TasFarmers Matters - Study studies no answer

Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to.

It’s a golden rule of government.

Governments never go out to public consultation or commission reports without first knowing their preferred outcome, which often is busy inactivity.

Call me cynical, but it is true.

Their preferred outcome will always be framed in the question they put to those conducting studies, reviews and community consultation.

The other classic piece of government behaviour when it doesn’t want to do much but to be seen to be doing something is to ‘review the reports’.

This means re-reading the reports that have been previously commissioned that ask the same questions that are being asked now.

Getting dizzy from going around in circles yet?

A classic example is the government’s recent study of King Island’s Port of Grassy’s infrastructure.

This study follows on from numerous other studies, submissions and communications to government of all colours about what is required at Grassy to maximise King Island’s potential and the efficiency of the port.

A key part of this latest study was reviewing the reports.

If there is one issue that unites all of King Island, it is the port and how it needs to be improved.

King Island has been through an enormous amount of consultation, reviews, reports, assessments and opinion seeking only to have the report which was meant to consolidate these into an action plan, only achieving limited scope for improvement and the need for a further study.

And this is because government avoided the obvious, but hard, question, which is what government needs to do to maximise King Island’s economic and social potential.

While some of this extends into infrastructure, there are also the perennial questions around freight routes, ship suitability and port management, including the cost of doing business through the port.

All of these are key elements to the big picture, but given the scope of the most recent study, they weren’t to be seen.

I suspect King Islanders are a little tired of being asked what they need and why.

What King Islanders want to hear is how this is going to be fixed.

It is self-evident what needs to be done – decades of studies, reviews and consultation have shown that.

Some of the key stakeholders on King Island were in primary school when this process first started.

The frustrating element to this is that the longer it takes to develop and implement a plan, the more expensive it gets.

What might have cost $20m in 2008 costs $140m in 2025.

While $20m was certainly a lot of money in 2008, it would have been a lot easier to find than $140m in 2025.

There is absolutely a big cost to doing something to alleviate the issues on King Island.

But there is an even greater cost to not doing something.

About 30 per cent of Tasmania’s high-value cattle herd is on King Island.

It is home to the state’s best beef brand, not to mention the King Island cheese.

King Island is a huge catalyst to the economic activity in the state’s agricultural sector, but it cannot live up to its full potential on a diet of studies, reports, reviews of reports and endless community consultation.

If only government would put as much time, effort and capital into improving access to markets for our farming sector as they do for football stadiums – imagine how good Tasmania would be then.