The Australian government needs to reform tax incentives, reduce insurance and liability requirements and boost private sector participation if it is to pump blood into the nation’s anaemic space industry, according to aerospace experts.
The government has kicked off a review into its decades-old Space Activities Act that sets the regulatory framework for companies wishing to explore commercial opportunities in space.
The review forms an important plank in the federal government’s innovation agenda and has been established to spark a boom in the local space industry.
The 10-month long review will examine whether federal laws, which were originally introduced in 1998, are holding back research and private investment in space technologies.
“The Space Activities Act is now almost 18 years old. It was legislated at a time when there was interest in Australia developing a commercial launch service provider industry, and was premised on that underlying goal. Thus far at least, that has not eventuated,” said Steven Freeland, a space law expert based at Western Sydney University, who is conducting the review.
“In the meantime, and even more so over the past five years, space-related technology has moved forward at an extremely rapid rate.
“The nature of this ‘new space’ technology is such that it opens up significant opportunities for new participants in space activities, in a broad variety of ways.”
Mr Freeland said one of the ways to open up opportunity in the space industry was to ensure that the regulatory framework did not hinder the development and implementation of new programs and participants in the sector.
“Any legislative framework in this area will need to find the appropriate balance between, on the one hand, the need for Australia to properly and appropriately protect itself from liability issues and comply with its international obligations, while, on the other, supporting the development and implementation of real opportunities for innovation and commercial activities,” he said.
The evidence of Australia’s anaemic support for space programs is as clear as it is damning. In 2008, the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Economics produced a report called Lost in Space? Setting a New Direction for Australia’s Space Science and Industry Sector, which found Australia was the only OECD nation to lack a space agency.
Even New Zealand, which has a population of four million people, one million tourists and more than 30 million sheep, has developed a space industry that is bigger that Australia’s.
Rocket Lab — a US company that is developing low-cost launch vehicles in New Zealand — is one example of how Australia’s trans-Tasman neighbours are tearing ahead with commercial space plans.
The company’s founder and chief executive, Peter Beck, said the New Zealand government, with its light regulatory touch and generous tax breaks to new companies, had got it right when encouraging entrepreneurs to embrace the opportunity of commercial space.
“I’m always dubious when governments try to stimulate an industry into action. It needs to happen organically,” Mr Beck toldThe Australian.
“It’s like your mother taking you to piano lessons and telling you this is what you will learn. But unless you really want to learn piano, you will give it up.
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