Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank all members of the committee and say how grateful the Greens and I were that we had such an excellent set of hearings with tripartisan support for most of the issues that were discussed. We had fantastic cooperation from the Australian Antarctic Division, the CSIRO and the science community in Hobart. We were lucky enough to tour the facilities, meet the scientists, have a look at their various research programs in detail and meet the people who decked out and managed the logistics of the personnel operating in Antarctica. I think it was a very tangible experience for senators to actually go to Tasmania and meet the good people who are doing so much good work, particularly in the area of climate science.

Australia has a very long and proud history in the Antarctic. We are all familiar with the epic journeys of our early explorers and the sovereignty that Australia has over this enormous stretch of ocean, the Southern Ocean, and Australia's areas within the Antarctic itself. We are a leader. We have been a leader for decades now in and around Antarctica in areas such as science, particularly marine science and climate change science.

The Greens initiated this inquiry. Once again, I am thankful for the support we had to get the inquiry up. Around the time we initiated the inquiry, we were not aware that, coincidentally, Professor Tony Press was doing a report for the government—a 20-year strategic review. That tells you that it has been a long time since we in this country have looked at the Southern Ocean and Antarctica and taken a holistic view on our strategy in relation to not just the logistical support of operations down there but what we need to do to maintain sovereignty of the area and other challenges, opportunities and threats surrounding the Antarctic into the future. Being a Tasmanian, obviously I am very familiar with the importance of the Antarctic Division to my state. The thousands of scientists, their families and the support networks around them are absolutely crucial for the community down there and they are absolutely crucial to the economy.

I am very pleased not just with the quality of the witnesses and submissions that the inquiry received but also with the recommendations. There are a number of very strong recommendations here right across the board. I note Senator Macdonald is in the chamber today and he may wish to comment on areas such as patrolling the Southern Ocean. That is something he has been actively involved with before. It became very obvious to me in the last 18 months from asking questions in estimates and trying to get more information on exactly what we do in the Southern Ocean that very little was going on. Very few assets, as they are called, be they military or otherwise, were being deployed down to the area. We had very little capability, with isolated vessels and aircraft capable of the duration to go to the Antarctic let alone land there. It seems to me that I have been watching the size of the science community in Hobart shrink over the years, particularly with recent budget cuts. This inquiry was a very good opportunity to highlight the good work that they do. I know Senator Carr, who is also in the chamber, has been very involved with CSIRO over the years and knows exactly how important that science community is to Tasmania.

I commend the report's strong recommendations. As Senator Gallacher said, there are 18. They are all important. The Greens do have two additional comments that I want to go through, and I will finish at that. There is no business case around the extension of the Hobart runway, which was this government's promise, and it seems there are no fruitful negotiations around the use of that runway. That is nearly $40 million sitting there that is not being used. We did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. The RV Investigator, the new CSIRO ship sitting down in Hobart, only has funding for 180 days but it was earmarked for 300. If we took the runway extension funding allocation and temporarily redirected it to allow the RV Investigator to go to sea, at $140,000 per day running costs we could nearly fill that gap of 120 days for the next three years. Of course, we would still like to see that extension to the runway done when it is needed from infrastructure pools of funds, but at the moment it does not look like there are any takers for that. We still have issues with the Wilkins Runway and its capacity in Antarctica which need to be addressed as well.

The second additional comment we made was on something that became obvious from our witnesses. We received this in a submission from a very experienced Antarctica science stakeholder from the University of Tasmania, Professor Matt King. It was his view—and we certainly supported it—that a significant portion of the Australian Antarctic Division budget should be ring-fenced for science and associated logistic support. We estimated around 20 per cent of the overall AAD budget would be suitable. We would like to see that budget ring-fenced and given priority.

We would, of course, like to see more funding to go to science. There have been cuts over a number of years. We tend to see emphasis put on assets rather than on personnel, but this is critically important to the economy of Tasmania. It is critically important to our understanding of climate change and how it impacts on all Australians. Much of the cutting-edge work on climate science is being done down in the Southern Ocean, and that is directly relevant to things such as our temperature fluctuations, extreme weather events et cetera that we have in Australia.

I commend the committee's recommendations to the Senate and I look forward, now that this is on the radar and that the government has agreed with a number of these recommendations—I said it was tripartisan—to continuing to give the Antarctic Division in the Southern Ocean the prominence it deserves and has had in the past and endeavouring to continue to grow the scientific community in my state and Australia's global leadership—I will say those two words again: global leadership—in key areas of climate science. Much of that is done down in the Southern Ocean, particularly down in the sea ice around Antarctica.