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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-05-01 Daily Xml
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Australian Space Agency

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (14:46): Further supplementary arising from the original answer: does the minister or his department have any estimates of the number of jobs that could come from these relationships that the minister is entering into with companies overseas?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (14:47): I thank the member for his ongoing interest in it. We haven't got a figure on the total number of jobs, but it is a huge sector. I mentioned the German space agency has a budget of €1.7 billion, so AU$3 billion. In the UK Space Agency, the Catapult people I spoke to were talking about $200 million to $300 million collaborations. These are significant dollar investments. I know that the Galileo system is actually a GPS-type system that they are using in Europe. They think it is more accurate; down to a centimetre accuracy, 10 millimetre accuracy, so there are all of those exciting opportunities, and there will be some defence spin-offs as well.

I think it is very hard for anybody to guess at this point in time how many jobs will come from these relationships. The fact is they knew about SmartSat CRCs, they knew about the Space Agency. The whole world is watching what is happening in the space sector in Adelaide, South Australia. It is the first time Australia has jumped into the space sector. It is a fabulous opportunity for our state in this sector and it will provide benefits to the whole community. In fact, some of the low orbit satellites in the agribusiness sector, in data management, data harvesting—we have a drought we are dealing with at the moment; we had a little bit of rain last night—and some of the new technologies will provide up-to-date information to farmers for applications in agriculture. The actual jobs that will come—

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: Point of order, Mr President: relevance to the question. It was about the number of jobs.

The PRESIDENT: It was your question. I am going to allow the minister some leeway in answering your question.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: I am trying to demonstrate, Mr President—

The Hon. K.J. Maher interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Leader of the Opposition, I have made a ruling. I am going to allow the minister some latitude. It was a very broad question.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Thank you, Mr President. I am trying to demonstrate that, at this point in the cycle, it is impossible to estimate how many jobs we have created. There is a huge opportunity and we are going to go and grab that opportunity.

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