John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to look at the response to the report of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories entitled Antarctica: Australia’s pristine frontier: the adequacy of funding for Australia’s Antarctic program. This was a very important report, as all reports of committees of this parliament are, into the funding specifically for the Antarctic Division and its home base in Kingston in Hobart, Tasmania, and of course our bases on Antarctica itself.

The committee report specifically focused on the adequacy of funding. I think that was very important. The report was very exhaustive in the sense that it took evidence not only here in Canberra but also in Hobart itself. The report basically found that, for a long period of time, funding for the Australian Antarctic Division had been fairly tight. That was reflected in the evidence given by the division itself. At page 13 of the original report, it was noted at paragraph 2.4:

In informal discussions with the Committee, the Division reported that there had been no new money invested in the AAD for many years.

That is something that is not new to the current government, and was also the case before 1996 with the previous Labor government. Over a long period of time, this excellent organisation has been the subject of some tight funding, which has, of course, made its operations difficult. Nonetheless, it has achieved a set of marvellous outcomes given the shoestring budget that it has been run on.

The report was tabled in June 2005. The government’s response unfortunately took until Thursday, 1 March 2007 to be delivered. That was a bit unfortunate because some of the recommendations that were made—and the report was completely bipartisan—went to making some initial and immediate grants available to the organisation to further what the committee identified as some important works. The issue of the ability to access Antarctica itself was central at that time. It is a matter of history that, in the 2005-06 budget, the government allocated $46.3 million to provide an air link with Antarctica; that was most welcome indeed. That initiative of the government, which was the first major boost to the Australian Antarctic Division in a long time, has certainly made the operations of the Antarctic Division a lot more appealing to many other scientists who found the trip down to Antarctica on the Aurora Australis a little bit too much even at the best of times.

That budget initiative back in 2005-06 is now coming to fruition. We saw this last Friday when the committee once again followed up its interest in the activities of the Australian Antarctic Division and received a very comprehensive briefing on how the division was faring with a number of its activities. Central to this was the fact that it has now taken possession, through a lease arrangement, of an Airbus A319 aircraft that will have the capability to land on the ice runway, which was under construction but is now completed in Antarctica. This will enhance opportunities for scientists to travel over the summer months and to stay for short periods to undertake important scientific research. This research is not necessarily seen in our everyday lives; it looks at long-term issues such as climate change and the benefits that our society can glean from understanding our past and how climate has changed over a long period of time.

When we were visiting the Australian Antarctic Division the other week, it was interesting to hear that they ranked 166,000th out of 100 million websites in terms of the number of strikes. That might not sound very high in the pecking order but, in terms of the number of websites that are available and the number of actual strikes, they are right up there with the leading sites throughout the world. They have to constantly update and upgrade their site because it is accessed not only by scientists but also by students and the public alike.

Whilst that has been a good initiative and a very commendable initiative on the part of the government, it is my view that organisation itself still has little capacity to operate totally effectively on the budget that is provided to it; this is fairly historical. It appears to me that the organisation has little capacity to return the efficiency dividends that the government demands of many departments and agencies. The Australian Antarctic Division deals pretty much with the nuts and bolts of scientific research. Its main consumables are items such as fuel, clothing, food and spare parts—all items whose prices increase with the CPI. The efficiency dividend that the Australian Antarctic Division must return ends up in some instances being funded out of other programs and projects because it is being funded for less than the CPI. Therefore, it has to trim its sails unnecessarily in some places, and some projects undoubtedly suffer as a result. From my perspective, there seems to be no fat in the budget of the organisation. I think this is a little bit unfortunate.

When one considers the recommendations that the committee made back in 2005, they were not outlandish by any means. The committee suggested in that report that funding be provided for a scoping study to look at a dedicated marine research vessel. It did not go down the path of suggesting that there should be a new vessel but instead suggested that a scoping study be done. The response of the government, tabled on 1 March, basically said, ‘Look, we’re putting in the Antarctic air link,’ but I think that that missed the point. The point was not just about putting in the air link; there may well have been a need for a further dedicated marine research vessel, given the dual role of the Aurora Australis.

We also went into extra funding for the International Polar Year activities and suggested that there should be additional funds made available immediately to help plan that year. That will be upon us in 2007-08 but no additional funds were given. The government’s response was that they could meet any requirements out of existing funds. That was disappointing. We also asked for additional grants to be made in the period 2004-05 to 2008-09 by doubling the grants to the Australian Antarctic Science Grants scheme to $700,000. Again, the government disagreed with that recommendation, but I and my colleagues thought that it was a highly commendable recommendation to be embraced.