Farquhar, this is the future. Can I have a word?

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Dear Scott,

As the founder of software company Atlassian, you will be the Biggest and Techiest voice for Big Tech at this week’s Economic Reform Roundtable in Canberra. Congrats! We were interested to hear your hopes and dreams for artificial intelligence in Australia on 7.30 on Tuesday, August 12: “One of the big opportunities we have is to be the exporter of data centres … A big bunch of computers put in a big cold box, you know, somewhere … We can actually build these quite cheaply … We can be the data centre provider for the region … I hope they get built here.”

We have identified a property perfectly sized and located near power and water to provide this wonderful opportunity for Australian investment. “Somewhere” has a name! We’re all so excited. Unfortunately, as the current occupant of this property, “Uig Lodge” in Point Piper, Sydney, you are required to vacate asap. You will not be entitled to compensation. Apologies for the haste.

The Future

Illustration by Dionne GainCredit:

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Get lost, it set me back 130 mil. It’s my property.

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Dear Scott,

We note that you cite your “property” rights. We were interested to hear your ideas on property, also on 7.30. Sarah Ferguson asked you if the law should protect writers, musicians and other creators from Big Tech stealing their work and using it to train AI to take their jobs. You said that if property is stolen and then transformed “in a new and novel way”, and if the benefits “outweighed” the previous use, “that’s fair”. For you, the owner’s property rights belong to the past. In July 2025, you told the National Press Club that building new data centres in convenient locations “is a multibillion-dollar, multi-decade opportunity. To do that, we need to systematically remove barriers to growth.” Our new data centre is a transformative re-use of “Uig Lodge”, and its benefits will flow to all Australians: a transformation of the land from unproductive to productive use. Unfortunately, as you will agree, your occupancy is a barrier to growth.

Best wishes,

The Future

Scott Farquhar, we’re delighted to inform you that our data centre will transform Uig Lodge for the benefit of all the people in the world in the future.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

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But I’m going through hell getting council approval for my renos!

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Dear Scott,

In your Press Club speech, you listed your complaints about council, “as anyone who has built or renovated a house knows”. You said an artificial intelligence digital agent could remove such barriers: “A developer would know whether the block of apartments they want to build are likely to be possible before they even purchased the land. Wouldn’t that dramatically increase not only the number of applications submitted but also the number of complying and successful applications? We could dramatically increase the number of dwellings built without changing a single law.”

We have applied such a digital agent to “Uig Lodge”. Our DA for a multibillion-dollar data centre in Point Piper was approved overnight without changing a single law.

Kind regards,

The Future

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You’ll be hearing from my lawyers!

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Dear Scott,

You have already heard legal advice from ours (which we downloaded for free). Your DA application was assessed by an AI that looks at how much you spend on luxury goods and then “personalises” the cost of your very own fee. (Sorry, Scott, you had no property rights over your data.) As luck would have it, yours came to $130 million. This would have benefited all residents of your council area! Pity you missed your chance. Our data centre will benefit them so much more.

Call us any time if you want to discuss.

The Future

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This is property theft. This is communism.

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Dear Scott,

“Property theft” again. We note your thoughts on “communism” from the 7.30 interview when you were asked how you would feel if Atlassian’s software had been ripped off: “If someone had used my intellectual property to compete with me, then that is an issue. If they had used all the intellectual property of all the software in the world to help all the people in the world to write better software in the future, I think that is fair use.” We’re delighted to inform you that our data centre will transform “Uig Lodge” for the benefit of all the people in the world in the future, so we can only assume that you use “communism” as a compliment.

Maybe we could catch up for a coffee!

The Future

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You want to take us back to the past.

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Dear Scott,

We old-timers have a phrase to describe the attitude of your kind: “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine’s me own.” BTW, from our vantage point, AI doesn’t look artificial or intelligent. We call it RA: Real Authority.

Best wishes,

The Past

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If it was down to your kind we’d never have got beyond horses and carts.

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Dear Scott,

Henry Ford would have had little incentive to develop the Model T if he couldn’t register it as his intellectual property. Do you still think “governments should move fast to remove regulatory barriers to new ways of working”, as you told the Press Club, or do you want laws to protect you now?

The Past

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You’re taking my words out of context. You’re taking the piss. You’re a piss-bot, aren’t you?

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Your words aren’t your property, Scott. Nor is “your” land. As for satirically using your words to expose your double standards, you said it yourself, Scott, on 7.30: “Of course we can.”

Yours truly*,

The Future and The Past

*Not

Malcolm Knox is an author and columnist.

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