Speech Delivered by SIAA CEO Dan Lloyd at the 18th Australian Space Forum, 15 July 2025

Good morning. It is a great pleasure to be speaking with you today on Garna Country. I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and pay my deepest respects to Elders past, present and emerging.

It is a real privilege to address you today as the new CEO of the Space Industry Association of Australia.

I hope I am bringing a constructive tone and a fresh set of perspectives to this role. I spent years in the global communications industry in London, Mumbai and Australia working in a range of executive roles across policy, strategy, commercial leadership and partnerships across Africa, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Australia. I’ve led a host of initiatives with substantial geostrategic implications including a strategic alliance with China Mobile.

More than anything, I’ve spent my time trying to identify a strategic approach which aligns the levers across government, industry and academia to accelerate new markets defined by transformational technology – exactly the opportunity in front of the Australian space industry.

I then spent time in government as Senior Adviser to the Communications Minister running the biggest regional communications funding program since the establishment of the NBN, and a range of security of critical infrastructure, resilience and policy initiatives, so I believe I also have a real appreciation of the challenges and opportunities of policy, regulation and funding in government.

It is also a real pleasure to be addressing you on the back of yesterday’s announcements re the Optus-led sovereign satellite consortium. The enthusiastic collaborative spirit at the heart of this initiative is very clear and exactly what builds the industry. This brings together not only Optus, HEO, Inovor, but also DSTG, ILaunch trailblazer, SmartSat CRC, and three leading universities on a truly exciting project that builds the next level of Australian capability. Given the history of the organisations involved, I think this is also clear proof of the critical role which government funding can play to create the conditions in which industry can move forward.

Key Messages

There are four key reflections I want to share today. In summary:

1. Most importantly, I think this is a critical time for a fresh, robust, informed and respectful dialogue between industry, government and academia. This dialogue isn’t about space, but about Australia can best secure its economic future and national resilience and the very significant role space can play in that.
2. We are in a global race to secure the economic and strategic benefits of transformational technologies including AI, quantum and space. I have worked at the global coalface of analogous rivalry in the global communications industry so have a clear sense of the nature and scale of the challenge.
3. Australia has many more levers at its disposal than we are currently using. Much of the discussion inevitably gravitates to government funding. That is incredibly important and I will continue to advocate for targeted funding where it has a high chance of making a serious difference, but we can’t forget the value of broader government action: I have seen time and time again that signals can be very important, as can strategy, communication and coordination.
4. IAC 2025 is a once-in-a-generation opportunity and you’ll hear a lot more about it from the next speakers. I do need to acknowledge that IAC 2025 is of course built on the shoulders of IAC 2017 in Adelaide.

Now to cover each of these key areas briefly:

Reflection 1: A robust and constructive dialogue

Companies and industries inevitably spend a lot of their time thinking about what government can do for them and passionately advocating for it.

The space industry is particularly passionate and probably can’t help but be particularly passionate as we see genuine innovation and transformational opportunities almost every day.

But I fear this has led government and industry to talk past each other for a while. That can be an issue, particularly in a fast-moving industry.

Having spent the last few months talking extensively to industry and government, I actually hear and see an enormous amount of commonality of interest, just expressed in very different ways.

Industry tends naturally to talk about space specifically and does have a tendency towards space exceptionalism.

The returned Albanese government instead talks of range of industries including space which have the potential to build a Future Made in Australia, the opportunity to drive a step change in industrial capability, economic security and sovereign capability.

Minister Ayres and the Future Made in Australia agenda are focused on enabling innovation, supporting advanced manufacturing, and securing strategic industries. That’s exactly what the space industry is talking about as well.

The National Reconstruction Fund and Industry Growth Program are powerful tools. And to their credit, NRF leadership has engaged the space sector with real intent. It is no surprise that they are speaking here at Andy Thomas as they understand the important signals that their interest in the sector sends, as well as their investments.

And the Future Made in Australia agenda has been supplemented with a focus on productivity, seeking big ideas in the national interest which can drive broad multi-sector improvements in productivity. The Space Industry has so much to offer here as well, starting with earth observation data for planning, environmental management, public safety and emergency management, and to help Australia achieve its goal of $100bn in primary production by 2030.

There is huge potential for the space industry to articulate its benefits through its natural alignment with the Future Made in Australia and the productivity agenda, so I look forward to doing so.

This doesn’t remove the need for an active robust dialogue which is open to the need for more targeted policy and funding initiatives as they play a very important complementary role, so more on this in a minute.

Most importantly, this isn’t a time to pretend that the answers are easy or clear, it is a time for a serious dialogue. SIAA will be tasking this forward through a series of events and we hope to see many of you in Canberra on 29 July for our Policy and Strategy Forum.

Reflection 2: A Global Contest

We are clearly engaged in a serious global strategic race for the economic and resilience benefits of transformational technologies including space. The stakes are high.

In a previous role, I managed Vodafone’s strategic alliance with China Mobile. I saw first-hand how purposeful these techno-nationalist initiatives are. China Mobile commercialised an entirely new 3G mobile standard, TD-SCDMA, from scratch and had hundreds of millions of subscribers live on it not long thereafter. China’s Huawei strategy literally reshaped the global telecoms infrastructure industry in under a decade. I saw how broad the thinking is and how clear and seamless the alignment is across civilian and defence domains.

And today, we see clear signs of the same long-term techno-nationalist strategic intent in space:

• Testing of ASATs, very particular on-orbit manoeuvres, and electronic warfare capabilities;
• But also a range of broader initiatives including the deployment of the first 12 satellites in China’s Three Body AI Computing Constellation. China will be thinking through every dimension of strategic advantage. This potentially not only builds energy efficient data centres in space, but gives China an additional dimension of resilience, as critical systems can be deployed and backed-up on orbit.

The other piece that space industry observers might not be aware of is the terrestrial complement to this activity with Russia and China are actively probing and disrupting terrestrial infrastructure particularly undersea cable systems—dragging anchors, cutting fibre, and testing response thresholds.

I think it is important that we understand all the dimensions of rivalry and the need to compete with the outputs and implications of these efforts. This will require a new degree of collaboration across industry, government and academia.

The potential implications are very broad so I won’t attempt to summarise them, but the sort of discussion that this might provoke is for example whether Australia should review SONS – Systems of National Significance – with a view to establishing non-terrestrial redundancy. One starting point might be our Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure. It is essential to everyday life, is secured through distributed infrastructure but is currently entirely terrestrial. Perhaps that is just the sort of vulnerability that China is seeking to mitigate.

There is also great potential to integrate non-terrestrial redundancy into a wide range of national initiatives. There are for example, major projects across government for public safety and emergency management including PSMB and CBNMS, but with a largely terrestrial focus, whereas non-terrestrial networks could substantially enhance coverage and resilience.

This is a serious challenge and it is going to require broad perspectives and innovative strategies to compete. Industry stands ready to play its part.

Reflection 3: There are more levers at our disposal, we should consider them

Much of the space industry debate has been around whether there is sufficient funding to tip the Australian space industry into a virtuous cycle of sustainable scale.

Government funding is indeed incredibly important especially since it can smooth the “boom and bust” cycles of early stage technologies which are inevitably capital intensive, and the industry will always seek and welcome additional funding. I believe there are particular opportunities for modest targeted funding schemes focused on unlocking major opportunities, eg we have proposed a fund to realise the potential of the Technology Safeguards Agreement and break through the devil in the detail.

However, more importantly, the discussion often starts and stops in funding measures, meaning that the broader levers available to government don’t get so much attention.

In industry and government have seen the power of the broader tools in the arsenal – particularly signals, strategy & policy, communication and coordination mechanisms.

One trade-off with the general economy approach which the current government is taking is that it may not send as clear signals as other approaches which are more industry-specific.

When investors look at Australia’s peers, they generally see more overt signs of strategic intent in the space industry, most often in a clear national space strategy or policy. One of the most common questions that I get in the lead up to IAC from international partners, governments and investors is why Australia doesn’t have one. We explain as well as we can – we point to the signs of intent the next level down, in for example the priority areas of the National Reconstruction Fund. However, it is worth considering whether clearer signals can be sent in a coordinated national strategy or policy which could also:

• Articulate national ambition;
• Identify strategic differentiators;
• Align federal, state, and local government policies and efforts;
• Capture coordination and procurement efficiencies; and
• Signal clearer priorities to partners and investors.

This exercise would be particularly useful to align on Australia’s strategic differentiators and articulate how to maximise the benefits of them. What are our strategic differentiators and how are we leveraging them? Is it launch and return? Is it a globally competitive regulatory regime? Is it advanced manufacturing? If there is one thing which is worth aligning on across industry, government and academia, I would start with this.

In times of tight fiscal constraints, it is especially important to consider alternatives which don’t require substantial outlays. Sometimes, the most powerful lever is clear intent: signals, coordination, and a trusted, efficient regulatory system.

Reflection 4 IAC 2025: Our National Launchpad

All of this brings me to IAC 2025.

This is not just a conference. It’s a strategic moment for Australia to:

• Signal to the world that it is open for business;
• Showcase the surprising breadth and depth of Australian capability;
• Elevate space in the national consciousness; and
• Forge new partnerships and investments.

IAC is core to SIAA’s strategy to accelerate the industry.

I must thank our co-hosts —the Australian Space Agency and the NSW Government. They have dedicated substantial time, resources and some of their best people to make IAC a resounding success.

I won’t steal their thunder by listing all their successes, but I did want to introduce the next speakers – two of the hardest-working people I know who are playing key roles in ensuring that the IAC marathon is a resounding success. Please join me in welcoming IAC Director Lisa Vitaris and International Program Co-Chair Dr Annie Handmer.

Thank you.