Money will be given to agency as ‘seed funding’ with most long-term funding expected to come from private sector

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The government will set aside $50m to fund Australia’s first dedicated space agency, according to senior insiders.

The ABC on Thursday reported that funding for the space agency was guaranteed in the budget on Tuesday. It is understood $50m will be given to the fledgling agency as “seed funding”, with the intention that the majority of the agency’s funding will come from the private sector.

Megan Clark, a former head of the CSIRO who this year completed a comprehensive review of Australia’s space sector, will lead the agency, the ABC reported.

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Prof Alan Duffy, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University, said the agency would be primarily focused on research and economic development.

“Rather than putting people into space, it will be focused on creating jobs for those people on earth,” he said. “Space is a global sector worth some $420bn and grows faster than China’s economy – it’s something we want to be a part of. The aim is to develop commercial opportunities so Australian start-ups and companies gain access to this very valuable sector.”



The founding of a space agency had been first been announced in September last year but this year’s budget is the first time that funding had been confirmed. The ABC reported that the agency would work on areas such as GPS technology.

“GPS involves such a breadth of knowledge that you need one agency to understand it,” Duffy said. “You essentially need a singular focus on everything from the ground up to that geostationary orbit ... It is clearly a space problem even though it has effects here on earth.”

He added that a space agency would help Australia partner with Nasa and other international agencies, and he expected the new agency to work very closely with the CSIRO.

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“Both the government and Labor have committed to functionally the same funding figure, which bodes well in that we have a bipartisan supported agency.

“The inspirational value is worth the $50m price tag alone. There will be any number of future engineers and scientists inspired to go into Stem as a result of this space agency. They will now know there is a place for them.”



Australia’s space industry had a revenue of $3b to $4b and 10,000 full-time employees in 2015.

While no commencement date has been announced, Duffy said it could “happen quickly” depending on the as-yet-unannounced structure.

“Prof Clark’s review has been known to government since early March,” he said. “I would hope they would have a running start.”