The Challenge
In 2020-21, the value of Australian agricultural exports was over $50 billion. With 72% of Australia’s total agricultural production being sent overseas, the agricultural export sector is a major contributor to the livelihood and economy of Australia. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is the regulatory body that ensures the quality of exports being sent to other importing countries. As the regulator of the agricultural export sector, it is the Department’s responsibility to ensure that the products meet all international standards and regulations, and thereby maintain the agricultural industries’ access to international markets.
The Agricultural export industry is a diverse sector, with a range of different players – from small fishing vessels to large meat and dairy processing establishments. The challenges faced by the industries in gaining access to markets and complying with regulations is very different across this spectrum.
Further, the perception of Australia as a regulator varies across the different importing countries. There’s a range of factors that could impact their perceptions, and it is the Department’s responsibility to maintain Australia’s regulatory reputation.
Our Response
Following our success with designing and trialling the risk-based approach in the seafood space, we have been working with Dairy Australia and DAFF to build out and implement the regulatory model at full-scale, starting with the dairy sector. As part of this phase of the project, we have had two streams of work – one focused on developing up the risk-based approach, and the other around building behavioural interventions to drive better compliance in industry. We ran a deep discovery process with the dairy industry, understanding their experience of regulation and pain points with the current system. Taking the learnings from this discovery process, the team has been working with the State Regulatory Authorities to align the regulatory approaches across the country. This is an ongoing project, involving transformation at the strategic, systemic, cultural and operational levels of the regulatory ecosystem. Our collaborative process ensured that we had a rich set of views from different areas of expertise coming together to build a holistic view on risk and regulation.
The Impact
The risk-based approach offers significant advantages by making regulation far more efficient and effective. For the Department, it enables proactive risk identification through data-driven insights, allowing potential issues to be addressed before they arise. For industry, it ensures that compliant businesses are not burdened by unnecessary regulation, while receiving tailored support aligned with their needs. At the same time, entities requiring closer oversight benefit from targeted regulatory actions that help maintain compliance.
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