Export Market Development Grants
Senator KITCHING: Thank you. That's all I have, Chair, on that topic. I don't think I took too long.
CHAIR: We'll let others be the judge of that and we will move on to Senator Van.
Senator VAN: Senator Kitching, I agree with you that women should always go first. Mr Beresford, my questions are about the changes to the Export Market Development Grants. The changes were after some consultation going into the report and then the change with legislation. I've received a lot of correspondence from exporters who are a little bit nervous about it; I think that would be the right way to put it. The minister very kindly had a meeting with them and allayed a lot of those fears. Can you update us on the consultations and on the rules and regulations that, I believe, are going to be included in that?
Mr Beresford : I'll pass the question to Ms Ralston as she is overseeing that piece of work.
Ms Ralston : There are a couple of layers to the approach to the consultations around the next changes to the MDG scheme. We will do some work around opening up consultation very shortly; probably invitations will go out in the next week for conversations around the rules. That will be part of the design of the scheme and carry many of the familiar aspects of the scheme, which are currently embedded in legislation. We'll kick that off in the next week or so and hope to conclude that before Christmas, in the next couple of months. In parallel, we'll also start work on a co-design of some of the actual program guidelines. We will involve exporters, members of industry associations, some of the EMDG consultants and others in designing some of the practical aspects, because that's where there's some room to have some really good innovation about things like the schedules of milestone payments and where we could try to improve the administrative simplicity and cut some of the red tape out of the scheme.
Senator VAN: Between now and the end of the year is quite a short period, as you'd be well aware, given how quickly and, sometimes, how slowly, this year has gone and how it's been mired down by COVID. How are you going to make sure that stakeholders have a really good say in how this shapes up? There are simple things, like the one that I was asked about, about three times today: if they get approval to spend this money at the start and they do one set of paperwork at the beginning, do they then have to submit a second set of paperwork, and is that then audited like it is currently? Also, are parts of it paid if it meets the guidelines, and that's what they put in at the beginning? How are things like that going to work? How are you going to be able to get through enough detail to ensure that you satisfy all these exporters, who we are going to rely on quite heavily over the coming year to recover from this pandemic?
Ms Ralston : Again, there are a couple of layers to how we will approach that. The first point I should make is that, in the review, one of the biggest criticisms of the current scheme from our exporters and people who claim against EMDG was the need for greater simplicity. More than two-thirds of the submissions to the review that was done raised issues around improving simplicity, about making the application process easier and faster, but also about making sure the rules are less complicated. Our overarching goals and design principles for the new scheme are to make it simpler, to reduce red tape for the companies and make it easier to claim, but also to give certainty to people about what they are spending their money on when they're marketing internationally, to make sure they have some understanding of what they'll be entitled to receive before they spend that money. That's why the idea of an upfront approval for a grant is built into the new design.
As for how we'll do that, there are two layers. We've got rules that will be developed that will support the legislation. There's a great deal of interest from stakeholders in seeing those rules soon, because people are curious about how the new scheme will work.
Senator VAN: When will we see those?
Ms Ralston : We're hoping to do that very soon. As I said, we'll probably be starting consultations next week, and they will run—
Senator VAN: But when will we see the rules? I assume the rules will be circulated before the consultation?
Ms Ralston : That's right. There are two layers, as I said. There's the consultation on the rules, and we'll circulate the rules and invite comment. As with the review, we wrote to 5,000 companies, we held roundtables, we held webinars, we held face-to-face meetings with individual companies, and we briefed industry associations and all their membership, so we intend to have a similarly broad engagement plan around those rules.
The second piece, then, is designing some of the practical points that you mentioned, those payment timings and how the payment systems will work. We can do some of those elements in guidelines—we've got a little bit longer to work on that, into the early part of next year. We'll be doing that actively, with members of the export community.
Senator VAN: I really hope that you get this consultation right, because, as I said, I'm getting an awful lot of correspondence from an awful lot of exporters. These are people we are going to need.
Ms Ralston : We understand it's a very popular scheme and a very well loved scheme, and I think various people want to see it improve. This is a great chance to work even harder for those exporters.
Senator VAN: I hope so. I hope I'm congratulating you at next estimates on this.
Ms Ralston : I look forward to it.
