Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I had the honour of announcing the Research Support for Counter-Terrorism program grants of the federal government. This program is under the auspices of the National Security Science and Technology Unit, which is located in the Office of National Security in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Australia is confronted with significant scientific challenges in several key areas, one of the biggest being national security. To meet these challenges, Australia needs to further develop its research capacity and encourage scientific collaboration. If we can increase our national research capacity and capability, Australian research organisations can provide much greater security outcomes.

The RSCT program aims to build Australia’s security and counterterrorism capability. The program has proved to be a highly effective way of helping organisations develop projects which may not have been developed with the key government seed funding. The investment is dedicated directly to project costs and does not fund institutional infrastructure or fixed costs. Combined with the co-funding arrangements, it means that comparatively small grants can yield rather major results. For universities or small to medium enterprises, the injection of several hundred thousand dollars can be of invaluable assistance. It needs to be emphasised that the RSCT is one highly targeted program that runs parallel to other funding programs and research avenues used by the Australian government to develop national security capabilities. Operating the RSCT program on its current scale allows a high level of participation, advice and feedback from user agencies. Partner organisations in this round have provided over $11 million. The federal government has provided $5.9 million through the RSCT program.

We are finding that more technologies developed with a specific counterterrorism application in mind have the transportability that allows them to be used in areas in areas outside of counterterrorism. Clearly, tools which help first responders, such as better radio communications, critical infrastructure modelling and scenario testing, can be put into use not only in the event of a counterterrorism response but also in the event of natural disasters, such as bushfires, floods or an avian flu epidemic. Grants are given to the organisations which are best able to conduct research in response to a specific requirement. As such, the nature of an organisation is not as important to the program as its experience and potential to deliver a useful product to our frontline agencies. Over the period that the program has been operating, universities have been the largest recipients of grants, with a close division between government and private industry. The program is most successful where the money it is contributing can make a significant difference to the viability of the project.

Some of the project outcomes are quite spectacular, such as, in the biological area, a device called the surface plasmon resonance biosensor. This device is a handheld detector which can identify and analyse biological agents. The biosensor was developed by the CSIRO in collaboration with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and provides law enforcement and emergency service agencies with support in the detection and identification of a range of biological threats that may arise from a terrorist attack. The biosensor’s technology allows the user to immediately identify and take action to deal with a direct biological threat. As part of the program grants, I announced that the Australian government will provide an additional $248,000 to the CSIRO, in collaboration with Emergency Management Australia and the Australian Federal Police, to extend the biosensor development, allowing the device to simultaneously identify more than one biological agent from any single sample. While the project represents a significant advancement of Australia’s counterterrorism capabilities, the biosensor can also identify other biological threats, including avian and equine influenza.

There are other areas that have benefited from this counterterrorism research funding. For example, in the physical and information security area, the NSST Unit co-funded with the CSIRO the development and trialling of neutron scanning technology for air cargo scanning of containers, representing the next generation of cargo-scanning capability. The project enabled laboratory tests of the effectiveness of the scanning technology in the detection of explosives. This type of scanner is currently being trialled by Customs at Brisbane Airport.

It was my pleasure as Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister to announce these funding grants, which are putting Australia at the very forefront of counterterrorism research. I think we will see the benefits of this funding over the next couple of years.