Page 1217 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 11 April 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Minister for Planning and Land Management and Minister for Urban Renewal) (10.28): I thank Ms Lawder for this motion and I am very supportive of the proposal. I do have a couple of amendments, though, which I seek leave to move together now.
Leave granted.
MR GENTLEMAN: I move:
(1) After paragraph (1)(e), insert:
“(f) the important role played by the ACT is recognised through the heritage listing of the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, Orroral Valley Tracking Station and the Orroral Geodetic Observatory;”.
(2) Omit paragraphs (2)(a) and (b), substitute:
“(a) support the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Apollo 11 mission and continue working with stakeholders, including former tracking station employees, Tidbinbilla Deep Space Communication Complex, NASA and the Australian National University, on a celebration;
(b) work with stakeholders on possible options for an artwork or similar to commemorate the space tracking industry in the ACT in time for the 50th anniversary;”.
The amendments support what Ms Lawder intends to do today. Also, they acknowledge the ex-staffers in planning for the event. As we know, it is a very important time in Canberra’s history. After talking to the group last year, after the anniversary, I gave some instructions to heritage to start to work up a package for the 50th anniversary.
Humankind reached the heights of technical achievement on 21 July 1969, when we placed our first footprints on the moon. The famed lunar module Eagle landed on the surface of the moon, with barely 30 seconds of fuel remaining, at 4.17 pm Eastern Daylight Time. It was recorded somewhat differently in the Honeysuckle logs, which I will go to a little bit later. Astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped off the landed spacecraft and onto the surface of the moon, heralding a new era in modern history.
The lunar landings captured the imagination of the entire world. Once upon a time, the idea of landing on the moon was the stuff of storybooks, but with Apollo 11 the impossible became real. Neil Armstrong remarked that the need to explore the moon was part of humankind’s need for self-discovery and that it was in the nature of the human being to face challenges.
The international space race was a rare case where there were moments of mutual respect between the communist Soviet Union and the United States during a geopolitically tense time in modern history. In 1960 the United States and Australia signed an agreement under which Australia established and operated a number of tracking stations which would form part of worldwide networks under the control of
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video