Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Carr, the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. Can the minister explain what the government is doing to support Australia’s bid to host the square kilometre array radio telescope?

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Marshall for the question. The square kilometre array is precisely the sort of thing that we should be thinking about in Science Meets Parliament week. The SKA is a $2 billion radio telescope that will have 50 times the sensitivity and 10,000 times the survey speed of present radio telescopes. It will generate huge spin-offs in supercomputing, fibre optics, non-grid and renewable energy, construction and manufacturing over its 50-year life. The ICT requirements will be huge. The array will generate 200 gigabytes of data a second. That is the equivalent of all the words ever spoken by human beings in its first month of operation. The computer needed to process this data has not yet been invented. The SKA will make it happen. It will drive innovation across Australia and build a capacity that will benefit the entire research community as well as industry. This is a massive infrastructure project—

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Alan Ferguson (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Senate will come to order.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pity that the opposition has so little regard for our scientists and the research community. It is a pity that the opposition has so little foresight as to understand the importance of ensuring that Australia takes its place in the world research community. This is a massive infrastructure project that will create highly skilled, high-wage jobs for half a century. Its development is being backed by a consortium of some 19 countries. The two countries that have been shortlisted to host the array are Australia and South Africa. With South Africa being a sentimental favourite, it is critical that Australia put our best case forward so that we ensure this important piece of infrastructure is developed within this country.

Earlier this month I visited Europe to champion Australia’s bid in meetings with the European Union Research Commissioner, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, the German Minister for Education and Research, and scientists in Berlin and Brussels. Next month, we will have the international SKA forum in Perth. The forum is jointly hosted by the Australian and Western Australian governments. It will be a watershed gathering of international policymakers, business people, scientists and engineers with an interest in the SKA. It will be the perfect opportunity to showcase what Australia can do. The proposed core site is in Western Australia. It has many technical advantages, but we have a lot more going for us than just that. We have an exceptional community of radio astronomers, with a proud history of scientific discovery and technological innovation.

I call our astronomers world-class, and they are actually better than that. We have published over four per cent of the world’s papers on space science, and those papers have had a huge impact. We also have CSIRO. We have shown fantastic leadership in the SKA. It is making good progress on a prototype telescope called the Australian SKA Pathfinder, which will demonstrate our capacities and be a significant achievement in its own right. It will deliver the equivalent of all the data that currently exists in the world’s astronomical archives in the first six hours of its operation. This government is absolutely committed to winning the SKA for Australia. We are structuring our bid to maximise the benefits for all members of the international community. (Time expired)