Doorstop interview at Adelaide with Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek

SUBJECTS: OPENING OF THE BUREAU OF METEREOLOGY’S AUSTRALIAN SPACE WEATHER FORECASTING CENTRE; DELIVER OF THE MURRAY-DARLING BASIN PLAN.

DEPUTY PREMIER OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA, SUSAN CLOSE: I'd like to welcome everyone here to the centre of space, which is South Australia. We have a growing industry here and we're so excited to welcome the Bureau of Meteorology’s Space Weather Forecasting Centre, right here in the heart of South Australia at Lot 14.

I'm very pleased to have Minister Tanya Plibersek here, the Minister for Environment and Water. She and I share this portfolio we’re shortly going to have get in a small plane and have a look at the state of the River Murray, it is delightful to have her once again in Adelaide.

This Bureau of Meteorology centre is so important for the future of our understanding of how our space technology is working into keeping it robust, and I'd like to invite the Minister to come and speak about her perspective on that. But I think there might have been a couple of questions first?

JOURNALIST: What does it mean to have [inaudible]?

DEPUTY PREMIER CLOSE: South Australia is increasingly the place where as the space industry is gravitating. We're seeing the rocket launch capability, the design of satellites, and also the incredibly complex programming that's involved in being able to interpret data that's coming from satellites to make it useful in managing our land, as well as for defence purposes and telecommunications purposes. To have South Australia the natural home and space industry is tremendously important to the future of our economy, because we need to really harness the power of people's brains. That requires a good education system, it requires excellent universities with their research capabilities and require sophisticated businesses, sophisticated companies. That's what space is. So we are extremely happy to be the home of yet another space related centre, the Bureau of Meteorology’s centre is very, very welcome here. This has created an ecosystem around the space industry that is second to none.

JOURNALIST: This was obviously I think, funded by the former federal government and we're sort of opening it now. But what talks have you had with your federal counterparts about other projects here at Lot 14?

DEPUTY PREMIER CLOSE: I've been talking to Minister Ed Husic quite a lot about the future of industrial projects in South Australia as well as specifically about Lot 14. One of the significant advantages for the South Australian economy is our very low emissions profile for our electricity generation. We're at around 76 per cent of our electricity generation coming entirely from renewable resources, from wind and from the sun. What that means is that we are in fact the best in the world for intermittent renewable energy production. And we're going to get better with the investment in hydrogen This is the basis for reindustrialisation of South Australia on the basis of net zero being a realistic target for us. We want to pull industry here to make things using the kind of renewable energy power that we have naturally and in abundance in South Australia. We also want a very sophisticated industrial future, which includes space of course and defence, and they’re the discussions that I've been having with Ed Husic, about how we invest here and how we accelerate that transformation.

JOURNALIST: How many jobs will this space weather station lead to?

MINISTER FOR ENVIRONMENT AND WATER, TANYA PLIBERSEK: There's 18 jobs directly associated with this centre.

DEPUTY PREMIER CLOSE: There are 18 jobs associated with this centre. The number of jobs in this case isn't the most powerful part of the story, though. 18 doesn't seem like a lot but what it actually is, is a capability that makes our space industry more robust, helps protect it from space weather, so that we're able to have a robust, healthy and growing space industry based out of South Australia.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Thank you so much. It's so wonderful to be here with the Deputy Premier Susan Close. And Susan, I have to say how much I admire what the Malinauskas Government is doing here in South Australia, particularly this part of Adelaide is such an exciting place to visit now.

Today we're officially opening the Bureau of Meteorology’s Space Weather Centre. This is an amazing facility that gives us the power to bring together all of the space weather monitoring capability that the Bureau of Meteorology has, and share that capability with 80 other space businesses that are located in this exciting part of Adelaide.

Monitoring space weather is really important for industry. It's really important for the day to day lives of Australians, so the sort of industries that rely on space weather capability - defence, telecommunications, electricity transmission, our GPS, satellites - all rely on predictability in space weather. We need to know if a solar flare is going to interfere with our defence technology capability. We need to know if a solar flare is going to interrupt our electricity supplies or our telecommunication supplies. This information generated by the Bureau of Meteorology Space Weather Centre is really important for the day to day lives of Australians, for industries such as agriculture, mining, telecommunications, defence, that rely on satellite technology.

It's also an amazing contribution to this new space precinct. We know that there are lots of spin off businesses in the locality that are relying on this information to develop new communications tools, new technologies, new apps. Having that co-located here in this exciting space precinct won't just provide the 18 jobs that the Bureau of Meteorology will directly employ, it'll generate employment and investment in other space businesses that are right here on Lot 14.

JOURNALIST: Some of these you know things you mentioned, defence and agriculture. What were we doing before, how are we responding to space weather events?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, Australia has been monitoring space weather since the late 1940s. The difference is the capability that this new centre brings. So we've always known a bit about space weather we've been applying that information to longer term predictions of weather, to you know the impact it might have on high frequency radio. This new centre takes us to the next level for being able to predict the impact of space weather for what's happening on Earth.

JOURNALIST: Does it increase our sovereign defence capabilities?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: We know that our defence capabilities are increasingly reliant on satellite technology and remote technology. And of course, that means that disruptions caused by solar flares are much more critical in today's security environment than they might have been 40 or 50 years ago, making sure we learn from the impacts of solar flares on telecommunications satellite technology and so on. Building that body of knowledge is critical now, but it becomes particularly critical at times of crisis.

JOURNALIST: But did we have Australian satellites that did that prior to this centre?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: The satellite technology draws information from a number of satellites and a number of earth-based monitoring systems. So you might get one of the scientists to go into detail with you on that.

JOURNALIST: I know another thing you're looking at today is the Murray River and a big part of Labor's election pitch to South Australians was that you would ensure water was delivered as part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Where are talks up to? Have you met with the State Water ministers and how is that looking?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I'll be spending the day with the South Australian Water Minister and Deputy Premier, we will  be flying over the Murray mouth, the Lower Coorong and looking at the water infrastructure and wetlands and farming lands that depend on a healthy River Murray. I'm really excited to be doing that today. We'll be making a further announcement this afternoon about extra investment in the Goyder Research Institute, another $8 million over four years. That's something that the South Australian Government have been arguing for it's something that the local member Rebekha Sharkie has been arguing for and today I'm announcing that extra investment which will help us monitor inflows into the area of the river mouth, the Lower Coorong and evaporation, the impact that that's having on the natural environment down there.

I have to say the Deputy Premier and Water Minister here in South Australia has been very clear with me about her expectations for the federal government to work with the states and territories to deliver on that 450 gigalitres of extra environmental water that was a condition for South Australia signing on to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

I have inherited quite a job, I have to say. Of that 450 gigalitres that was promised a decade ago, two gigalitres was delivered by the previous federal government. So 450 gigalitres promised, two gigalitres was delivered by the previous federal government. So we've got an enormous task ahead of us. It's going to require a lot of hard work and a lot of cooperation.

Water ministers will be meeting shortly and we'll be having lots of conversations about how we achieve the Murray-Darling Basin Plan but achieve it we must. We've got to remember the reason that states and territories signed up to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. It's because water the most precious resource that Australia has, was over exploited and that had an impact on our natural environment. It had an impact on cities and towns right across the million square kilometres of the Murray-Darling Basin that faced running out of water. It's had an impact on agriculture and other industries that rely on water. We know that $22 billion a year of food and fibre is produced in the Murray-Darling Basin and about $11 billion worth of tourism as well.

We need to make sure we have a healthy river system right across that million square kilometres and right through the mouth of the Murray into the ocean because there's more than 2 million people who rely on that. Now we are I think keeping a small dangerous plane waiting, so I might leave it there, thank you all for coming.