ACS President Calls for Expansion of Australian Defence Industry

Opening the Australian Computer Society conference at the Hyatt Hotel Canberra this morning, Mr Yohan Ramasundara, ACS President, called for an expansion of Australia's local defence industry. Mr Ramasundara pointed to Austal as Australia's only commercial company with the capability of designing and building warships locally. He suggested that Australia should aim to design and build locally warships on the scale of the Canberra Class LHDs, which were built in Spain and then transported to Melbourne for completion.

Following Mr Ramasundar, Dr Vikram Sharma, CEO of Quintessence Labs in Canberra, mentioned work being undertaken for the Australian Department of Defence on quantum key distribution for cryptography. 

I will be speaking at the conference at 1:15pm, in the security stream, on m-Learning from Canberra for the Indo-Pacific and how this can complement China's Belt and Road Initiative.