Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of this motion this morning as someone who was born not long before man first stepped foot on the moon. I remember growing up as a young lad when the space race was still very much active and I remember my parents telling me about the fear that Australians experienced when the Soviet Union put Yuri Gagarin as the first man into orbit. I remember my mum and dad telling me as a young fellow about how much fear there was even amongst Australians, as cocooned as we were back in those days, about Russians being in space. Then time moved on and NASA put John Glenn into orbit in Friendship 7 on 20 February 1962. The United States then joined what is now known as the space race.

A little later in that year, on 12 September 1962, President John F Kennedy gave a tremendous speech at Rice University in Houston, when he announced to the world that, by the end of that decade, NASA—and, in fact, the United States—sought to put man on the moon. There's a terrific quote from that speech he gave at Rice University. He said:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

That one paragraph from President Kennedy's speech really embodies the US's intentions to put man on the moon and, indeed, their whole space campaign. But it does more than that; it embodies the human condition. It's a bit like: 'Why did you climb the mountain?' 'Well, because it was there'. For millennia, human beings have looked at challenges and said, 'Let's do this; let's climb that mountain,' 'Let's go to the moon,' 'Let's do things that will make us stretch beyond our comfort zones.' That is what makes us different as human beings. Whilst, admittedly, we're a little bit late to the party, Australians can take tremendous pride in the work that we will now be doing in space over the coming years.

I want to really congratulate the government and, indeed, Minister Andrews for her work and the leadership that she has demonstrated in really grasping the nettle—not because it's easy, but because it is hard. When I look at all of the space exploration that has been undertaken by various nations—whether it be John Glenn in one of the Mercury rockets, the Apollo programs, the space shuttles or, more recently, the unmanned travel that has been going on—what really amazes me today, in 2019, is that when the Americans first put man on the moon the computer that they used onboard the Apollo 11 spaceship had nowhere near the computing power of a mobile phone or even, I'm told, an Apple Watch. What amazes me is the sheer brilliance of the men and the women— (Time expired)

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