Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday morning, before I flew to Canberra, I put on an advanced bomb suit, the same type that our service men and women use in explosive ordnance disposal teams across the Middle East. But the bomb suit wasn't to prepare me for this week in parliament; I was visiting a Brisbane small business called Explosive Protective Equipment or EPE. They supply protective equipment to our defence forces, and their technology is so advanced that they've received a grant just recently through our Defence Innovation Hub. In layman's terms, they're looking at how to connect AMULET ground-penetrating radar to unmanned robotic vehicles so that our Defence Forces can better detect IEDs—improvised explosive devices—without putting people at risk. This has the potential to save lives being lost to some of the deadliest weapons in some theatres of war. I learned about the importance of this type of work in my recent visit to Iraq and the Middle East with the Defence parliamentary program. Not everybody know this, but Australia is actually a world leader when it comes to the technology and the capabilities to defeat or mitigate the impact of IEDs.

I want to congratulate Explosive Protective Equipment and wish them all the best with their work. This work will make a very real difference around the world. This business also symbolises some opportunities for Brisbane and Australia. The business has grown from two to 23 people in just a few years. A more prosperous defence industry creates more highly-skilled jobs, and that's why this government has made defence industry a major plank of our economic plan. (Time expired)