Nicolle Flint (Boothby, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This morning I met with the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology to continue my fight to have the national space agency headquartered in my home state of South Australia. I've also personally met with the Premier of South Australia on a number of occasions to discuss the case for space. Adelaide is the home of defence and advanced manufacturing, thanks to our government's recent $35 billion investment and our private-sector defence presence. We are the home of world-class teachers and researchers at Adelaide University, Flinders University and the University of South Australia. World-famous former NASA astronaut Dr Andy Thomas AO and space expert Andrea Boyd both studied at Adelaide University. I was honoured to meet Andrea, who is a mechatronic engineer and the European Space Agency's flight controller for the International Space Agency, through her brother Leighton Boyd, who is the director of my wonderful local community group MarionLIFE.

It makes sense to base the Australian Space Agency in Adelaide because we already have the training and manufacturing expertise to launch this capability. I'm fighting for an Adelaide based national space agency for the jobs and the future of young people in my state. One of those young people is Charlie Miller, a year 5 student at Pembroke School, who is here today in the gallery with his family and friends: Jane and Daisy Miller, Amber Sprague, and Scarlett and Georgia Foster. Charlie wants to be an aeronautical engineer, but maybe if we are home to the Space Agency he will consider being an astronautical engineer instead. I will continue to make the case for space.

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