sentences:  The AIGO facility in Western Australia was well-located to work with the existing and planned components of the global network, and already possessed an active gravitational-wave community.The LIGO-Australia plan was approved by LIGO's US funding agency, the National Science Foundation, contingent on the understanding that it involved no increase in LIGO's total budget.The cost of building, operating and staffing the interferometer would have rested entirely with the Australian government.