Canberra will play an important role in the Australian space race, even if the new Australian Space Agency moves elsewhere, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr says.
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However Mr Barr warned any decision not to base the headquarters in the ACT would be a political one.
The agency will be based in Canberra for its first year, but its head - former CSIRO boss Dr Megan Clark - has been tasked with finding a permanent home.
Mr Barr said he'd met Dr Clark twice and provided the Canberra prospectus to her.
While he refused to say what she made of the ACT's pitch, Mr Barr said it was clear Dr Clark was taking a national approach to the development of the Australian space industry.
"The model we’re suggesting will be the hub and spoke approach [that] ensures there are opportunities for all the states and territories who want to participate," Mr Barr said.
"My view is there’s real scope for all jurisdictions to work together on this and this can be an exercise in cooperative federalism rather than competitive federalism and that’s the very strong message I’ve conveyed to Dr Clark and that she has been hearing from other states and territories as well."
Referencing Senator Kim Carr's announcement that a federal Labor government would headquarter the agency in Canberra, Mr Barr said one side of politics had already taken the "common sense approach".
"It will only be a political intervention that will see it go somewhere else but that’s politics, that’s life, you live with those circumstances should they arise," Mr Barr said.
He also said his government would keep investing in the space industry, even if Canberra lost the agency.
“This is a key priority for the territory regardless of where the agency is headquartered, there will still be one in four jobs in the Australian space agency in Canberra," Mr Barr said.
"We will still have the leading research development and testing facilities in the nation, they will still be in Canberra, so we have a very significant role to play over the coming years and decades and the only sensible decision really is to locate the headquarters in Canberra."
Mr Barr made the comments while announcing an extra $250,000 for the Australian National University's National Space Test Facilities at Mount Stromlo.
The money will go into a fund that will allow small-to-medium enterprises to access the centre for space-flight testing.
The government also released a prospectus spruiking Canberra's credentials in the space industry.
ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt said the funding would open up "the world's best equipment down the road" to more businesses.
"We’ve got tens of millions of dollars worth of stuff here, it costs a little bit to operate, SMEs don’t even have that little bit to operate it at the right time, this is going to break that that barrier," Professor Schmidt said.
Professor Schmidt said wherever the space agency ended up, Canberra would still be at the heart of its operations.
"I think we have a unique capability in the southern hemisphere so at some level wherever things go, we’re going to be in the middle of it," he said.
