AUSTRALIAN SPACEGUARD SURVEY

Transcripts of a speech in the Federal Parliament by oppostion Science spokesperson Martyn Evans M.P.

House Hansard....................03-12-1998....................Page
1397

SPACE ACTIVITIES BILL 1998

 Second Reading

Mr MARTYN EVANS  (Bonython)(10.05 a.m.)—The opposition
is pleased to support this particular bill. It helps
us to regulate and define an industry which could potentially
be quite important to Australia in the next century
and which certainly could have very substantial and
relevant industry policy connotations especially for
South Australia—my own home state and, indeed, that
of the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources—given
the proposed Kistler project at Woomera.

Before turning to the detail of that, it is important
to have a look at the history of Australian space activity.
Australia has a very strong history of involvement in
space activity. Indeed, much of that relates to work
done in my own electorate by the Weapons Research Establishment,
now known as the Defence Science and Technology Organisation,
where a number of members of my own family have worked
quite closely over many years.

The WRE projects go back to involvement with the British
through projects like Blue Streak and working up to
the WRESAT which was the first genuine Australian satellite,
if you like, back in 1967, as I remember the date.

You might expect that, given that very strong early
involvement in satellite technology and in rocket launching
from Woomera, the strong involvement in the British
and European space projects and indeed our very significant
work with the United States through the Deep Space tracking
network over many years, Australia would by now have
developed a very significant space based industry. Unfortunately
that is not the case and I acknowledge that governments
of all political complexions have been to blame for
this in previous years. It has not been easy to persuade
the bureaucracy, or indeed members of parliament, as
to the relevance of space based industry policy, the
need for Australia to participate in this kind of industry
or the benefits that might flow domestically from that
to our own economy as well as the advantages to science
in general.

It is important that we understand just why the industry
is so important to us. Over the years Australia has
certainly developed that expertise. It has also entered
into quite a number of [start page 1398] contracts for
the supply of space type services but almost all of
them are with overseas based companies. The majority
of our telecommunications satellite work with Telstra
and Optus of course is with the international satellite
consortia, although Optus have their own satellite which
they inherited from the original government project.
The majority of that funding of some $500 million to
$600 million a year goes to the payment of overseas
based corporations, whether they are the international
telecommunications satellites or the French SPOT satellite
for remote sensing, the American Landsat and Radarsat
series. All of that data which we use quite extensively
here, we also pay for quite expensively to overseas
based sources. You would think that by now, with that
kind of investment every year, year after year, we would
have done better in developing a domestic industry.
Indeed, successive governments have not, I think, paid
close enough attention to the economic value of that
information and to the domestic value of it. It is easy
to overlook that ongoing payment to established industries
overseas.

To what kind of use do we put this information? Satellites
have had a number of traditional uses which have now
become firmly established in our society and in our
very mature technologies. The one with which most people
are probably familiar is the use of communications satellites.
They have been in use for many years now and shoulder
much of the broadband work. Many of the international
telephone circuits travel between Australia and other
countries by satellite. We have the use of television
signals, cable TV, pay TV and indeed satellite feeds
from overseas events. We all expect to see important
overseas events now virtually as they happen or at least
very soon thereafter and that demands usually a satellite
feed. Who can forget the live television from Baghdad
as the American Cruise missiles flew overhead and the
CNN reporter pointed them out—with some degree of trepidation
and considerable courage, I imagine—with CNN using their
own individual satellite uplink from the roof of the
hotel to beam those pictures to the world?

We have come to accept that kind of satellite technology
as a very casual thing, but it represents a significant
capital investment, a significant ongoing cost to Australia
and a substantial technological achievement. More recently
we have seen the advertisements for the new hand-held
phone satellite systems. Iridium, for example, is the
one that went into operation in September-October with
very expensive handsets at $3,000 or $4,000, and costing
anything up to $12 per minute for the call. But you
do get the opportunity to call from anywhere in the
world and you do have the privilege to say that you
are ringing from the jungles of Indonesia, the darkest
depths of Africa or Antarctica, for example, and still
hold the conversation that you could hold from the lawns
of Parliament House.

So it is expensive technology but, with some 60-odd
satellites in orbit, a very significant space launch
option for the countries who get that kind of business.
Obviously, that system is already in orbit and, apart
from maintenance satellites which may need to replace
those that fail, there is not much more business in
that outfit. There are many other proposals of a similar
kind which will involve low earth orbiting satellites
or even higher placed satellites. Australia is positioned
to be part of that industry if we have the appropriate
regulatory framework in place to share liability, to
ensure the safety of those launches and to protect our
domestic environment.

One of the other major uses of satellite technology
is remote sensing. Remote sensing is a little-known
but very important technology. AGSO—the Australian Geographic
Survey Organisation—and many farming organisations,
the Bureau of Meteorology, universities and others make
extensive use of remote sensing technology. Because
Australia has a unique, very [start page 1399] large
landmass with some unique characteristics, it is essential
that the data for use in Australia is properly detected
by the satellite, and properly massaged and processed
to be useful for Australia. We do get very good service
from the American and French satellites at the moment
in that area, but for Australia to be independent—or
at least partially independent—in this area would give
us much greater leverage in the future.

People are now starting to understand the economic value
of this data, for instance, if you know in advance the
condition of crops such as wheat in other countries.
It is very easy with remote sensing to detect some changes
in wheat crops, including the quality and projected
yield of those crops. That has very vital market-sensitive
information contained within it which can tell you what
the impact on demand and supply will be in future years
and what the potential effect on prices will be. There
is very significant economic value for that data as
well as important environmental uses for it in terms
of vegetation and farm management, moisture content
of the water, potential for bushfires and the like.
The myriad uses are so many that it is not possible
to canvass them all here today.

Australia has considerable expertise in the use of that
data, but we do need an independent source of it so
that we are not forced to rely on other countries for
data, especially as people become aware of the strategic
value of information in the information age of the 21st
century. Australia needs to be part of that process
to understand what is occurring.

The government has made a number of changes to space
policy in recent years. For example, they have abolished
much of the limited effort which occurred previously
and consolidated it in a practical effort through CSIRO
to launch FedSat in about the year 2000. There is the
residual national space policy unit within the department,
but funding is now even tighter than it has ever been,
and it has never been generous. The reality is that
Australia's effort in space is very much a constrained
one, but one which I think we should endeavour to improve
in future years on a bipartisan basis.

The legislation before us defines quite a useful regime
of regulation and liability definition for the industry.
Obviously, we hope and pray that every launch will be
successful, but there is always a significant risk that
that will not be the case. Therefore, it is essential
that appropriate steps are taken in advance to protect
public safety, to protect the local environment and
to define liability in the unfortunate event that one
of these launches goes awry.

As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry,
Science and Resources has said, Australia is a signatory
to a number of international treaties in this regard.
We have important international obligations, which this
bill preserves and protects, to ensure that Australia
is able to make an appropriate contribution.

In the Senate, a number of amendments to the bill were
accepted by the government on the suggestion of the
opposition. These have improved the bill. The bill was
quite appropriate beforehand, but some of the areas
which the government intended to specify in regulation
were more appropriately defined in the bill, and the
government accepted that. It has also accepted a suggestion
that no fissionable material should be included in any
payload without the specific approval of the Minister
for Industry, Science and Resources.

Weapons of mass destruction are particularly excluded
from any payload by the legislation, but occasionally
for scientific reasons and for reasons of satellite
payload management, in the case of a deep space payload
effort, it is necessary to have fissionable material.
That is a matter for regret but it is a matter of scientific
necessity on occasion and it is appropriate, with safeguards,
if the minister gives his specific and informed consent.

[start page 1400]The regime of the bill has been adequately
debated in the Senate. This is framework legislation.
We will have to look to the specific terms of the regulations
and of individual approvals for launch facilities which
are already proposed for Woomera and possibly also Christmas
Island. Other sites like Cape York and Gladstone are
occasionally mentioned, but the Kistler proposal at
Woomera is obviously the one which the government is
proposing to get off the rank first. The agreement is
already there and we certainly hope that that program
will be up and running early next year, and that the
organisation will be able to take advantage of this
legislation to get that important industry in place.

Let us look at this as an industry. One of the things
which it is very important that we implement, and which
the opposition would strongly support and stress the
value of, is a space industry policy. It is critical
that this country now begins at last to profit from
the industry with which we have been so closely involved
in the past and in which I hope we can be more involved
in the future.

Australia is a potentially good launching site but that
should not mean that all of this equipment can simply
be imported for overseas companies to make all of the
profit from it, leaving us as just the launching pad.
It is essential that an industry policy is developed
in conjunction with this to ensure that local industry
is able to participate in these programs to the maximum
extent possible, and that there is a real and rational
technology transfer to local industry.

I look forward to seeing substantive proposals from
the government as to how this industry policy can be
developed in the future, to ensure that local industry
does participate and profit and that there is real technology
transfer to Australia in the future so that we not only
benefit from the scientific and industrial and commercial
applications of space technology but also profit from
the activity itself. Also, Australians will then be
able to showcase to the world their very real expertise
in these areas and we will get the spin-off benefits
in many of the other subsidiary industries.

It is not simply the direct benefits which are important
but also the spin-off technologies in robotics, in control
systems, in the biological sciences. A whole range of
those activities is possible, based on the outcome of
space technology. While people often do not understand
the spin-off benefits, those benefits can be far more
substantial than the direct benefits of space technologies
themselves. Industry policy is particularly vital in
that regard.

Yesterday we saw the introduction of a wide range of
new taxation legislation. That is not particularly the
topic today. However, it is worthy of note that the
government did grant a wholesale sales tax exemption
for imported launch material for Kistler in their Woomera
venture. The government proposes to abolish wholesale
sales tax and to impose a GST. I have not had a chance
to peruse the full detail of the bills introduced yesterday,
but they do not, so far as I am aware, contain an exemption
for Kistler or any related activity.

It could be said that space launches are the ultimate
export industry. The material does, hopefully, leave
Australia, and potentially it leaves the planet. In
light of this being an export industry, if so defined,
perhaps the government is implying that the usual GST
rebate for export industries will be available.

However, it is quite possible that some of these payloads
will return to Australia, in which case can it be said
to be an export industry? Indeed, some of the payloads
may not leave the launch pad due to some unfortunate
accident, in which case they would not be launched.
In [start page 1401] some cases it may be a test flight
which does not include the launch of a payload, but
simply a rocket flight and perhaps a return of the launch
vehicle to Australia.

In that context, I suggest that there is significant
work for Treasury to do in respect of the GST, because
we would not want a variable application of this taxation
regime for different launches. We need consistency and
certainty in this industry. The wholesale sales tax
exemption which was previously granted gave that consistency
and certainty. I suspect that the GST will cause confusion
and uncertainty in this industry—as it will in so many
other areas. I look forward to the government's explanation
of how that will be overcome.

The final matter I wish to raise before the Main Committee
is the Spaceguard project. Just after the government
came into office in 1996, one of its early decisions
was to cancel Australian participation in the European
Southern Observatory. They have since recovered from
that somewhat by participating in the Chile telescope
project. However, I still very much regret the early
decision on the ESO.

Another decision which has not been partially revoked
was the decision to pull out of Spaceguard. Spaceguard,
for those who do not know, is the international effort
to monitor near-earth asteroids and like objects. Anyone
who has seen the current movies, Armageddon and the
like, will understand the potential for one of these
rogue chunks of ice or rock in space to collide with
earth.

It has happened many times in the past. It will, undoubtedly,
happen again, whether it is within our lifetime or within
the lifetimes of the next five generations is a matter
exclusively of luck and nothing else. If we do not know
where these objects are, we will never know what is
going to happen nor will we be able to take any mitigating
action in defence of the planet.

Other countries participate in this program. Australia,
of course, was a good participant in this program, but
the government has cancelled that effort. A full participation
in Spaceguard would cost this country something like
$600,000 a year. A minimal participation, which would
still be acceptable, would cost much less, but we are
not contributing at all. The problem for that is that
Australia is one of the most obvious detection sites
in the Southern Hemisphere and, without Southern Hemisphere
detection sites, a very substantial chunk of space goes
unwatched.

I say to the government that we should be participating
in this international effort, Spaceguard, not only for
the sake of our international scientific reputation
but also as a matter for the defence of Australia, if
not the planet. A very modest contribution would see
Australia's reputation restored. While the threat is
not a high statistical probability, the very catastrophic
nature of the outcome of the threat, even if it is a
very low probability, is such as to make Spaceguard
a worthwhile activity, given that we do now have, for
the first time in human history, the appropriate technology
to monitor these objects.

The world is watching. Australia is a black spot in
that area. I ask the government to reconsider the very
modest funding which would put Australia back on the
map in the Spaceguard terminology. This is not a matter
of politics; it is a matter of a very simple determination
for the planet. Although the probabilities are very
low, such events have happened before. The event in
1916 in Siberia was very significant. It occurred in
an uninhabited area but, of course, it is of recent
origin and serves to remind us all of the impact which
these things can have.

On that very futuristic note, the opposition supports
this legislation. We are pleased the government accepted
the amendments. There are a couple of issues to be cleared
up in further [start page 1402] debate, if that is possible,
but if not, then subsequently by a statement by the
minister. I conclude with my plea to support the Spaceguard
international effort.

Last update 1 June 1999

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