Questacon
Parkes, ACT
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Questacon’s twentieth birthday is a time for celebration.
All Australians can take pride in the achievements of our National Science and Technology Centre.
Since it opened in 1988, more than seven million visitors have enjoyed exhibitions and programs in this building.
Another fifteen million around the country have taken part in Questacon’s travelling exhibitions and programs.
Questacon has an illustrious past, but its focus is firmly on the future.
It makes a critical contribution to our innovation effort by getting Australians excited about science and technology.
While Questacon’s message is one I want all Australians to hear, it’s especially important that it reaches our young people.
The number of students doing maths and science is falling.
We have to turn that around.
Our future in a high-tech world depends on it.
Questacon can help by encouraging young people – and not-so-young people – to develop a positive, life long interest in science and technology.
There is no better time to renew our commitment to this goal than in Questacon’s twentieth anniversary year.
The Australian Government is pleased to be helping the celebrations along with $120,000 through the Australia-Japan Foundation for anniversary events.
In July, two Japanese secondary students travelled to Canberra for the Questacon Smart Moves Invention Convention.
We are very grateful to Dr Mamoru Mohri and his staff at Miraikan – Japan’s National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation – for facilitating Japan’s participation in this event.
It is a pleasure to have Dr Mohri with us here this evening.
In September, five communicators from Japanese science museums joined with their counterparts at Questacon in a Science Performers Exchange Workshop.
Japan’s involvement in this event was facilitated by the Director General and staff of the National Museum of Nature and Science, which is represented here this evening by Dr Keiichi Matsuura – welcome, and thank-you.
Meanwhile, my own department is supporting displays and public lectures by Japanese science institutions specialising in Antarctic research, space research and earth-marine research.
Questacon is proof of how important creativity, hands-on experience and collaboration are to science education, and to science itself.
The centre works closely with its corporate sponsors and strategic partners, and they have played a huge part in its success – again, thank-you.
Questacon was born of collaboration between Australia and Japan at the time of this country’s bicentenary.
We are still working together on science two decades later.
In fact, the Australia-Japan Joint Science and Technology Committee had a very successful meeting in Canberra just this week.
Let me therefore conclude by thanking:
• Deputy Minister Toichi Sakata;
• Ambassador of Japan, Takaaki Kojima;
• Ambassador for Science and Technology Cooperation, Seiji Kojima; and
• our many special guests from Japan, for the continuing support and friendship of the Japanese people.
As I said at the beginning, it’s important to honour the past, but even more important to focus on the future.
There is no doubt in my mind that the future will be a great place for Australia and Japan – especially if we build it together.