Australian Space Agency

Mr BROWN (Playford) (15:31): I rise today to speak on a topic that has proven popular in this parliament: the topic of a national space agency. As members would be aware, the agency began operation this month, with its interim headquarters in Canberra. We have heard from a range of members about the potential advantages of bringing such an agency to South Australia and also about how South Australia's unique physical, industrial and institutional landscape makes our state so well suited to hosting such an agency.

Indeed, the significant work done by the former Labor government in seeking to attract the agency to South Australia articulated these benefits very clearly and set out a compelling argument for giving the national space agency a South Australian home. There is fierce agreement in this place that the national space agency should be substantially based here in South Australia, but I believe that we should also commit ourselves to the industry hub of the agency being in my community of Mawson Lakes.

Mawson Lakes provides a rare coincidence of the spectrum of institutions that would be impacted and utilised by this agency. UniSA's local campus is home to the International Space University's Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program. This program complements the university's existing programs delivered there, such as the Graduate Certificate in Space Studies, and provides further exposure to the cutting edge international understanding of issues such as space science and exploration, human spaceflight and life sciences, space systems engineering and technologies, space business and project management and space law and regulatory issues.

It is not yet clear exactly what role Australia's national space agency will play or how it will be composed. However, it is apparent that it will be tasked with co-ordinating, regulating and promoting the local industry. The academic understanding of these issues is crucial to Australia effectively contributing to and capitalising on the ever-expanding international space industry.

Quite literally across the road from where this program is delivered is the Mawson Lakes Technology Park, which houses over 100 local and international companies, many of which are already working in the space industry. Local examples of these companies include Rapier Electronics, which builds and supplies electronic components for use in spacecraft; Solinnov, which designs and supplies high performance electronic systems used in receiving satellite communications; and elmTEK, which provides simulation and training systems.

Co-located with these and many more South Australian companies are national and international firms at the leading edge of the global space industry. These firms include Lockheed Martin, QINETIQ and the Australian SpeedCast subsidiary, NewSat. These local and international companies provide a fine example of the firms that would likely be championed and coordinated by our new space agency. There are other South Australia companies working in the space industry, such as Fleet, in Beverly; Inovor, in Adelaide; and Neumann Space, in Brompton. However, these geographically disparate firms only serve to highlight the remarkable opportunity presented by the coalescing of space-related firms in Mawson Lakes.

I believe that a national space agency co-located with the Mawson Lakes cluster of highly relevant and experienced institutions is the best way to ensure that such an agency can effectively fulfil its role of coordinating the full gamut of space-related institutions. Not only will co-location make this space precinct more efficient in a practical sense but co-location will also more easily facilitate the development of closer relationships and networks between the existing institutions and the new space agency. This close proximity would also create a familiarity and collegiality between the agency and these institutions, which will enable the effective promotion of their work around the globe.

Mawson Lakes already contains representative elements of the constituent parts of Australia's space industry, which a national space agency would seek to coordinate, promote and regulate. By adding the national space agency's physical presence to this existing mix of industry and academia, the agency would be well placed to draw on this experience, contribute to this community and achieve its objective of launching the Australian space industry into the stratosphere and beyond.

The Premier has indicated that he and his government are wholeheartedly behind efforts to make South Australia the permanent home of our new space agency. In this, we are in furious agreement, but I do hope he will agree that the home base for our nation's space industry should be in Mawson Lakes.