The 1980s – the missed link in the story of Australia in space: a note

The discussion and sometimes euphoria over the re-establishment of Australia’s space programs has been marked by a total neglect of the attempts to re-establish an Australian Space Program in the 1980s. Discussion slides from the 1960s or early seventies straight to the present time; it is though the 1980s did not exist. And yet, the 1980s were marked by a considerable push including the failed establishment of new institutional structures.

When the grand new initiative began, I became very annoyed at what I saw as the effective re-writing of history; neglect amounts to rewriting. I was also annoyed because the discussion failed to recognize the individuals who tried so hard. Then during the clean-out of my papers prior to the move to Armidale I found a box of documents on the 1980s’ attempts.

That box has disappeared for the moment, lost in the pile of boxes in the garage. It will re-appear in due course, allowing me to write a better documented account. For the moment, I just want to record some of the key events, recognizing that without documentation I may get things wrong including the spelling of names.

Australia’s withdrawal from space has been much canvassed in current discussions. Australia had an active launch site and a not-inconsiderable space sector. In Sydney, Hawker de Havilland employed some 4,000 people in its space division. When the British abandoned its independent space program, Australia had a chance to join ESA, the European Space Agency. This move was opposed by France which had its own plans and saw Australia as a threat to those plans. There was also little support domestically. The then Menzies Government saw it as a waste of money. The net effect was an unwinding of Australian involvement in space and our not inconsiderable space sector.

By the start of the 1980s, things had begun to change. Four factors contributed to this:

•  Barry Jones, the newly appointed Minister for Science and Technology in the Hawke Government, supported by Deputy Secretary Roy Green, began a space push. This led to the setting up of the Madigan Inquiry, While this proceeded, Jones and Green attempted to use Section 39 funds, part of the IR&D grant scheme, to fund Australian involvement if space projects
• Meantime, the Department of Industry and Commerce, concerned that the industry policy focus was too dominated by support for cot-case industries, established a new branch (the Electronics, Aerospace and Information Industries Branch) to chart new directions in the high technology sector. I was charged with responsibility with setting that branch up. We focused early on the role that space might play in developing not just the aerospace sector but Australia’s high technology industries in general
• There were moves in CSIRO too. The Division of Radio Physics under Bob Frater supported by Colin Cooper had not lost its interest in space and supported increased Australian involvement in space. Ken McCracken, head of Minerals Research and a dedicated believer in the value of space based remote sensing began a push to create a special space focused centre within CSIRO. There was growing interest in the universities too where researchers were experimenting with new space focused technologies
•  In industry, Hawker de Havilland had not forgotten its previous role and supported the push led by (among others) Peter Smith and Stan Schatzel. Stan had had a long involvement with Australian space activities. There were also a growing number of small space related start-ups.

A number of initiatives resulted:

• We began a series on industry consultations aimed at identifying opportunities and impediments and to gather support for new space initiatives
•  In CSIRO, Ken obtained endorsement to create a new committee to examine CSIRO’s role in space of which I was a member. This resulted in the creation of the CSIRO Office for Space Science and Applications headed by Ken, supported by Christine Astley Boden
• A new Australian Space Board was created headed by Bruce Middleton to develop new program activities.

These various moves would finally fail. The reasons for this deserve exploration as does the whole story. In essence, the climate in Canberra was changing. These space initiatives were seen as yet more special pleading for industry subsidation. I remember a frustrating meeting at Treasury where I finally said in frustration how do I satisfy you? David Borthwick carefully explained about benefit-cost analysis. It was actually quite a helpful response, but my problem was that benefit-cost analysis deals with the known, while I was doing with the what might be. I could explain linkages, show where I though benefits would come, but I was really very reluctant to attach numbers or risk assessments. From my perspective, I could show benefits, but so long as we were in the right ball-park precise quantification was meaningless.

When I get my box of papers I will write more. For the moment, I simply wish to assert that the new Australian Space Agency is not the first Australian Space Agency, that what happened in the 1980s deserves to be remembered.

Glimpses into a policy past - the 1984 Australian aerospace industry development statement

One of the things that I struggle with on this blog is actually bringing alive some of the things I talk about, to explain how things work, why things go wrong, what needs to be done to improve performance. 

I threw out most of my papers from the Canberra and then Aymever periods. Later, I regretted this. Now digging through my old papers as part of my present restructuring, a word actually relevant to this post, I have found all sorts of interesting bits and pieces. More had survived than I realised. 

The following press release was the first in a series of releases on our then attempts to position Australia in the high technology sector.

I still remember this one very clearly.

Minister John Button (and here) had decided that he wanted to release the aerospace industries plan via a press conference. When I went to see him for a pre-conference briefing he was in an ebullient mood. I couldn't get him to focus.

This was not the first time I had briefed a minister, nor my first press release. Both were common nature. However, it was the first time I had briefed on a major initiative that I had played a key role in crafting, one where we had to fight hard to get it through. It was also the first in a rolling series of announcements that we expected the minister to make over coming years.

Yes, that's right, years! The work plan that I had developed with my colleagues- the pattern of rolling but integrated policy reviews -  required several years of work, more to keep implementation going. The later Communications Equipment Industry Development Strategy had a ten year time horizon built into it.

We knew that just as the structural problems being experienced by Australian industry had taken years to develop, so effective responses would take years.

I do not remember whether or not this was the first "industry plan'". Our division was working on the first Button Car Plan at that time. I tried to check dates, but the on-line material  does not help. My memory is that the aerospace statement was the first. Further comments follow the press release.   

Looking at the statement, it is almost a template for all those statements that came later and across portfolios. My current public service colleagues will find it totally familiar.

This illustrates a problem, the difference between mechanics and creativity. The practical mechanics of policy development tend to dictate very common structures to both policy and implementation. And yet, results can vary greatly. How things are done makes the difference. 

As I left the press conference after the release, I felt dissatisfied. Because I hadn't been able to get John to focus properly, I knew that we hadn't given the media the things required. We had set in train a process, one that I believed would give results. And yet, we hadn't started well.

I don't blame the minister. While he was the boss, it was my job to give him advice, structure and information. It was also my job to be persistent, to manage his mood. To my mind, the failure was my own.

CSIRO & industrial development

This photo was taken some three years after that in A PhD student, 1983. It is on a CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation) lab visit looking, I think, at a new piece of semiconductor equipment. The photo was taken by a CSIRO photographer.

I have lost both the beard and a fair bit of hair! The beard had gone for female, not career reasons. At this stage I was having too much fun to worry about career issues!  The hair loss was involuntary.

It's quite a high powered group. I am sorry that I cannot remember the name of our guide, but from left to right.

At back left, Dennis Cooper. He was then 2IC in CSIRO Radio Physics, and was appointed head in 1988. To his right is Tommy Thomas who ha been appointed Foundation Chief at the new CSIRO  Division of Information Technology in 1985. In front is Dr Bob Frater who was then Chief of the Division of Radiophysics and also Director of the Australia Telescope Project. The Australia Telescope opened in 1988 and is the premier instrument of its kind in the southern hemisphere. Bob Frater maintains that it was the Mills Cross experience that:

• provided him with the insight to marry up astronomical instrument development and related industry development that proved so important later in obtaining funding and building the Australia Telescope
• gave him an appreciation of the huge spinout benefits that come from meeting the demanding needs of new instruments.

In 1988 Bob became head of the newly created CSIRO Institute of Information Science and Engineering (a group of CSIRO Divisions) and then Deputy Chief Executive, CSIRO in 1999. Further comments follow the photo.

    

We had a close working relationship with CSIRO for we regarded it as a critical player in our attempts to build Australia's place in the global electronics, aerospace and information industries. However, our approach was not quite the same as that holding today.

One of the things that used to (and still does) frustrate me about some of official colleagues and especially those in Treasury is the generalised application of universal models.  

I was concerned with a practical question.

The electronics, aerospace and information industries  - all those industries based on electronics and systems and including services as well as manufacturing - were clearly going to be global growth drivers over the next two decades. Australia's performance in these areas had been very poor. What could we do to turn this around?

The four most pernicious universals that we were trying to deal with were:

• Australia's comparative advantage lay in agricultural and mining. We should not be trying to create new industries outside those areas. They would fail. Australia did have comparative advantage in those traditional areas. However, that of itself need not rule out other options. Our analysis showed that Australia as a whole performed badly on key indicators (trade intensity, trade diversity) as compared with countries with comparable resource endowments. Comparative advantage as such could not explain that performance. Other factors must be involved.
• Let the market decide. This combined comparative advantage with neoclassical nostrums. Our analysis showed that in an imperfect world, competitive as compared to comparative advantage was often created through state action. There was no evidence that simplistic application of free market nostrums in a globalising world could of itself guarantee any form of optimum outcome.
• Horizontal is good, vertical bad. Policy measures must be universally applicable, not tailored to varying needs. We tried to point out that diversity meant that a universal measure was in fact vertical because its on-ground application created differential and often persevere results. By contrast, vertical measures could be better tailored. As a current example, look at the continuing failures in policy towards Australia's indigenous people. 
• Results for individual policies must be measurable in advance. We were trying do new things, to create a climate for growth. We could not be certain that individual things would work in advance. Our focus was on totality with constant adjustment through experience. A measure of failure was inevitable.

There are always questions of balance in these things.

I mentioned in my last post my reaction to existing industry assistance measures, that crazy patchwork quilt of tariffs and other assistance measures that, to our mind, had had such a devastating effect on Australia. We considered that we were dealing with a globalising world, that Australia's best chances lay in a world of reduced trade barriers, that free markets and competition gave the best results. We focused on the best adjustment processes.       

In looking at CSIRO, there were two very different world views.

In the old view, CSIRO was practical, existing to provide the benefits of scientific research to Australian development. The new world view accepted this, but added to it a generalised overlay focused on narrower commercialisation. The question now asked what not whether or not CSIRO research would or had benefited Australia in a general sense, but whether the best direct commercial returns on individual discoveries had been achieved.

We were concerned with general questions, but our focus was on our industries. Just as CSIRO research had so benefited Australian agriculture, we now wanted that research to benefit the electronics, aerospace and information industries. The question of the direct return on specific research activities was related, but different.

The true pioneers, and I would include Messrs Cooper, Thomas and Frater in this, are those who pursue dreams and are driven by passion, by curiosity. They may play the game, but this is a means to an end.

Another such was Ken McCracken. He had a vision of Australia in space, of the benefits that might be offered by things such as remote sensing. I quote:            

As Professor of Physics at Adelaide University between 1966 and 1969, Dr McCracken led a team that pioneered X-ray astronomy of the southern sky with instruments launched on Skylark rockets from the Woomera Rocket Range.

In 1970, Dr McCracken was founding chief of the CSIRO's new Division of Mineral Physics in Sydney. His first official task was to attend a research meeting in Canberra which was preparing Australia's response to a NASA invitation to make use of satellite images of Australia obtained by its recently launched Earth Resources Technology Satellite (later renamed LANDSAT).

"I knew nothing about remote sensing, but I had been building satellites for 15 years and knew of the enormous revolution satellites had brought to communications," he said. "It was clear to me that if somebody could put an eye into a satellite orbiting 800 kilometres above the earth, it would be another sea change in technology. "I was also attracted by the physics involved in satellite images - it seemed to me that it could overcome some of the limitations of conventional aerial photography."

From 1970, Ken pursued his vision. In the early 1980's he became concerned that Australia's space industry was fragmented and lacking direction, and had already missed out on commercial opportunities that had been seized by other Western nations.

In, I think, 1984, Ken persuaded CSIRO to investigate the establishment of a special office of space science and applications. A working party was established. I was invited to join because CSIRO had just been transferred to the industry portfolio. One outcome was the CSIRO Office of Space Science and Applications.

I am not making any claim as to responsibility. Ken selected me because of my official connections, because he knew that I would be sympathetic as indeed I was.

In 1995, Ken won the Australia Prize for his work on remote sensing. And yet, and I am sure that Ken would agree with this, the sense of lost opportunity remains. Perhaps I should let Ken have the last word in his remarks on the prize:

Dr McCracken said the CSIRO administration of the 1970s must take some of the credit for the award of the Australia Prize to his team. "They set the broad research goals and stipulated that I and my colleagues should develop the techniques and instruments the industry would need 10 years into the future," he said.

"At first, much of what we did was against the industry wisdom of the day, yet after half a decade, the industry was using virtually all our research results and making a major financial contribution to the research program".

"Because Australia was among the first countries to develop these new techniques, the minerals exploration industry gained an enormous competitive advantage over the rest of the world".

"It would not have done so if it had been forced to import the technology, or if research had started three years later - in practical research, the early bird really does get the one and only worm".

"Anticipating the technologies of the future is a very tricky business and very few people have the ability to do so. I was lucky to answer to a very small, stable group of scientific managers - leaders, really - who possessed that rare skill and who had the confidence to back young Turks like me".

"I believe Australia has scientists today who are just as good and who are thinking about what their client industries may be doing in the future. Some will be right, others will be wrong, but Australia has to accept this as a cost of progress. Industries must also be prepared to take a chance and invest in their own future".

"Research is the key to the competitive industries of the future. The key to our future is that the very best of our research minds should be harnessed to deliver what our industries will need ten years hence. The challenge for our research managers is to know what to back when everyone seems to disagree with them."