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100. MED in consultation with other agencies is developing a co-ordinated communications strategy around a number of announcements of new initiatives over the period to the end of June 2007. This strategy includes both the Food and Beverage Taskforce response and the Aquaculture strategy response. I expect to make a public announcement regarding the Food and Beverage taskforce in the in the last week of June 2007, based on the key messages outlined in this paper.

Key response messages

101. The key messages to communicate publicly are:

• Government affirms the critical importance of the sector to achieving the aims of economic transformation and sustainability and confirms its commitment to work with key stakeholders in the sector to address the challenges and seize the opportunities inherent in these agendas;
• Government broadly endorses the taskforce's strategic approach of taking actions to protect the core of the sector while at the same time developing new markets and new higher value products but urges the sector to more proactively seek transformative opportunities;
• Building on the taskforce's work, and affirming the importance of maintaining and enhancing the sector's existing strengths, government's vision for the sector's future (in Annex 2) places a strong emphasis on the need to identify and seize transformative opportunities to build globally significant high-value agribusinesses, including associated upstream and downstream industries, and invites industry to adopt this vision as a guiding principle for the sector's development;
• Government recognizes the mutual supportiveness between improvements in the sector's productivity and environmental sustainability and that these twin goals are integral to the sustainable use of New Zealand's natural resources and the sector's future development work;
• Government will work with the sector to ensure that environmental sustainability is integrated into the sector's future development work as a core value;
• Government agrees with the taskforce's emphasis on the need for much greater collaboration between private firms, between industry and research institutions and with government. [...];
• Government has also started work on implementation of 38 of the 49 recommendations, through both existing work streams and the development of new policy, including six key initiatives in the areas of innovation (including product development infrastructure), labour-market and skill development, audit and mentoring of new export firms, in-market assistance and continued support for pastoral research; and
• Taking note of the taskforce's theme of improving collaboration and its recommendation for a peak oversight body, the Government calls on sector stakeholders to work together and develop models of leadership and collaboration appropriate to addressing the future needs of the sector and also calls on key players in the sector to commit to working individually and collectively towards the goals of economic transformation for the benefit of New Zealand.