Page 1068 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 24 March 2015
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Tidbinbilla is one of three NASA tracking stations equidistantly located around the world, featuring giant radio antennas that relay commands to and receive data from dozens of spacecraft exploring the sun, planets, moons, comets and asteroids of our solar system. The other two stations are located near Madrid in Spain and at Goldstone in California in the USA. In the past the tracking station was run under contract to the Australian government by private companies, including AWA and British Aerospace Australia, and is now run by CSIRO. The tracking station is currently gearing up for the July arrival of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which will take our first close-up views of Pluto.
A large number of current and past staff attended the anniversary. At risk of leaving many of them out, I acknowledge the contribution made by many Canberrans to our knowledge of deep space and our surrounding planets. I acknowledge the following, who are just a small subset of those who have worked at the tracking station over the past 50 years: Jeff Appleton, Peter Badowski, Shane Badowski, Allan Bailey, Candy Bailey, Laurie Bailey, Graham Baines, Miriam Baltuck, Marisa Cappello, Peter Churchill, Gordon Clee, Angela Corujo, Frank Corujo, Barry Davis, Mike Dinn, Bill Dobie, Jim Duncan, John Dunn, Lionel Franks, Chris Hall, Paul Harbison, John Harter, Garry Hobbs, Paul Hutchinson, Richard Jacobsen, John Johnson, Jim Kirkpatrick, Kevin Knights, Len Litherland, John Murray, Ross Murray, Glen Nagle, Kate Noonan, Terry Neuendorf, Penny Neuendorf, Jim O'Brien, Dennis O’Brien, Basilio Ormeno, Gary Pearson, Fran Purbrick, Bob Quick, Len Ricardo, Ana Ross, Tony Ross, John Saxon, Trevor Smith, Taryn Smith, Richard Stephenson, Pam Takanen, Ron Tollasep, Barry Unsworth, Nikki Unsworth, Kendra Wells, Kevin Wells and Mark Wombwell.
I look forward to hearing more about the outstanding space exploration work into the future from the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. You can find out more at cdscc.nasa.gov.
Education—Canberra College Cares program
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.48): I would like to compliment Ms Porter for her question yesterday in relation to CCCares and compliment the government and the department for the great advances that have been made in CCCares over the years. It was a great pleasure to attend the opening of CCCares a couple of weeks ago and to see the great advances that have been made since 2004 when I first visited CCCares at Stirling in a very cold and bleak set-up.
Over time, through grants—the Commonwealth Bank grant that was talked about today and the social inclusion grants—it was possible to build up the facility to demonstrate quite clearly the need that was there for an organisation like CCCares and also how well CCCares has worked for young people who juggle school and parenting, and for their children. It is a great testament to the leadership of Canberra College, to John Stenhouse and his staff, who had the foresight many years ago to institute CCCares, and to the myriad community organisations who participate in the program.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video