Election Promise To Help Australia's Space Industry Take Off

The Coalition is turning its focus to infinity and beyond today.

Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews announcing $3.5 million to help grow the space sector in Australia, if the LNP gets voted back in after this weekend's Federal Election. 

The Member for McPherson said most of the money, around $2.5 million, would go towards setting up test facilities around the country. 

"We're also investing about $900,000 to look at the policies that need to be put in place to enable the space sector in Australia to take off," she said.

The space industry is currently worth $3.9 billion to our economy and employs about 10,000 people, with the coalition hoping to grow that to $12 billion and another 20 thousand jobs by 2030.

"Here on the Gold Coast we have a growing space sector and we have Gilmour Technologies absolutely leading the charge in the space race," said Ms Andrews. 

Adam Gilmour from the Gold Coast-based space company welcomed the election promise.

"We intend to use a little bit of this money, potentially for some testing equipment... and as a launch company we're very happy to see more impetus towards developing a launch site in Australia and doing the ground work to get that going," he said.