economics and industry standing committee

ECONOMICS AND INDUSTRY STANDING COMMITTEE

INQUIRY INTO WESTERN AUSTRALIA’S ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP WITH THE REPUBLIC OF INDIA

TRANSCRIPT OF EVIDENCE TAKEN AT PERTH

FRIDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 2020

SESSION ONE

Members

Ms J.J. Shaw (Chair) Dr D.J. Honey

Mr Y. Mubarakai Mr S.J. Price

Mr D.T. Redman __________

Economics and Industry Friday, 11 September 2020 — Session One Page 1

Hearing commenced at 12.06 pm

Mr RICHARD SELLERS Acting Director General, Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation, examined: Mr PETER BALDWIN Commissioner for India, Western Australia Trade Office, Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation, examined: Ms SIMONE SPENCER Acting Deputy Director General, Strategy and International Engagement, Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation, examined: Mr EDMUND O’HALLORAN Acting Director, Economic Analysis, Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation, examined: Mr BRODIE CARR Managing Director, Tourism Western Australia, examined:

The CHAIR: On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for agreeing to appear today to provide evidence in relation to our inquiry into Western Australia’s economic relationship with the Republic of India. My name is Jessica Shaw and I am the Chair of the Economics and Industry Standing Committee. I would like to introduce the other members of the committee. To my right is Deputy Chair Terry Redman, member for Warren–Blackwood, and Yaz Mubarakai, member for Jandakot. To my left is Stephen Price, member for Forrestfield. David Honey, member for Cottesloe, is an apology for today’s meeting. It is important that you understand that any deliberate misleading of this committee may be regarded as a contempt of Parliament. Your evidence is protected by parliamentary privilege. However, this privilege does not apply to anything you might say outside of today’s proceedings. Before we begin with our questions, do you have any questions about your attendance here today?

The WITNESSES: No.

The CHAIR: Would you like to make opening statements?

Mr SELLERS: Not me, personally, but others have been here a few times and we have had some follow‐up questions. Happy to get straight into the questions, Chair.

The CHAIR: Sure. We will begin our questioning today on tourism matters and then we will move on to broader strategic matters. Mr Carr, we have not had much in the way of evidence on tourism‐related matters. We really do want to have a good discussion on how Tourism WA in particular sees the opportunities for bilateral trade and tourism between Western Australia and India and then get a good understanding of the sorts of initiatives and programs that Tourism WA has been pursuing.

Mr CARR: Cool. Do you just want me to —

The CHAIR: Yes, if you could give us an overview, that would be fantastic.


Mr CARR: Yes, great. It is a great opportunity with India for us, and one of our fastest growing markets. It is poorly serviced from an aviation perspective with no direct flights. So we target mostly working through the likes of Singapore Airlines and other partners to attract people to go with a one stop to WA. We had been working quite hard on the direct aviation route pre‐COVID. Indian airlines are quite challenging airlines to work with. They are not as mature as your Singapore Airlines and western world airlines. Having said that, Singapore Airlines owns a good share of Vistara, which is probably our lead target airline that we are going after. Air India was up for sale, or in chapter 11 or one of those things, and Jet Airways as well has grounded its fleet. It has been quite challenging from an aviation perspective to get the direct route. The direct routes obviously offer us not only tourism benefits but whole economic benefits of trade, students and all that kind of stuff.

[12.10 pm]

We predominantly focus in India on building the awareness of Western Australia through different means. We have a direct employee over there through the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation who has been on board with us for a little over 18 months.

Mr BALDWIN: At least.

Mr CARR: His focus is building that awareness mostly through trade training and trade initiatives. When I say trade, it is things like working with the equivalent here of a Flight Centre, for example, so working through those equivalent trade partners in India to build the awareness for Western Australia so that when you walk into a travel agent and you go, “I want to go to Australia” they go, “We’d like you to go to Western Australia. We know a lot about Western Australia.” There is a program called the Aussie Specialist Program, which Tourism Australia runs, but they have a specialist Western Australian element to that. He spends a lot of his time on trade training and building the awareness, and then also spends a lot of his time working on opportunities for things like MICE business, which is a really growing segment for us coming out of India and out of COVID will probably lead—international education will do well as well I think, but MICE will be a really good opportunity for us.

The CHAIR: So what is MICE, sorry?

Mr CARR: MICE, sorry —

The CHAIR: I am assuming it is not rodents!

Mr CARR: No, we do not want rodents. MICE is your meetings, incentives, conferences and events; that is what MICE stands for. You might have a pharmaceutical company and they award their top salespeople to go on an event somewhere, and they do that in Western Australia, or it could be a pharmaceutical group that is doing some PD training or something and they choose to come to Western Australia and they invite all the special pharmacists from around India to come. There could be a conference here on stuff where we have strong trade relationships on innovation or something where there is a big trade event and they come for a trade event. We see those as really good opportunities for us, especially in the incentives space. Ratul, who runs that office for us over there, is already working hard on that. It is quite challenging—if I just keep going and you tell me if I am giving you too much or I am not entertaining enough.

Ratul has been working really, really hard during COVID to make sure that we are well established on the back of that. What is really important, not just in India—it is in India, but this is relevant to all of our international markets—is making sure that our relationships are maintained with aviation partners and with trade partners. Aviation and trade partners are the key for us when we come back. If we can come back with a direct route and if we can come back with strong trade support, they will put the people on the plane to come here. What is particularly challenging globally from


an aviation perspective, even in Australia, is actually having people to maintain that relationship and dialogue with. Take Qantas as an example. I know it is not India, but it will give you a sense of context. When COVID hit here, Qantas laid off all of their network planners except for one person. One guy was working one day a week for the whole global network of Qantas. We had to try and force our way to the top of the conversation. It is the same in India, it is the same in Singapore, it is the same everywhere in the world, that they have got a lot of people who have been stood down as they try to minimise their costs. Making sure we maintain a relationship with them, as people are let go, is a challenge for us. That is one of Ratul’s main focuses over there, and MICE business and building that trade and keeping that trade partnership and relationship going.

The CHAIR: That being the case, though, would it not be an ideal opportunity to create the demand as well by broader marketing strategies? If the trade aspect of it is challenged, there would be a lot of—much as there is here—pent‐up energy and enthusiasm to go somewhere as soon as the borders permit.

Mr CARR: We do some.

The CHAIR: Could you give us an idea of what sort of broader marketing strategies you undertake and how you resource that?

Mr CARR: Yes, sure. I will give you broader ones pre‐COVID and I will give you COVID ones.

The CHAIR: Sure. That would be fabulous.

Mr CARR: During COVID now, internationally, we are only doing demand‐side marketing in social and digital, and a little bit of PR. We are not doing any mainstream media; we are not doing any big trade partnerships. We are not doing any of those globally, not even outside of Western Australia on the east coast.

The CHAIR: Why is that?

Mr CARR: Because of the border situation and promoting “come to Western Australia” when we are not open. We do not do any of that outside of WA at the moment. Obviously, we are focused on our Wander Out Yonder stuff. We have a campaign globally running which is called Adventure Awaits. You might have seen it in Western Australia. It only ran really quickly because our boundaries opened up really fast and we went with Wander Out Yonder. Adventure Awaits is live in all of our out‐of‐WA markets, including India. It is in social, digital, and some PR. I say “some PR” because not all markets are active in PR at the moment, but there is still a lot that want content, like for the lift‐out in the local paper or whatever—where to go when things get better. We service them with a lot of key assets, imagery, text, things to do, top 10 things, stuff like that. That is what is happening now in India and everywhere outside of WA.

Pre‐COVID, though, we had a number of really good initiatives in India. Some obviously on that trade‐side, building the training and stuff like that. Then the other things were things like we took Adam Gilchrist over to India for a big media launch and to drive awareness for Western Australia. He was there and the Premier was there as well. They did a lot of things together, and Peter was there. I was not there myself. But cricket, obviously, in India is bigger than politics in a lot of ways.

The CHAIR: Understandably!

Mr CARR: Adam was huge for us. We had to make sure that we balanced the attention between the Premier and Adam because most of the Indians really all want to see Adam Gilchrist! We do some stuff. We have done some stuff with Adam there, but we also do stuff through co‐op marketing with trade. We do not do it in India—because of the maturity of the market and the size of the market—a lot of mainstream media. We simply cannot afford it and we will not get cut‐through. Most of it is


trying to grab people in that bottom part of the funnel when we know they are looking to come to Australia or they are looking to go on a holiday, to grab them there. They are already warmed‐up people; they have a high desire to travel, so we try to grab them at the bottom of the funnel, mainly through cooperative marketing deals.

The CHAIR: I am assuming, though, that there is a national effort aimed at getting an interest in Australia as a first point of contact. How do you feed into that? How are you working with the national —

Mr CARR: Tourism Australia.

The CHAIR: — with Tourism Australia, and what are other states doing? How does Western Australia’s effort compare to what other states are doing as well?

Mr CARR: I will do the other states first. The smaller states do not have much of a representation there, but Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, for example, are our main competitors. New South Wales does not actually have much of a presence because they just “hero” themselves off the harbour bridge and they do not think they have to do much. A lot of people want to go to Sydney. They recognise it as the capital, even though we know it is not.

[12.20 pm]

But Victoria and Queensland are very strong and very active in India. They all employ the same philosophy as us; they focus on trade partnerships, co‐op partnerships. They do not do the big mainstream media pieces. Generally, in most markets, we leave that hero stuff to Tourism Australia. For example, Tourism Australia normally pick a couple of key markets that they will spend most of their money on. They did the big hero piece in the US with Dundee II. I do not know if you saw Dundee II but it was a “pretend that the movie was happening in Australia, go to the set”. Last year, at Christmastime, they did a big piece with Kylie Minogue pretending to be in Buckingham Palace just before the Queen’s speech. It had really good features of the quokka in it. They focus on a couple of markets and they go big on those markets for one year and then they move on to another. They have not gone particularly big in India as a key market for them. They focus mainly on the US, Europe and China, and growing China for them.

The CHAIR: Obviously, the Varghese report has come out and has said that international education and tourism should be the priority focus for the federal government in terms of its efforts to promote the bilateral trading relationship. Do you think that may prompt the federal government to perhaps put a bit more resource into targeting the Indian tourism market?

Mr CARR: I hope so. I do not know if I can really answer that question. I hope they do. The relationship between international education and students and tourism is a really good point and a really strong point. When we have strong student growth from any market into WA, we also get strong visiting friends and relatives, which we call VFR. So if Johnny comes down—I do not know if I can speak like that—and he is at university or school here, normally his parents come and visit a couple of times a year. Johnny comes and then Jill comes next and the relatives and stuff like that. There is definitely a good relationship and partnership between education and tourism. To that point, I hope the federal government does spend a lot of money on promoting it within India. It would be great.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: Mr Carr, just a couple of questions with regard to this initiative with having a tool on the ground in India, trying to enhance and propel the state’s interest in terms of educating and providing the intel of Western Australia being a destination point. We all know that most of the Indian tourists tend to use the east coast as a 10 or 15‐year holiday and coming across to Western Australia is a novelty for them. How do we measure the work on changing that approach? Is there


a way that Tourism WA measures its strategy in terms of statistics and how that has really improved rather than just being a conduit of providing information but really there is no tangibility towards the outcome of saying, “Well, in 2018–19, we had, say, 30 000 visitors go to the east coast, and out of the 30 000, we have now extracted a further 2 000 who would never have come to WA who have now been able to come because of these new strategies?” Is there a mechanism and do you have any examples within the last 18 months where these strategies have provided results in terms of tangible outcomes?

Mr CARR: Yes, I do. Over the last five years, we have had double‐digit growth in visitors from India. That is the quick answer.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: That is tourism visitors?

Mr CARR: Tourism visitors, yes.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: Is it tourism based on the fact that because Western Australia is also seeing the Indian diaspora double as well from 2011 to 2016? Is tourism reflecting that the visitors are their brothers and sisters and cousins and aunties and uncles and mums and dads, or are these people who have never visited Western Australia and are actually coming to Western Australia either from the east coast or are they coming to Western Australia and then travelling to the east coast? Is there any way for you to break that down to say these numbers have doubled because of what exactly?

Mr CARR: I will give you a broad range and home in on a couple of things and, hopefully, that answers your question. We measure performance for us at the top level on visitor numbers, length of stay and share of market and spend. If we take India, for example, we will look at visitor growth numbers but we will look at spend numbers, length of stay numbers and, finally, we look at the share of the total pool. We look at our share and if we grow that share from a whole of Australia. This research is done by Tourism Australia through Tourism Research Australia. When you land at the airport, you get that landing card and you tick the landing card and you say, “I’m coming for this reason or for that reason.” That is those numbers. Your point of entry is where you are registered, if you know what I mean. If you fly to Sydney and then you fly here, your point of entry is where you are captured.

Then we capture spend. They capture spend by going to the airport and actually talking to people at the airport, doing surveys and asking how long they stayed for and how much they spent. That is how that research is pulled together. The most important thing is to look at spend. We look at spend a lot and share of target market. You can have a low yielding visitor and you can have a high yielding visitor. We generally try to target the high yielding visitor. Why do we try to target the high yielding visitor? Because Western Australia is not expensive but it costs more to come here and it costs more to experience Western Australia. If you want to come here and go up to Exmouth and Broome and Kununurra and stuff like that, it is a more expensive destination. It is better value for money, I think.

Ms SPENCER: You are not biased!

Mr CARR: No, I am not biased!

We target those high‐value travellers and those high‐value markets. In India, for example, we are trying to target the higher value Indian traveller, and there are a lot of them.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: Again, with regard to the first part, the point of entry, in terms of those statistics, what picture is Tourism WA seeing with regard to these visitors? Are they purely coming to Western Australia for tourism purposes, to see family and friends? What is the breakdown of that? Could you broaden that narrative a bit more for us?


Mr CARR: I do not have the stats on the top of my head. I can probably look them up quickly on my phone because we have it all.

The CHAIR: You could take it on notice.

Mr CARR: Yes.

The CHAIR: That would be very helpful.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: If you could, please.

Mr BALDWIN: I think visiting friends and relatives is the majority of Indian visitors. From memory, I think it is around 60 per cent.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: The committee would still like some statistics on that so we can get an idea as to what is the breakdown in terms of the matrix of the visitors coming to Western Australia. From our perspective, we are trying to get an idea of that. That would be valuable to the committee in our recommendations.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: You talked about the data that is actually captured—that is, the numbers that come in, the time they are here and their spend et cetera. The profile of that for, in the first instance, international travellers into Western Australia, is that different from other states? In other words, if we just looked at the number of people—I think the spend is 25 per cent and other states are 34, 35 per cent, New South Wales and Victoria, of international as part of their total tourism spend in their states. In terms of the numbers, the spend and time here, is the profile of those visitors who come to WA internationally different from other states? Is there any distinction?

Mr CARR: Not really. The only big difference is that China makes up a really large portion of east coast tourism. The rest of the world is quite evenly spread amongst the states and the type of traveller and their spending habits and all that kind of stuff is quite evenly spread. It is the same across all the states, except the only big difference is on the east coast, about 50 per cent of their international market is Chinese.

[12.30 pm]

When you saw COVID hit and the China market drop straightaway, for us in WA, yes, it impacted us, but not hugely because they are not 50 per cent of our market. That is the big difference. Generally speaking, the Chinese are at the top end of your value. They are spending more than most other markets.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: When you said we had double‐digit growth in the Indian market, what measure is that against? Is that against the total spend here or numbers?

Mr CARR: That was against visitor arrivals and spend. We measure it quarterly, so it is a rolling 12‐month forecast. It is quite easy to give you that data.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Pre‐COVID, the international component of the Western Australian tourism market was less than 25 per cent of our total tourism market—the 2018–19 data is what I am reading here. What proportion of the international market is the Indian market, and do we have a target of what we want to achieve out of that?

Mr CARR: Yes. We have targets. I just want to make sure I understood your comment correctly.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: The data I have here is for the 2018–19 Western Australian tourism sector. International visitors account for less than a quarter of the total direct tourism GVA; in comparison, other states were 34 per cent for New South Wales and Victoria, so they have a higher international component of their total tourism spend, I am assuming.

Mr CARR: Yes, and that will be from the Chinese. That is the difference there.


Mr D.T. REDMAN: I am interested in your comments around the Indian component of that for us and what capacity it has. Do you have a target of where you want to get that to? If it has double‐digit growth, it sounds like it is going to be lucrative, but does that play out in spend and people travelling up north or just coming into Perth?

Mr CARR: We set targets for all of our key markets every year and an overall target. I do not know the Indian target off the top of my head.

The CHAIR: Could you take that on notice for us, please?

Mr CARR: Yes.

The CHAIR: That will be great, thank you.

Mr CARR: If I can give you it pre‐COVID, because post‐COVID it is —

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Messy?

Mr CARR: It is complicated. I think if you wanted to do a comparative analysis, it is better to look at pre‐COVID stuff so you can actually get trends and stuff like that. As of now, we do not know when it will be back or how it will come back. We can take that one on notice. Is it minister? Is that how I refer to you?

The CHAIR: Member.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: Member.

The CHAIR: One step at a time!

Mr CARR: We will take yours on notice as well.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: I am still just a member.

Mr CARR: I am still learning—a bit presumptuous, maybe. Member, I do not think I answered the second part of your question.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Which is about the likely growth, and I guess take it for the Indian component of the international market in Western Australia.

Mr CARR: Yes. I will share those targets on notice. The key thing for us is trying to get the direct aviation access, because when you get the direct aviation access, you get a definite step change—you will go from there to there. You might be trending like that, but you actually will do a step. The direct access is the key. The western gateway—look, Perth is the obvious choice when you fly to Australia. It is the obvious route to go, right, from India through Perth and then disperse around WA or then go over east. It is the obvious direct route and one that we have been pushing really hard.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: Mr Carr, sometimes I feel there is more to be done here than actually gain momentum in the country itself. Having a presence is great, but the question I would like to ask Mr Carr is: in Western Australia, as part of Tourism WA, if you just focus on the subcontinent with India and China in terms of its population and market share, and the other Asian countries and the visitors to Western Australia, does Tourism WA have a team around identifying those celebrities that do visit? I am going to share some examples with you as to how you can leverage this, because I do know that Tourism WA has done a great job in the last couple of years with the whole quokka thing and now the new Wander out Yonder campaign. It has been fabulous; it has been really great. The point I am trying to make here is that we have got a lot of these celebrities—you know, you have got movie stars that have actually visited Perth; we have had politicians visit Perth. For example, we had one of the biggest Bollywood stars perform recently at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre and there were about 3 000 people there—it sold out. He had three shows. We could have leveraged his marketing capabilities to advertise Perth. He is one such movie star who has come to


Perth. The other one who I had the pleasure of meeting last year is a politician; his name is Dr Shashi Tharoor. He has about seven million followers. He is a highly recognised individual in India. He has a massive fan following. He was here for the Jaipur Literature Festival in Mandurah; it is one of the largest literature festivals in the world, and he was here. I had a chance to meet him and he wanted to see and hear more about Western Australia, and there was just absolutely no presence from any aspect of a strategic point from Tourism WA. What I am trying to basically understand is: does Tourism WA have a strategy in Western Australia where they look for these big identities that visit Western Australia and how we can leverage that presence of theirs to, I guess, propel and advertise how great their visit has been to the state? I surely felt that that was a big chance that was missing.

Mr CARR: Only if we know about it. Generally speaking, we are not out there looking for celebrities who are here from overseas, who are already here in WA, but if we know about it, then we will try and leverage it.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: How would you like to be notified? How can, I guess, Western Australians inform Tourism WA about certain main events?

Mr CARR: I guess through the Indian network or if the chamber of commerce or something lets us know. We get that quite often through the Chinese Chamber of Commerce or through the Chinese—it is not an embassy; it is a consul. We get notified from them if someone is here and we can help facilitate famils. That is generally what we try and do if an ambassador or someone is coming—we try and give them that experience that they can then talk about naturally.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: Am I to understand that we do approach consulates, from your perspective, to seek —

Mr CARR: Generally, they approach us.

The CHAIR: Have you targeted celebrities from other countries and asked them to come here, and then get them to pop over to Rotto and have a quokka selfie? In other markets, do you target high‐value actors in America?

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Nigella Lawson?

The CHAIR: Or Chris Hemsworth or Roger Federer—there is any number of high‐profile individuals. Do you do that from high‐profile individuals from other countries and would you consider doing that in India?

Mr CARR: Yes, we do that. It is case by case. We have a limited budget and all that kind of stuff has to come into it. Like Chris Hemsworth, Matt Damon, they came to WA.

The CHAIR: Was that at the state’s invitation? Was there a proactive outreach to identify somebody who would be popular and say, “Hey, have you ever thought about coming to WA? Here’s a bit of an incentive.”?

Mr CARR: That one was done through Tourism Australia. Chris Hemsworth is an existing ambassador for Tourism Australia, so through our relationship with Tourism Australia we just kept on writing to them until they delivered us Chris Hemsworth and Matt Damon. We just built a relationship with them to say, “Look, we really want them to come, and if they come we can help with some of the on‐ground experience.”

Mr SELLERS: To add a bit of value for members, even in the six months I have been here, we have targeted individuals we thought would have reach in certain events or certain aspects of what Tourism are doing. Quite often, you end up in a commercial negotiation and the state cannot meet the outcome of that, so it is very much a case by case one. Brodie and I lived one of those where we


thought we were going to have a really good outcome, right up until the eleventh hour, but a very high level celebrity fell away because it suddenly became too expensive.

[12.40 pm]

So it is a limited budget, we do it on a case by case—but to really come back to your question, you know, if a Bollywood star or something like that was over that was tying in at the same time that the team was doing a deal with the Indian airlines, we would be very much open to that, and that is a discussion we would have with the consul or through Peter’s office at the time. But it has to be, by nature, case by case, otherwise it gets overwhelmed for the way the budget sits, but it is a good strategy.

Mr CARR: If I can, we have an ambassador and influencer strategy with a budget against it.

The CHAIR: Is India in that?

Mr CARR: Everyone is in that. It is just an overarching strategy; it is not a market‐specific strategy, so it is open to any ambassador or influencer. But there is a limit to it.

Mr S.J. PRICE: Mr Carr, in regards to, I suppose, the opportunities that are out there globally for international tourists to come to Western Australia, where does India sit within a global range of targets? Is it in the top two or the top 10? Especially when you are seeking out high‐yielding travellers, because we have heard quite a bit of evidence over a broad range of opportunities in India, some saying there is a lot of opportunity but we have to be a bit more targeted in how we approach that, and others saying it is almost too difficult, do not worry about it, go and look somewhere else.

Mr CARR: It is not too difficult. Look, India sits in our top 10 of key markets. It probably would not be our first market. Specifically, until we get that direct route, it will struggle to get into our top five, as an example, but it is in our top 10, for sure. In India, you just have to be really smart about how you spend your money and where you target your spend, like, from what ports do we link in with Singapore Airlines, where we know they fly in, so it is an easy route for them to get from Mumbai or Delhi or wherever to Singapore and then down, you know. You just have to be pretty targeted in the audience you are going after, because if you go too wide in India, we just will not have enough money. It is a huge population and you would just be drowned with all the other noise out there. So that is why we spend a lot of—and every market is different, in terms of where they are on the maturity scale. Indians booking travel predominantly book travel through an existing shop. They do online, but they do online for their domestic bookings. Peter, you would probably be able to speak to this as well, but going out of country, they use a travel agent. That is why most of our spend is with that travel agent piece, so that when I walk in and want to go to Australia, you are educated and you tell me that “I know a lot about Western Australia, you should go there as part of your journey.” Would you agree that most Indians book that way?

Mr BALDWIN: Yes, no, absolutely, and I actually had a conversation with Ratul, our tourism guy over there, the other day, and the program that Brodie talked about, about the Aussie specialist program that is done online, Ratul spent a lot of time giving away gift vouchers for travel agents who had completed that course. He told me that Western Australia had moved up from ranking number six of the Australian states to number four, and that is just a reflection of building that awareness amongst those travel agents.

Mr CARR: It is a super key part of when you are building a market from the beginning. The people that are selling it have to know the destination, so you either do that through in‐person training, or bringing them out here, and obviously we cannot bring all the Indian travel agents out here, but that is a real key part of it. If they do not know about your market, they cannot sell it.


Mr S.J. PRICE: That makes perfect sense. Some of the other evidence and feedback that we have received is that some of our delegations that we have sent over to India have been too broad and not focused on whether it be a particular industry or part of an industry, or something like that. But certainly it is good to hear you say that it is about identifying sort of key markets and targeting a particular part of that.

Mr CARR: Yes. Otherwise you would just get lost in India. In most countries, we do not have the spend. We are not Coca‐Cola where we have a mass amount, or even Tourism Australia. You have to leverage off Tourism Australia. We know when Tourism Australia are doing a big hero piece or something, or doing something. We then quickly adapt and tack on to the back of stuff with the bottom of the funnel, and we have done that in India. We do it in all markets.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: One quick question before the Chair presses on. There are a number of programs that help to support the tourism operators here for the Asian market; there are Asia‐ready programs. How well are we set up for the Indian market and is there a need to have similar programs for the Indian market here?

Mr CARR: They already exist.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: They already exist, do they?

Mr CARR: Yes.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Okay. Just give us some understanding of the cultural gaps and what sort of things are significant to the Indian market? I am very aware of the Asian market.

Mr CARR: In some of our specific Indian training like we will do for hotels or something, it is making sure they are India‐ready and knowing what the Indian needs are. I am trying to remember what a couple of those specifics are, like certain things in the room that they might want, or certain ways they behave, or their different religions and cultures and so forth and how you need to be respectful of that. So there is an India‐specific program with either Tourism Council WA or through ATEC. They are out there; they are for Japan, India, China.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Post‐COVID, do you expect there to be much travel sensitivity, even if the disease is kind of sorted? A lot of people I discuss with say, “I’m not going to travel too much anymore.” Are you getting any sense of that in the international market?

Mr CARR: Yes, I am excited to talk about this. It is a broad question, member. Look, I could talk about this for probably hours, but I will try and do some succinct messages for you. Australia as a whole is a really highly desired destination because it is viewed as safe. The number one thing that travellers now want is a safe destination to travel to. Australia is remarkably high on that metric. Western Australia is really high on space and vastness and isolation. We are the most isolated place in the world. People are not attracted to cities like they were before; they want to have a bit of space. They want to be on the beach by themselves. They do not want to be on Bondi and jammed in; they are not looking for that anymore. So Australia and Western Australia are really desirable destinations, especially because of that first point—safe—and Western Australia, from that vast, isolated point of view. We, with Tourism Australia, have a project called project green light. It sounds a bit like something really secretive, but it is not. We call it project green light because when a market becomes green lit, then we will—remember I was talking about social, digital and PR, and that is it, but when do we start to go and do the other marketing in that market? And that is when that market becomes green lit for us.

In project green light, we are working with Tourism Australia, and that covers 20 markets. India is one of them, but it covers 20, whereas we only have 10 or 12 key markets, and other ones are not key, but they do 20, which is good for us. It looks at things like: Are borders open? Are COVID cases


rising or falling? Are COVID deaths rising or falling? How is consumer sentiment in that market to travel in the next three months, six months, nine months, 12 months?

[12.50 pm]

They go and do the research in market and then it is done every month or two weeks, depending on the market, so we can actually see trends on when we can see if a market is going to open or not. It looks at things like the forward capacity of airlines. We go into the global distribution system for airlines—well, we do not; Tourism Australia would do it—where they go in and look at: are the number of flights to Australia going to increase or decrease in the next six months? Because airlines, if they are feeling positive, they will start to put the routes back for sale. It looks at a whole number of these factors and then it sort of ladders up into a dashboard that says if the market is red, green or orange. Unfortunately, most of them are pretty much red at the moment.

The other thing that we need to consider is the lead time in market for booking to start that marketing. For example, Europe lead time is 12 months; India is in that three to six months; Singapore is less than a month, sometimes. They could be a week, because it is just that weekend escape. So you need to know that intel so that you know when to start your marketing with those trade partnerships and so forth. If we could see India opening, we need to be ready for that market six months before it actually opens.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: Can I just jump in there?

The CHAIR: We really need to move on because we have only got an hour left.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: I am going to ask you to just take some questions on notice, it is really to do with —

Mr CARR: It depends.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: If you could, that would be great, because we are getting the hurry‐up from the chair.

Mr CARR: Sure, member.

The CHAIR: We can send questions on notice. I am sorry to chair so militantly. Thank you very much, but I am conscious that there is a whole heap of stuff we need to cover with JTSI today.

Mr CARR: Thank you for your passion for tourism. It is really great.

The CHAIR: Thank you very much for being so open with us. We appreciate it.

Mr CARR: We hope you are all wandering out yonder as much as you can.

The CHAIR: When we can get away from this place!

Mr D.T. REDMAN: All the very best for your future.

Mr CARR: Thank you. I have resigned, so I am leaving—when are we leaving, Richard?—in the next little bit of time. Heading back to France with my wife.

The CHAIR: All the very best for you.

Mr CARR: It is really sad days. I am disappointed that I am going to be leaving, because I have absolutely loved the job and enjoyed it so much and am really passionate about Western Australia.

The CHAIR: Thank you very much.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: We wish you and your family all the best.

Mr CARR: Thank you. Can I —

The CHAIR: Yes, you are dismissed!


[Mr Carr left the hearing.]

The CHAIR: I hate to be such a militant chair, but, you know, that is the job.

What I would like to do is broaden the conversation out a bit. We covered tourism, so we will broaden the conversation out. I would like to, I suppose, pick up on the COVID theme, because obviously an awful lot has changed in the last few months and the outlook across a whole range of sectors has changed and there has been an incredible amount of work going on in government in terms of a COVID response. A lot of it has been quite internally focused on stimulating infrastructure projects. That is absolutely fabulous work but, obviously, as part of these terms of reference, we are very interested to understand the implications for trade. So, perhaps, Mr Sellers, you would not mind giving us a bit of an overview of how you see COVID’s impacts and what it might mean for our relationship with India.

Mr SELLERS: Certainly. Thanks, chair. What I might just focus my remarks around is one aspect of it in terms of air freight and some of the things that we are seeing in airlines, which, while India is a portion of that, it is equally reflective across other markets as well, and then pass over to Simone. Simone and I have been working on the industry recovery stream and I would ask Simone to focus around the supply chain issues in industry that would be of interest around India as well.

Just in terms of ourselves in Western Australia, and air freight, a lot of the air freight that we had, whether it was going to India or others, was in the belly of passenger planes. There were very limited cargo flights going out of Perth. So one of the first noticeable impacts was that as those passenger airplanes were removed from those routes, the opportunity to ship produce and other goods was markedly affected—basically, an overnight stop for some. The federal government and state government combined to get some dedicated freight activity, initially to Singapore and then a little more beyond that, but if you look at the COVID effect, that is probably for high‐end perishable short shelf life ag products—fish, lobsters and others. It is one of our key aspects coming out of COVID now.

Peter can tell us what portion of that sort of stuff might go to India now, but the chance of even growing what was going there pre‐COVID into post‐COVID has some changes that will affect the whole airline industry. There are fleets of older planes being parked up, some of them in places where you would guess they are unlikely to come back into the patterns, and then there are more modern planes that, unless the top‐end traveller is there—and I am still just talking about those that have cargo in the belly—are going to stay parked until the cost structures and the quantity of people warrant them perhaps to come back into service. So, they are, for example, maybe the A380s; that is me speculating, but they turned out to be a more expensive plane than some of the others they were flying.

So if you put that in and then look at the routes that we have got and the airlines that are still functional and how they might plan their next range of step‐change into picking up flight patterns to India and others, the available planes that are left after you do that triage of what has been parked up and what is viable to fly means that there has to be an investment in some of those cheaper, more size‐right planes that still can be a wide body, like a Dreamliner, but it is just going to have a lag effect. It does not matter whether it is India or somewhere else, that effect is going to be one that we have to manage carefully, plan around and try to add the total value to an opportunity for a flight route that picks up the cargo, business travel, tourism—all the things that make up the economics around that trip. We are close to the airport and to industry through Brodie, through the Department of Transport, through direct discussions that were occurring through COVID and now in this stage of living with COVID, and what the recovery might look like, with the airport trying to


talk through that and how government and the airport can plan a few scenarios to get us into those routes in a meaningful way.

The CHAIR: I know this is incredibly difficult, and it is literally looking into a crystal ball, but what sort of time horizons are you working over as you do this scenario planning?

Mr SELLERS: So, it is probably best explained as you are running through scenarios about what you might need to have done in advance of a likely opening more than, at this stage, because you just cannot start planning, clearly, as much, for when it is open. For example, the discussions that we are having with the airline industry, with the airport, with DPIRD and others is: what might you need to do if you thought an international border was going to open in a year’s time or in a year and a half or two years or six months—what things do you need to have in place to be able to service that particular market when it opens? You step back and start to plan on, if scenario A is 10 months out, you need to have done this, and nine months out you need—that is the sort of planning that is being worked up.

The CHAIR: How is that being resourced? How is the government resourcing that sort of planning?

Mr SELLERS: It is not just the government that is doing it; it is business interests for the airport and business interests for, you know, big industrial groups. The broad answer is it is being done from within existing resources in government being shifted on to that, because there are other things in government that are either a lower priority or have stalled because of COVID. I am not trying to talk on behalf of the airport, but I know that the airport would put, as a priority, resources to do this ahead of some of the other things that they are doing because the amount of activity for the airport right now is at a level that they would not want to see into the future, where they are probably spending more money than they would like in their business model. So there are other drivers in there.

The CHAIR: Is JTSI the lead agency in the state government doing this sort of scenario planning?

Mr SELLERS: For agricultural products, we work with DPIRD, but it is a joint operation. Pre‐COVID, there was an existing aviation task force—when I was running the Department of Transport, we hosted it—that had DPIRD and it had JTSI. So there are structures where it is sitting within and then there are the structures that are emerging as part of recovery. For just planning on Perth Airport, that would be JTSI being the lead, working with Perth Airport and drawing in other expertise. For the broad, we would hope to use that group that was already existing within the Department of Transport to actually focus on those areas.

[1.00 pm]

The CHAIR: Okay. Are sectoral plans being worked out around commodities? How is the planning for COVID recovery in terms of trade being undertaken? Is the department of mines and petroleum, for example, looking after the outlook for LNG export?

Mr SELLERS: You are right. That is a good question and I will pass it over to Simone in a moment. But just on mines and oil and gas and petroleum, they are probably two good examples of things that already had quite a bit of machinery around them pre‐COVID that has just stepped up a level. So for mines, there were already structures, processes, interactions to continue to grow to work with those parts of the sector that were not as, I will just say, lucky, for want of a better term, in terms of the iron ore price staying up, and others. Within mines, there is a continuum of those that were hit very hard and that commodity is not doing as well compared to iron ore, which has probably had its best year in terms of outcome that it has ever had, but mines would be looking after that and we would help, and on the big projects, JTSI and mines work together.


The CHAIR: So, critical minerals, for example: I mean, that is a real prospective pathway for West Australian exports into the Indian market. We are just sort of trying to get a sense of how do we reinvigorate or how do we prepare, when things do pick up, to get straight back into that Indian market and really keep pushing. If you think about it, it is almost like we are drawing a line under a point in economic development and trade at the moment. When we start to recover from COVID, how are we making sure that we are ready to go—we are in India and doing everything we can to push West Australian exports out?

Mr SELLERS: There was a lot in that statement.

The CHAIR: Yes.

Mr SELLERS: Yes. Just to unpack it a touch, hydrogen, cathode, active battery materials, lithium, advanced manufacture—all the strategies, and a lot of them have already been announced, cover aspects of what you were just talking to. The critical minerals are a really good example. Obviously—sorry, you might not know; I have had a fair history in that—travelled a lot, been to India several times dealing with various metal‐related issues. The critical metals’ component would be targeted through the areas where you know that the investment can potentially come from, where there are partnerships. But there is structure around those now. The ones that are having the step‐change moment because of COVID are the acceleration of the hydrogen strategy, acceleration of some industrial land and acceleration of the things that incentivise.

If we are going to have a critical metal process here, we have done decades of work on the geology. Exploration incentive has been cranked up, so the things that generate the projects are going really well. Then how do you sell that opportunity to the world, India and others—DMIRS, the mines—and us to work directly on that? There are specific strategies that do have country‐related targets, and this is probably the opportunity for Simone to lead us through a little bit of that, but it does answer some of your questions, Chair.

The CHAIR: Sure. Thank you.

Ms SPENCER: It is a very interesting question in a COVID context because I guess one of the things I would note is that we are really trying to be very sensitive about the fact that Western Australia is in quite a unique position in terms of how we have been able to manage the pandemic, and so traditionally, obviously, in a trade and investment environment, missions out; delegations in; lots of face‐to‐face engagement. We have increasingly pivoted to be able to do a lot of that virtually, but we are also mindful of the fact that I am sitting next to my commissioner for India, which is not a usual situation, and my staff in India are actually working from home at the moment, and so there is a need to, in whatever engagement we embark on into the future, be really sensitive to the fact that we need to be aware of the conditions of the market in which we are engaging, so we are trying to actually determine what is the most sensitive way to do that now. Some markets are absolutely up for virtual missions and delegations. We have just commenced a program in London Tech Week—a whole week of engagement that people can do online. But different markets—we cannot assume it will be one size fits all.

Certainly, with the Indian community, one of the things that we have done during COVID is make sure that the relationships with the community here are very strong. As you would have been aware, initially there was some commentary made at the federal level, for example, around Indian students that they should return home, and I think that had a very swift reaction from the Indian government. Modi contacted Prime Minister Morrison and suggested that was not necessarily helpful messaging. So we actually have actively reached out and worked with the Indian Society of WA and the consul here just to provide some reassurance that Indian students are guests in Western Australia and that we will do as much as we can to support them. So, I guess from a trade and investment perspective,


we have sought to very much foster the relationship with the diaspora in our community here, but also, where possible, extend those thoughts and wishes, particularly around the health aspects of the pandemic, to our trading partners offshore.

Interestingly, though, what we are seeing is the state’s response to COVID has been to re‐evaluate: how do we want to participate in those supply chains, and particularly the value chain of those industries that we have done historically very well in? So, one of the things you will see in the recovery plan is a focus on not just, for example, selling the mineral that we dig out of the ground overseas, but how can we actually be involved in the advanced manufacturing or value‐add of that product. Most of our trading partners are thinking exactly the same.

When we look at what is in the economic recovery plans of those countries, it is very much about how can we bring that value to our country; how can we bring that supply chain closer to home. So there are now two imperatives around near‐basing your supply chain. One is not just because it provides local jobs and growth to the local economy, but also there is now that security component to it. I guess, it is going to be a really interesting discussion, because, obviously, we are seeking investment from other countries into our local jobs, local capability and manufacturing, and other countries are rightly seeking our investment into their local jobs and local capability, and that is a longstanding dynamic between ourselves and India. A lot of the discussions we have had with the consul here are about what opportunities are there for West Australian business to invest in India. So it will be about managing that dynamic in a respectful way going forward.

The CHAIR: How are you engaging with the diaspora around that? I mean, you have got your business advisory councils, business advisory forums. Are you proactively seeking Indian diaspora members on that? It is great. We acknowledge it, and in fact we had ISWA in the other day who were talking about how supportive the state government has been, but one thing that came through from that evidence is that there is an incredible amount of capacity, knowledge, some fabulous relationships existing in the diaspora, but they are not necessarily being tapped into, but there has never been a more important time for us to do that. What is government’s thinking around better leveraging the diaspora here as you undertake these activities?

[1.10 pm]

Ms SPENCER: I would say that very early on in COVID, obviously the focus was around international students. We actually had weekly meetings with ISWA around what was happening with the Indian student community here. They currently represent 20 per cent of the international students we have in Western Australia. We still have 27 000 international students in Western Australia currently. For obvious reasons, Western Australia is not a bad place to be, so they have chosen, thankfully, to stay and continue their studies. As a part of that, as you would probably be aware, we did support ISWA to seek a grant from the COVID‐19 relief fund, because they have been doing an amazing job in supporting their own student community. Something that we were quite conscious of was that other jurisdictions chose to provide very generalised grants for international students, whereas we have chosen to work more closely with those places where we felt students would more naturally gravitate to for support. So I guess rather than coming to the state government for a handout, the idea that they could be supported by their communities and their communities had the funding to do that was something that we thought was a better path. We have worked very closely with ISWA around that grant, and also the consul.

I guess it was difficult in those early stages of the pandemic, when no‐one knew how long it would last for or how deep it would go, as to what the next stage would be in those discussions. It is only now that we are starting to have a real think about it. It is quite clear that we are not rescheduling or delaying some of those ministerial missions and delegations that we had planned, and we are


going to have to think about alternative ways of delivering that engagement, because the border issue is not resolving itself any time soon. For countries like India, they are in a very different place in the journey around COVID than we are. We had a lot of good engagement around the recent anniversary of Indian independence. Certainly listening to the consul’s address, there was a lot of synergy between, obviously, the interests of India’s trade markets and those of Western Australia. I guess building on the back of that, what we are seeking to do is to basically negotiate how do we present our opportunities into market in a way that is going to be useful for the Indian business community and where they are at at the moment. We are focusing a lot on the development of market plans and collateral, where we can actually have the material to present into market. India is actually picked up in the Asian Engagement Strategy, so under that umbrella we do have the connection with the business councils. We run regular events where we can actually promote mutual interests from a trade and investment perspective. We can provide you with some very generalised collateral around what the value propositions are and the opportunities are, but what markets want is the specific details, whether or not it be cathode‐active material manufacturing or a particular area of strategic industrial land that an investor might be interested in. I guess the ongoing challenge for us is that investment is not necessarily an excuse to come to Western Australia at the moment, in terms of getting a G2G PASS or bypassing any quarantine requirement, so it is how we get around, I guess, the traditional methods of having someone come and sight a project.

The CHAIR: But still I want to come back to my original question, which is: how are you engaging the diaspora in that? It is great to develop strategies and it is great to sit around and identify target markets, but there is a wealth of knowledge and pre‐existing relationships at the person‐to‐person level existing in the diaspora. It does not seem that there is an Asian or Indian diaspora member on your business advisory forum. It seems like there is a real untapped resource there. Is there scope for greater engagement with the diaspora and utilisation of those existing networks?

Ms SPENCER: The business advisory forum, I would probably comment, is probably a higher level forum in terms of its representatives. We would be directly engaging more with the business councils and those diasporas more directly than on that basis. Certainly, we would be going directly to that community, rather than using the business advisory forum. I would say that we have not met with the business advisory forum since COVID hit, but we have directly met regularly, particularly Minister Tinley meets regularly, with the business councils. He has been addressing their issues. I would say, though, that their concerns have largely centred around students and the international student community here, but also what the options are for those students in terms of being able to study next year. One of the discussions I have recently had with ISWA is how we actually utilise that talent over the Christmas break. Obviously, returning home to India and then not being able to come back here for semester 1 studies would not be very good for either us or those students. That is a skill base that we can certainly draw on in WA, particularly in the current times. We have talked about a program of getting those students into employment or supported to be here during that period. I guess that is the more tactical discussions that we are having at the moment.

The CHAIR: But that is again focused very much on international education and students. Let us park that. As the evidence has shown us, we have an extraordinarily broad range of opportunities in agriculture, in mining, in energy exports, in the electrification of rural populations—there are all sorts of pathways, potentially, into the Indian market. Parking international education and students, we have a diaspora here. How are you planning to tap into that? How are you planning to utilise that resource here? I take the point about, and obviously follow, what Minister Tinley does in terms of his engagement at that very high level, but in terms of the people who are sitting there writing these strategies, writing and targeting an India market engagement plan, and the programs of work


that fall out of the Asian Engagement Strategy, which is a very high level document, what are you doing in a practical sense there?

Ms SPENCER: I know it does seem very focused on international students, but, again, I guess it goes back to where India sits at the moment. Unless Peter can say otherwise, we have had a lot of quiet in terms of that usual discussion around business opportunities from the Indian side.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: That is not what we are hearing from the community, that have made their depositions or had conversations or made submissions. That is not what has been presented as evidence. In fact, it is more about, “We would like to chase it.” We are looking at information and we are looking at engagement and they just find that the engagement process in terms of connecting to existing markets and opportunities is not really there, or they do not have people who they can talk to to meet their obligations. There is a clear lack.

Mr SELLERS: That is a really interesting comment, member, because you also have examples of very targeted things around critical minerals, lithium, fertiliser production, a range of things ag‐related—sorry, Terry, I just weighed into there from the past, and your interest, I am sure. There are examples where it has worked; it works very well. Various parts of government have avenues open, whether it is for India, for Indonesia, for America, for China.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: But, Mr Sellers, they have been existing markets. This is part of Western Australia’s diversification—diversify Western Australia. That is what we are talking about—an emerging market. If you talk about America, if you talk about Japan, if you talk about China or Indonesia —

Mr SELLERS: I was using it as an example. It is no different when you get away from the ones that have a more advanced project, which is quite often where parts of JTSI work. If I step back into a previous life when I used to travel to India to do a range of things around minerals and work right through from geoscience to advanced projects, right through to working with Indian companies and Australian companies to try to get a project up, there is that pipeline, there is that relationship. I get what you are saying. It is that relationship bit and where it starts, I think I am hearing. Is that right?

[1.20 pm]

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: I can make it even more direct, if you like, Mr Sellers. The question then is: does JTSI have an India plan that has existed in its formation, and is there tangible evidence of how Indian businesses have been able to, basically, invest into Western Australia through JTSI, or have Western Australian small businesses been able to invest in the 28 states in India through JTSI? If there is such a strong conduit of existing bilateral trade relationships, as you compared it with America, Indonesia and others, I would happily —

Mr SELLERS: I take your question, member. It is a good question and it is —

The CHAIR: Perhaps just to come at from a different —

Mr SELLERS: No, can we just answer that, please, Chair.

We have a trade officer over there, that is basically what Peter does, so maybe we hear a little bit of that and then we go back to the question, if you like.

Mr BALDWIN: My guys are still very active in communicating with potential investors and trade partners. There is actually a lot of interest in critical minerals in India. I have presented at a number of virtual forums and the like, and had direct responses from that. One of the case studies, I guess, of recent times is still progressing the partnership between an Indian company, Manikaran Power, and Neo Metals investigating lithium processing of the offtake of the Neo Metals mine. That is still progressing. Both parties have committed a couple of million dollars to that study. I have met with


Neo Metals; they seem very positive about it. We are communicating with Manikaran Power to see what other support we can give. I think we are still progressing these things in the absence of being able to meet formally. We have another company that at the first opportunity wants to come here to look at investments in critical minerals or goldmines or diamond mines. They are a very big jewellery company who want to diversify a bit. We are still being quite active in promoting Western Australia for investments and the like.

The diaspora question—I think we can always make a lot more of the diaspora. We have been very active. I actually went to a forum on Saturday of the Asian business councils altogether, including the Australia India Business Council, to work out what further strategies we can support them with. I really see that body as being critical in helping to draw the diaspora in to have the sort of connections that we maybe see more commonly in the Chinese diaspora of having strong business linkages and having them promote investment opportunities here. I think that is one of the main ways we are looking to activate the diaspora. But, you know, I would obviously be happy to hear —

The CHAIR: Perhaps another way of coming out it, let us try to get to the evidence we need from a different perspective. We did hear over the course of this inquiry about the work that falls out of the Asian Engagement Strategy. Could you perhaps give us a bit of an understanding of where the Indian market plan work is at, because we were told that there was an Indian market plan under development, and then the Asian Engagement Strategy implementation plan? Maybe coming at it from the sort of perspective might give us a bit better visibility of what you are actually doing.

Ms SPENCER: We had actually got quite far advanced with the implementation plan before COVID hit, and I will be honest, it had been largely put on hold, given the fact that a large proportion of the activities under the plan were engagement‐focused, so there has been a bit of a pause to kind of rethink what that engage might look like, both in the COVID context locally, when we have social distancing preventing a lot of engagement, and then in the context where we are open within WA, but not open to the rest of the world. What we did was we brought forward the program of works around market plans. They had previously been planned to be developed in stages, because they are quite intensive pieces of work, over the next two years. We will now have all of our market plans completed by the end of October.

What we actually have done is develop quite comprehensive internal market plans for government use, which, as you can imagine, contain a lot of information about engaging with a particular market and a lot of historical information about what we have learnt and what we seek to achieve moving forward. But it is very important that there is something public‐facing that we can use in the market, so each one of those internal plans is currently being translated into an external market outlook, which will contain as much information as possible for those in other markets than what we actually have to offer, but also what is on offer in that market for Western Australian investors. As I said, the due date for those is the end of October.

Building on that, we have also, as a part of the Asian Engagement Strategy, got a grant round, the Access Asia Business Grants. We had a successful first round, but then COVID hit, so the second round was suspended. We have now been able to roll over the moneys for the second round into a round we hope to launch for the balance of this year. That will very much be about ensuring that SMEs locally have the capability to engage in market in a COVID context. I imagine that they will be heavily weighted to that virtual capability, being able to make those connections when you obviously cannot visit the market. We are hoping that that will give a leg‐up to a lot of the local proponents in that context.

With the implementation of the Asian Engagement Strategy, we are, again, as I said, looking at how we can continue with the borders closed, and then after that what we could accelerate. We are


working to make sure that we have as much digital collateral available as possible so that potential investors can see as much as possible what we have on offer, so we will be launching the “Invest and Trade” website very soon. The idea is that the website will be very much an iterative page that will be maintained by those who have a live opportunity, so the hydrogen team will host all of their collateral on that page, and the offshore investors will be able to download a lot of material, but also get that direct contact information, I guess, going back to that point about the line of sight into what Western Australia has to offer, and those relationships will have much more of a kind of digital feel to them. We are in the process of producing a lot of video material for that website, because, obviously, if you cannot come here and touch and see something, us being able to provide as much as possible of a look and feel digitally is something that we are working on at the moment.

We are then looking forward at what would have been next year’s schedule of missions and delegations, particularly, you know, if we are talking about in the Indian context and how building on the Premier’s visit last year and how we might actually replicate that in a digital way. I hate to bring up international education again, but we are actually working very closely with the BDM in India to have a look at what would be required by parents and students in India for them to make a decision to come and study here and how we provide them with that material. They are looking for things like images or case studies of what it is like for a student to be studying here now, so it is just providing that material into market. We are working very closely, as Richard said, with the critical minerals team to have a look at that next step around what incentives particular investors would be looking for from WA and putting together a package for cabinet to consider around going into market with that incentive offer. But that will be on the back of a much broader piece of work we are doing about supply chain more generally, so I guess the message that we have been getting is: we know what broad industries there might be opportunities in, but what are the specific projects and what do you have on offer in terms of incentives around those specific projects? We are, I guess, using this time to provide a lot more detail around what those specific projects are and then the list of incentives that the Western Australian government may be able to offer for those specific projects.

[1.30 pm]

Mr SELLERS: Perhaps an example I know will include India but it will not be announced. There will be an expression of interest you will recognise when it comes out that is around some renewable options and perhaps some industrial land just tidying a couple of things Simone was talking about. This morning when I was looking at the marketing into various representative countries, it is designed to go through Pete’s office over there to show that opportunity to people in India who may well be looking for opportunities outside India to invest in that renewable market in an area where there are lots of characteristics that make it a viable place to go. Those sorts of things are happening as well. Hopefully, that will be out and you will recognise it when it pops out and you see it advertised.

The CHAIR: How does this all tie into the work program for Invest and Trade WA?

Ms SPENCER: Last year was the first year that we actually released an Invest and Trade plan for 2019–20, so we are currently reviewing that plan. One of, I guess, the most interesting components of the review will be what we were unable to do because of COVID that we would have to do again differently. We are currently in the process of compiling this year’s plan. We already have the individual market plans developed, so a lot of the intelligence will come from those, but then, where are the synergies with the state’s overarching WA Recovery Plan, so we will have an annual plan again and that is a public document that we put out. That covers sectors but also markets. The biggest change for us this year will be the addition of new sectors that prior to COVID were definitely important, but COVID has actually drawn a sharp relief—those sectors where the landscape is


completely different. Obviously, tourism and international education were two priority sectors for us prior to COVID. They are still really important but all the actions we had in place to stimulate those two sectors will have to be rethought this year. But health now emerges as a really critical sector for us going forward, and there is a lot of interest in markets around med tech, for example, and some of those other skill sets that we have here that we can grow investment into. Advanced manufacturing, I guess, was in the mix with a lot of other things. It is now an issue cutting across all sectors that we are looking at growing and defence becomes a much more strong offering for the state government.

The CHAIR: How are you resourcing that? Are you staffing people sectorally? Is there an India specialist in Invest and Trade WA? How are you making sure that we get an India focus?

Ms SPENCER: As you are probably aware from previous evidence, there was a functional review of the international engagement area of JTSI earlier this year. We previously had a country desk model that serviced the off‐shore offices, but I guess the feedback we were getting from the off‐shore offices was that they wanted a lot more commercial support from Perth. So the model we have moved to will be much more sector‐focused so that we actually have people who are resourced to support, for example, METS or the future battery industry or hydrogen. Having said that, it is not mutually exclusive of us supporting markets as well.

I guess the intention with the restructure is that we pull the overseas offices much closer into what we do in Invest and Trade and they are seen as an extension of what we do in Perth rather than something separate. So the actual KPIs for Invest and Trade now reflect the KPIs of the overseas offices, and they are brought together under those market plans. The Invest and Trade plan, which has those market activities is the same set of KPIs for what we now have in the Perth office. I will be honest; we have been able to accelerate that because we have not been undertaking any missions and delegations. Previously, for the staff that we do have, that took up an enormous amount of time. What we are hoping, if there is such a thing as a silver lining out of a global pandemic, is that in forward years, we will have at the beginning of the year a much more dedicated plan with regards to where we go and what we are promoting and that we can actually provide the collateral, and shape missions around that sort of intelligence that we have been able to gather. We are using that time we have got wisely, I guess—from not having to do a lot of that sort of delegation organisation—to make sure we are really well planned for next year.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: The commentary so far, pretty much across the board, has been pre‐COVID environment, in the COVID environment and then post‐COVID. Has there been any sort of assessment or tweaking of the plans if we have to live with COVID going forward? That puts a whole kind of other scenario on just about all the business we do in terms of travel and in terms of safety—all the things that go with living with a virus. Have all the plans been put through that filter; and, if so, what does that look like?

Mr SELLERS: I agree; it is what we have to do. I do not think any of us know what a post‐COVID looks like yet, or what it will ever be, because of what you are saying. Plans that are being evolved now have different scenarios aligned with them: if this happens, then maybe that. That is being worked through right from the work that the Public Sector Commissioner is working down through the Leadership Council right down to our plans that are part of the discussion we have. We sit down and talk about them. It is one of those ones, as you would rightly point out, there is a lot of uncertainty there, so it is a band of, “It could be X or it could be Y”. On paper, it will always be a best guess, maybe in the middle and a caveat underneath that says, “Should it go this way, then, we’ll try that.”

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Does that show that certain sectors are much more sensitised to a COVID world?


Mr SELLERS: A really good question. In that industry stream that Simone and I are working on, and you look at a particular sector in there, there might be iron ore, we mentioned going gangbusters and yet, you go through the 57 metals that are mined in Western Australia and there will be a couple that will absolutely need a lot of help and government might need to go and do some things to maintain them while whatever their future looks like. It is much more dire in other parts of the sector. We talked with Ralph about similar things that we are doing. The simple answer is yes. The detailed answer is specific in those sectors to those that were going better than maybe we might have thought at the beginning compared to those that have been smashed and those that are in the middle, and trying to target less clunky mechanisms around each of those so you nuance a better outcome.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: We have some visibility of what those sectors look like now with the borders being closed. I think that even in a world where we do not have a vaccine, at some stage the borders have to be lifted in some format and there is going to be a whole stack of processes that get layered in. I guess that is the kind of scenario I am thinking of. Are there sectoral differences in how you manage that post‐border opening in a COVID world?

Mr SELLERS: Very likely, but I cannot sit here and say that we have done the planning on all of those. It is really a prioritisation. The description around aviation and trying to get aviation ahead of the game in what we might do, just like you say, in different scenarios, once we have been able to manage at least some planning around that—we probably will not be right, but it will be closer than not planning—then we will move into certain areas. It would be overwhelming to try to do it all at once but those sectors that have been hardest hit, so if Brodie were still here, we would say the East Kimberley tourism sector—we have put a lot more focus right now on the things that we are trying to do to shore up the market and getting flights so people can get there for the next season so they do not have two seasons of pain, and maybe some other sector in one of the regions where tourism is sort of heaving a bit more at the moment. And that same strategy, to better answer your question, is being overlaid whether it is by myself, Ralph or whoever to do the bits that are in our bailiwick. For Simone and I, there are specific ones that JTSI are working on, and aviation is one of the major ones of those because we are a vast state and we need that to function for our social network and everything else to function, including trade. Getting back to the focus of this, the international relations, trade, opportunities with India based on us having a viable economy and so there is a triage of working through that. But the very simple answer is: yes; where we can we are doing that right now and we are trying to do it in a priority where it is the most obvious priority at the moment. It might be a different set of priorities tomorrow if something else happens with COVID. I am not sure if I am answering 100 per cent everything you are asking me, Terry.

[1.40 pm]

Mr D.T. REDMAN: I think that is about as best as you can answer. I am not sure that we can put much more definition around that. One of the things that I was going towards was food security. There was a lot of discussion in the past about food security in different countries that do not supply their own food. I am pretty certain that they probably did not think a virus would be something that massively disrupted their supply chains. We are in a very strong position as far as that is concerned. To use the point that Mr Carr made about safety being one of the drivers, I suspect that might be a driver in the food security space. Are you getting signals on that front; and, if so, are there any sort of strategies around how we might capitalise on that?

Ms SPENCER: What I would say there is that sort of analysis is something that we are undertaking at the moment. As I said, there is what we want in our engagement, but then there is understanding what the rest of the world is looking for from us. As a part of our planning for Invest and Trade WA and what collateral we might need moving forward, we did quite an extensive value proposition


piece earlier this year. I can tell you now that safety has moved up the list in a way that we never thought before. The messages that we are hearing from the market are what is attractive about WA as a source for food, for example, is not just that sort of safe supply, the fact that we have the production happening here, but it is because it comes from a jurisdiction that is deemed safe. I think the more we hear about people’s uncertainty about the virus and food chains and how it can potentially penetrate, or not, those supply chains, the more important that becomes for us.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Do you have any signals in the marketplace where there might be an enthusiasm to go towards much more of a sophisticated contractual arrangement or supply arrangement on agrifood?

Ms SPENCER: I guess what I would say is that there have been a lot of shifting sands geopolitically when it comes to food at the moment. What we are looking to do is, as I said, through the Access Asia business grants is make sure that there is a greater connection between the SME at the distributor level. A lot of the virtual work that we have done has enabled us to do that in the last few months. Previously, where you might have an aggregated buyer and a very large distributor, now we are actually able to reach a much sort of finer grain of potential market because we are doing it virtually. With FOODEX JAPAN, we did it online instead of in person. We had actual buyers from supermarkets able to do virtual supermarket tours. It has changed that landscape. I think there will be a much more sophisticated market penetration. Obviously, we are looking for markets for some of our produce that did not exist before COVID. I guess diversifying the market is something that we have already been committed to, and we will probably pick up or leverage some of the gains we have made in going direct to that distributor level in that SME partnering and engagement.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Do we need to market safety, or is that known?

Mr SELLERS: Good question. We need to think a bit about it. There is an element of it that everyone knows more about Australia now than they did pre‐COVID. It is a good question. I do not have a simple answer for that one.

There is an anecdotal bit that has come through with the borders and people having to get exemptions. This goes back to your more sophisticated interactions in food chains and supply chains. There are still people whom I have seen who are wanting to vertically integrate food production through manufacturing and abattoirs and other things where you would expect this is not the time when you would see someone from country X coming in to have a look at it, yet that is the group that wants to come and physically look at an asset right now and shore it up. That thinking is clearly happening, just on those anecdotal models, for that vertical integration part of a sophisticated model, yes.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: There has been a bit of federal pushback, I think, on some of that stuff to make sure they have a scan over it so there is nothing that sort of breaches any national security issues.

Mr SELLERS: We have been getting much more regular briefings from our commonwealth colleagues.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Okay.

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: Ms Spencer and Mr Sellers, I have to say that some of your comments around how, in a very short time, you have re‐strategised and reformatted your strategies is very impressive. I have to say that because pre‐COVID and during COVID, from what I understand, JTSI has reorchestrated its think tank towards meeting the expectation of diversifying Western Australia, along with the Asian Engagement Strategy and Invest and Trade Western Australia. I get the sense that there is an insecurity of resources in terms of being able to get flowing into the expectations of future markets. With the KPIs and re‐strategising, it seems that you are getting there. But the


suggestion or the response I am looking for is would there not also be an opportunity for JTSI to have an Asian engagement advisory business body that focuses on using, I guess, Invest and Trade Western Australia and the Asian Engagement Strategy to build a sub‐body or subcommittee below the business advisory forum and the international business committee that purely focuses on the emerging markets in Asia? I think that is one opportunity that would really enhance and propel that.

Ms Spencer, you identified intel. I have been very fortunate to have been brought up in India, and I have lived most of my life in Australia. The feedback I get from the grassroots is that not everyone is in ISWA and not everyone is in the AIBC, but we have a lot of grassroots in the Indian diaspora network that have links to the 28 states in India. Literally every state in India is like a new Indonesia, as an emerging market, as I like to put it simply across the table. There are all these ambassadors that are in METS and agri and you name it, and they are profoundly well informed about the markets in Western Australia, because they work here and they raise their families here and they call Western Australia home, but also where they come from as a state, they have local intel. They have local networks, the schools they went to or the family and friends. India is very family oriented in its business network. What I am trying to understand from JTSI’s point of view is how does JTSI culturally understand its strategy of gaining intel to formulate its strategy, which in the broader analysis is perfectly in line with the expectations of what the emerging markets are?

There is a whole element of where you could gain some strong, quick results by using the local intel right here in our backyard. I know that myself, because I have got that insight on both sides, but like myself as a very fortunate and privileged Australian and Western Australian, there are other such Western Australians who are from an Indian heritage and background who have got those grassroots networks. A think tank or an advisory council focusing on Asian engagement would really give you that boost required to meet most of those untapped opportunities that we talk about in emerging markets.

Mr SELLERS: Thank you. That was really passionately put. It makes a lot of sense listening to it. We will put some thought around it and come back, either here or to you as a member.

The CHAIR: Through the committee would be ideal. I suppose what we are looking at is what is missing. The bridge through to the diaspora seems to be missing. We had 15 submissions on Wednesday from diaspora members who are looking for a bridge. How we could better leverage that is something that is of real interest to the committee.

Mr SELLERS: Just sitting here and listening to it, I can see some opportunity. We will think about what that might look like and come back with a couple of models that you might like to comment on.

The CHAIR: To me, it seems that in addition to the work that you do, Mr Baldwin, it is just another mechanism for gathering intelligence.

Mr SELLERS: Sure. Just to sort of round that out, we would be trying to do whatever we do in a way that does not create extra effort for the people you were describing there but fits nicely into some of the processes that we do. So we will put a bit of thought around that and I am sure we can come up with something that creates a much better link there and gives a bit of an avenue. There is obviously a caveat that you cannot talk to everyone. There are always compromises in these things. But we will come back with what we think might pick up some of those issues you were raising.

[1.50 pm]

Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: Thank you. Can I raise one other issue, Mr Sellers and Ms Spencer?

Mr SELLERS: Sure.


Mr Y. MUBARAKAI: I feel there is again a very strong signal coming across, and I have an example to provide as to how another state has done a good job with it, and that is Victoria. In the last decade and a half, the state and Tourism Victoria, along with amalgamating their strategies and working with DFAT and the commonwealth to promote itself as a state—but not only that, but in terms of its drawing in the Indian market through business and tourism has been a strong conduit as well as to how they are able to attract their tourists and business or Bollywood movies to come and shoot in their state. That has been one of the propelling reasons as to why Victoria has become a hub in the last decade and a half for a lot of the migrants or businesses or tourism to that sector. The way I feel is that in the last year and a half, this is something that we could learn from as well. In 2018, there were about 300 staff members of Tata who wanted to visit Western Australia because now the middle class in India love their golf, which is not very affordable in India, and then there are the vineyards—they love their wine too. There is this whole new culture building there. The only reason they adopted not to use their trip to Western Australia was because the visa application takes between three and six months.

Ms Spencer and Mr Sellers, what I am indicating is that regarding business I think we may want to pitch to our federal counterparts about how we can provide quick business visas for those investors to come and for us to go to India. It is the same with tourism. If there are these easier ways of Indian tourists getting access to visas, it would make—because they go quite spontaneously when making certain decisions. When there is a three to six‐month wait time, but to Europe or other parts of Asia it is a week away or online 24‐hour service, those are the deterrents for them. If we are going to make Western Australia a gateway, I think we have to work as a state on giving access to a shorter version of getting the visa and coming to the state would be a perfect avenue as well. That is something that I felt was important to share.

Mr SELLERS: Thanks. That is good advice.

Mr BALDWIN: Just to comment on that, that news about that Tata trip came out when the tourism minister was actually in India. He raised it very strongly with the High Commission when he met with them. The High Commission did improve those times. It is now in a position where it is not getting as many visa applications, but they were under a lot of pressure. The ease of getting visas and things for these MICE visits is really crucial.

Mr S.J. PRICE: You have got to change that acronym!

Mr BALDWIN: We will be working strongly with the High Commission to try to get that rolling. Just one other thing on tourism that might be worth noting is that the commissioners that are based here now—China, Japan and Indonesia—we have been having a few famils of our own. We went down to Mandurah and were hosted on a nice cruise. They asked, “What could we do to promote tourism?” I said, “For India, the vast majority of the visitors are visiting friends and relatives. If you can reach out to that diaspora to promote your tourism—particularly daytrip activities—that will probably be a good long‐term measure.” I suggested that they might want to invite the Consul General here for a visit to Mandurah, not only for understanding tourism opportunities and spreading the message to the diaspora, but also to visit a fruit export/import company, because she had previously asked about Indian mangoes and prospects for importing them. She took up that invitation very gladly. I have not heard the result of it, but is an example, again, of maybe trying to link in with that diaspora.

Mr S.J. PRICE: Ms Spencer, you mentioned earlier that there are 27 000 international students. Is that just in WA?

Ms SPENCER: Yes. They are still here. One of the benefits of COVID for us is that previously we would have to wait for data with a lot of time lag to find out how many students we had in the state. We


would know that, say, last year annually we had 52 000 all up. Now, every few weeks we get a dataset from the commonwealth telling us how many people with a student visa are still within a particular jurisdiction. We know that of as of 30 August we have 27 000 students still here. That figure has changed only slightly since the end of February. What we are seeing is a massive retention of the students that did manage to make it back before the border closures. That is why we see it as really important to look after those students while they are here and make sure they have that experience, because lots of them are very cut off from their families. Also, we would like them to be able to continue their studies into next year.

Mr S.J. PRICE: Going forward, firstly, do you know how many of them are actually from India?

Ms SPENCER: Twenty per cent.

Mr S.J. PRICE: Going forward, is the intention for them to stay during the Christmas break?

Ms SPENCER: We have just over 5 400 Indian students. It is a discussion that we have already started having with Dantu and the consul office, and ISWA. We have now got a Wander out Yonder and work campaign. We have got a massive recovery plan. I think it would be really useful, not just for those students and their wellbeing—because obviously going home right now would mean that they probably would be unlikely to be able to return for semester 1 unless there are changes to the border environment—for them to be connected to opportunities to work during that period of time. I think that would be really good. We are making sure that we are supporting them as best we can because, obviously, for a lot of them that would be a time they would traditionally go and spend with family. Lots of them have now been quite disconnected from family for a very long time. We have got a number of discussions at the moment as to how we best support that very large cohort for that period of time.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: We normally have around about 50 000 students?

Ms SPENCER: Last year we had nearly 52 000 all up, but, obviously, that included a lot of pathway students, students studying ELICOS or just language courses, and the students in the school system. What we have seen that really reduced to is that 27 000 is largely those who were in long study programs or in higher education. It is really the pathway part of the market that has really dried up.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: Is it fair to say that on the international student market revenue that comes to the state, whether it be at university or whatever level, that pretty much they are running at two‐thirds capacity? I had the impression it was zero or none, but it is still two‐thirds.

Ms SPENCER: International education was worth nearly $2 billion to the state last year. In terms of sectors that I would consider have been catastrophically impacted by COVID, international education is definitely one of those.

Mr D.T. REDMAN: On numbers, it is 40 per cent of their revenue.

The CHAIR: While we are on education matters, we have had some evidence from StudyPerth about the withholding of funding—$1.5 million—from JTSI for the development of the StudyPerth student hub. Are you able to provide us with some information as to why JTSI is withholding that $1.5 million in project funding?

Ms SPENCER: StudyPerth gets funded a base grant from the state government, which they have done for a number of years. That is just over $1.3 million. The hub is actually funded out of that base grant. They received their base grant from us in the first week of July this year for this financial year. There has been no alteration to that funding. Last year, there was an additional $1.5 million in funding that was granted by the state government for them to undertake projects, particularly in destination marketing. Our understanding is that they spent around $600 000 of that on a marketing


campaign to China only. Then, obviously, COVID hit. One of the discussions we have had with StudyPerth is that they have a lot of unspent funds because COVID has meant that they are unsure as to how to recommence that engagement. They also undertook a lot of face‐to‐face events, which during COVID they were unable to do for the balance of last year.

[2.00 pm]

So what the state government has said is that they can keep all of the funds from last year that they were unable to spend, to roll them over, and then come back and basically have a discussion with the state government once they are in need of more funding. I think it was more that COVID really kind of disrupted the activities of StudyPerth quite significantly, so the state government was really looking to sort of understand if we did grant them another $1.5 million in project funding on top of their base funding, that they would be able to acquit that money. It was a landscape issue to do with the borders more than anything else. The funding has not been withheld; it has just been delayed until there is more certainty as to how StudyPerth would spend that money.

Mr SELLERS: But it will be delayed with negotiation. It will not be just, “Give us the money.” It will be, “Show us what is going on and what it is going to be spent on.” We will have that discussion with them, as you would expect.

The CHAIR: Which is absolutely appropriate, yes.

Ms SPENCER: But the hub and ProsPER and some of the other key events or activities that StudyPerth undertakes are done as part of their core grant. We have also provided StudyPerth with additional funding to fund the crisis relief program that they currently run. We have also put them in touch with a wide variety of other government funding programs to support students.

The CHAIR: Thank you so much. I will proceed to close today’s hearing. Thank you for your evidence before the committee today. A transcript of this hearing will be emailed to you for correction of minor errors. Any such corrections must be made and the transcript returned within 10 working days of the date of the email attached to the transcript. If the transcript is not returned within this period, it will be deemed to be correct. New material cannot be added via these corrections and the sense of your evidence cannot be altered. Should you wish to provide additional information or elaborate on particular points, please include a supplementary submission for the committee’s consideration when you return your corrected transcript of evidence.

We have a draft report, which we are sort of updating with new evidence. We may come to you with a few more questions on notice, but hopefully we will not put too much additional work your way. But apparently you have heaps of time for it now, without pesky politicians organising delegations! Thank you so much.

Mr SELLERS: Of course, there were some follow‐up questions that we will just get through as a matter of course.

The CHAIR: Great. Excellent. Thank you so much.

Hearing concluded at 2.01 pm

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economics and industry standing committee

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