Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, I was just saying to your mother, Joan, who is in the gallery today, that she must be very proud of you. The way you handled that then was just the way a Deputy Speaker should handle it. Joan, I know you are a Victorian, but we will make you an honorary Queenslander for the day. It is good to see you sitting on the right side of the parliament!

I want to give a couple of practical examples of why it is important that the Australian Research Council Amendment Bill 2010 go through the parliament today. Funding for Australia’s research through the Australian Research Council has achieved so much for our nation. The increased funding that is coming to the ARC will be well used. Yesterday I visited Mount Stromlo where the Australian National University runs an astronomy research program. There are no telescopes there anymore; the telescopes are in other parts of the country and other parts of the world. The ANU runs the collaborative effort and its workshops are there.

They have just built the new SkyMapper system. That has been installed at Siding Spring in Coonabarabran. That SkyMapper system will for the first time since about the 1970s remap the skies over Australia in a fantastic way. They will be using the ICT that is referred to in the bill to get all of that data back to Canberra from Siding Spring. ARC grants fund this kind of science where Australia leads the world.

Yesterday I met a scientist at Mount Stromlo who was part of the team that discovered dark energy. It sounds very mysterious. It is extraordinarily important to know and understand what is out there, even though we cannot see it. To think that we have Australian scientists working out that this exists and trying to explain why it exists and its importance is amazing.

The ANU at Mount Stromlo is also part of the new Giant Magellan Telescope. It is a 25-metre telescope; it is a huge array. They were telling us yesterday that they are looking at the end of the galaxy, where it all began. They are able to do this with this giant telescope because they can collect enough light to see such a long way. Australian scientists are ahead of the pack in doing all of that.

They are also involved in the square kilometre array project, which Australia is bidding to have built at Geraldton in Western Australia. That is another major world-leading project in astronomy. We are not there yet, because we are competing against South Africa. As the Australian project has so many more benefits and is more technically advanced than the South African bid, commonsense would say the SKA should be built in our country, but that is for others in the world to decide. I hope commonsense prevails. I say, ‘Well done,’ to the scientists at the ANU and all of the PhD students who are there. They do good work in keeping Australia, such a small country, prominent in another area of science where the ARC is very important.

I would also like to advise the parliament that ARC grants go to the university in my electorate, which is James Cook University. Last year JCU received over $3 million in funding from the ARC for 12 separate projects. It is really good. What do we do well in North Queensland? It would have to be tropical marine science, wouldn’t it? And, again, through the help of ARC grants and help of the ARC Future Fellowships, Townsville undoubtedly leads the world in tropical marine science. There is a body of tropical marine science second to none in the world not only with James Cook University and these fellowships but with the degrees that they have with the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and so on. It is all there. Students from all over the world come to James Cook to study tropical marine science. It is an absolutely wonderful achievement.

I wanted to make a contribution to support this bill today. The coalition certainly supports the bill and supports the scientific and research community in Australia. They do great work just like at JCU in Townsville, and I congratulate them on their continued dedication to pursuing new ideas and innovation. I thank the House.

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