Lot Fourteen

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (14:09): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier update the house on the establishment of the MIT Living Lab at Lot Fourteen?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:09): I thank the member for Newland for his question regarding Lot Fourteen and an extraordinarily exciting announcement for our state today. I think most people in this house know about our government's ambition for Lot Fourteen. It was previously the Royal Adelaide Hospital site. Those opposite, when they were in government, wanted to turn it into a 1,300-person apartment block. We have always had higher ambitions for this extraordinarily strategic location in our state and we have, of course, announced our plans and are well underway in implementing our plans to establish Lot Fourteen, which I think is the most exciting urban development project in the country bar none.

We already know that the Australian Institute of Machine Learning, which is a collaboration between the University of Adelaide and Lockheed Martin, will be established on that site by the end of this year. We were delighted in December last year when the Prime Minister came to Adelaide and announced that the Space Agency headquarters would be on Lot Fourteen, a very exciting announcement for our state. Not only that, but it was followed up soon thereafter with the announcement that we would host the Mission Control and the Space Discovery Centre.

Earlier this year, we heard that we would have the SmartSat CRC capability on that site. This is the largest space-related research project in the nation's history, and it is based here in Adelaide. This is a massively growing sector of the global economy: satellites to provide data and observation and improved productivity of traditional sectors like agriculture, mining and construction. I think it is going to be massively important for us to have that capability here in South Australia.

We have spoken often in this place about the importance of the cyber sector going forward, and we will have exciting things to talk about regarding cyber because this is a growing sector of our economy. But the missing part, if you like, was around data and data analytics. That is why we couldn't have been more excited than we are today. During the lunchbreak, I headed down to Lot Fourteen and met with Professor Sandy Pentland from MIT and also Dr Thomas Hardjono—

The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell: There's another million square kilometres of South Australia.

The SPEAKER: The member for Mawson is called to order.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —who are here from MIT. MIT is the number one ranked university in the world and we announced today that we will be opening an MIT Living Lab on Lot Fourteen. This is a project which will be done in conjunction with two partners, BankSA and Optus. Optus will be the technology partner for this site. Can I make this point: there is no cost of this project to the taxpayers of South Australia. These are projects which both Optus and BankSA have been very generous in supporting. It will be of great benefit to our state.

We can't wait to get started on the projects which we know will be of benefit to our citizens. We know this because this is not the first MIT Living Lab in the world. In fact, there are living labs in Beijing, New York, and some other cities in the world, and we've got the latest one right here in Adelaide. It is a three-year agreement with MIT.

We are going to be able to take data—whether it be from government sources, transactional sources, geospatial sources—in a de-identified aggregated way and use it to inform government policymaking, decision-making, which I believe will unequivocally improve productivity, economic growth and, importantly, jobs in South Australia going forward.