Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the motion by the member for Sturt. As a South Australian like the member for Sturt, I am particularly and especially proud to do so, because South Australia, and in particular Adelaide, has become the hub, as we just heard, of the Australian space sector. It's fitting for South Australia to play this role given that much of the history of Australia's space journey was centred in South Australia, in my state. It dates back to 1947, when the Woomera rocket range was established. This was the largest land-testing range in the world. But it wasn't until 1996, when Adelaide born astronaut, Dr Andy Thomas, became Australia's first member of NASA's elite astronaut course that the opportunities for Australia really began to emerge. Andy Thomas famously flew four missions, spending a total of six months in space. I'm sure that he inspired a whole generation of Australian girls and boys to dream of working in the existing field, including my eldest grandson, who is now seven and is in awe of Andy Thomas and anything to do with space. South Australia is also fortunate to have the highest density of space related organisations in the country. All these factors make South Australia the obvious choice as the location of the industry's headquarters, as we've seen.

However, it would be remiss not to acknowledge the foresight of the then Weatherill state government, which established Australia's first dedicated space office, in Adelaide in 2015, followed by Adelaide successfully hosting the 68th International Astronautical Congress in 2017. The current government is following through with all of the great successes of the space centre and is supporting it. This initial activity was pivotal to the growth of the industry. It generated the first space strategy, which clearly set out the economic growth potential of the space sector and it resulted, ultimately, in the establishment of the Australian Space Agency in 2018. It's a true testament to the importance of this sector for Australia that support for the Space Agency and associated activity has continued to strongly grow in a bipartisan way ever since. The opportunities are truly vast. Morgan Stanley, for example, forecasts that, in the next 20 years, the global space economy will nearly triple in size from US$400 billion in 2018 to US$1.1 trillion in 2040. Here in Australia we've set our own target of tripling the size of the space sector to $12 billion by 2030. Judging by the growth we've seen just in the past few years, I believe we have every chance of achieving this. For example, in 2006 the sector had around 10,000 employees and revenue of around $4 billion. Since then we've managed to expand to 14,000 employees and $5.4 billion in revenue; that's in a short period of time.

On an individual company level, there are also examples of extraordinary growth. Companies like Myriota, Inovor Technologies and Fleet Space Technologies, all based in Adelaide, went from employing a handful of people when they were first established in 2014-15 to employing more than double now. These results have been possible because of strong partnerships between government, industry and research. The perfect example of this is the SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre—or CRC, as they are known. This is one of the most significant space research collaborations ever forged in Australia. It brings together around 100 international and national partners who have invested over $190 million together with $55 million of federal government support. This represents $245 million in research effort over seven years. In a deal announced recently between NASA and the SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre, we can locally develop emergency beacon technology for the next moon mission. This is very exciting. It's important to note, however, that the application of space technologies goes far beyond missions to the moon; it plays an integral part in our daily lives.

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