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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-02-19 Daily Xml
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Australian Space Agency

Mr COWDREY (Colton) (14:16): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier update the house on the growth of the space industry here in South Australia?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:16): I thank the member for Colton for his excellent question. It is time to get excited in South Australia about the potential for entering into one of the most exciting sectors in the entire world at the moment, one which is massively outperforming global benchmarks in terms of economic growth. South Australia had a very important role in the early days of the space sector here in our country. I think most people would be proud that the very first rocket that left Australian soil was sent off from Woomera in South Australia. A year before I was born, Australia's first satellite went into orbit and, again, that came from South Australia. So these are very proud moments, but there was a hiatus of about five decades between drinks for space. There was lots happening in the 1960s but not much thereafter. In fact, in 2017—

Mr Brown: What, other than a space precinct?

The SPEAKER: The member for Playford is on two warnings.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —Australia was one of only two OECD countries in the world without a space agency, so it was a great moment when Senator Simon Birmingham, representing the Prime Minister, announced at the International Astronautical Congress in South Australia, where 4½ thousand delegates from around the world came to South Australia for that conference, that Australia would indeed have a space agency. I know those opposite claim everything for themselves. I wonder where their lot, when they were in government, were in terms of creating an Australian space agency. It was done by the Coalition, and I think it was an excellent result. We are going to be the happy beneficiaries of that decision here in South Australia.

The space sector provides enormous opportunities for us. As I said, the government made a decision in 2017 to have an Australian space agency. Again, we had a change in government in March 2018, and we worked as hard as we could when we got elected to put in a compelling and competitive bid to bring the headquarters here to South Australia. So in late 2018, we were very pleased to join with the Prime Minister to announce that South Australia would be the home of the headquarters.

Today, it was a great pleasure to be with the Prime Minister again when he officially opened the Australian space headquarters on Lot Fourteen on North Terrace right here in Adelaide. Not only that, the Australian Space Agency is co-located with the SmartSat CRC, a $245 million cooperative research program, the largest space-related program in the history of Australia. They are joining with a whole range of companies that are now on Lot Fourteen, creating jobs in the space sector. They are companies like Myriota, Inovor and Neumann Space.

Earlier this week, I had the great opportunity, privilege and pleasure to be present when SITAEL opened their office in Adelaide. They are the largest Italian private space company. They have come to Lot Fourteen because they want to be part of this excellent ecosystem that is creating jobs in South Australia and we are very excited about that. We know that the federal government has an ambition to treble the size of the space industry in Australia over the next decade, to take it from a $4 billion annual turnover to $12 billion, and along that time frame create 20,000 additional jobs.

One of the things I was very pleased about today is that we opened the 9th Australian Space Forum here in Adelaide. It was the work that Dr Megan Clark has done to look at the size of the growth potential for this sector. She outlined in that supply chain 170 projects that are on the books at the moment, totalling $1.6 billion in that capital pipeline, and the very pleasing result was that 31 per cent of them are right here in South Australia.

Mr Brown interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Playford is very close to departing today.

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