Dr Katherine Bennell-Pegg

And most of the space we rely on, almost all of it, is supplied by international companies or other countries.

And so by being able to do more ourselves, we can become more resilient with our own needs.

So 99% of data about climate and weather globally comes from satellites in space.

It's how we communicate across our land.

We're shortly to have triple zero coverage across all of Australia direct to our mobile phones through satellites in space.

If we look at

the UK, I know 18% of their GDP relies on space.

For Australia, it's even more.

I don't have the number, but it's even more just by inspection of how big and vast and remote we are across lands and seas.

So one way to think of space isn't as a niche industry, but as a place.

Space is like the ocean, and it's a place that is the ultimate high point from which we can see things.

And from that high point, like a super high mobile phone tower, we can connect what we can see.

And what we can connect, we can send information through.

Things like the GPS that guides us on our Google Maps, the timing data from GPS actually

is what our banking system relies on.

Every time you tap your phone to buy a coffee, the data in real time is being synchronised through clock measurements from space.

It's the same behind our energy and transport system.

And all of these things that we rely on are really international provided satellites.

So we rely in many cases on the goodwill of other nations to provide that.

I mean, that's a question for government, but I'd say that what's really exciting is that our space sector, over the investments in the last few years,