Senator Carr at the 4^th International SKA Conference. (July 7, 2011)

The Federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr, yesterday addressed the 4^th Square Kilometre Array Conference being held in Banff, Canada with the view to having the international consortium choose the proposal being put forward by Australia and New Zealand over that led by South Africa which would extend to the Indian Ocean Islands. The target construction cost is €1,500 million and construction could start as soon as 2019 and be expected to be fully operational by 2024. More than 70 institutes in 20 countries, together with industry partners, are participating in the scientific and technical design of the SKA telescope.

A decision on the location of the SKA site will be made in 2012 by a "Site Selection Group... established to oversee the process of evaluating the information on each candidate site".

Senator Carr in his presentation noted that "the Australian Government’s support for the SKA is demonstrated by our 24 million Euro commitment to the pre-construction phase, if Australia-New Zealand were the host site – and a commitment to five per cent of the pre-construction project, or 4.5 million Euro, in any case [together with] the New Zealand Government’s commitment of three million Euros".

In addition he listed the followed work that the Australian and New Zealand project (anzSKA) lead by Professor Brian Boyle has completed to date in expectation of being the successful bidder:

• We have strengthened the legal framework for the radio-quiet zone at the Murchison Radio Observatory, paving the way for a legislated guarantee.

• Government and the mining industry have negotiated a management framework to protect radio-quiet within a 520km diameter of the core site – this maintaining our superb radio quiet environment into the future.

• We will have all 36 antennas for the Pathfinder on site by the end of the year.

• We are building a full scale hybrid solar generation and storage plant in Murchison.

• We have launched the first of three supercomputers in the Pawsey project.

• We are connecting the continent with future-proof fibre-optic broadband, and we have laid the critical links to Geraldton.

• ...we have already lit the fibre all the way from Murchison to Perth, sending data from the first of our antennas in real time to the world.

• Furthermore, we have proven the science case with a successful demonstration of electronic very long baseline interferometry across the Tasman Sea.