Risks
66. The main risks and means of mitigation are listed below.
| Risk | Mitigation |
|---|
| Industry participants may not be sufficiently committed to the exercise. | Active participation in the Taskforce by senior Ministers and senior public servants will demonstrate the Government's commitment to the engagement process. Industry commitment will be particularly encouraged by the identification of early wins. |
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| The engagement may become unmanageable, given the size of the sector. | Seek to focus the Taskforce, at least initially, on the common factors and issues which can be addressed for the sector as a whole while also being prepared, as necessary, to look at the issues on a more disaggregated sub-sector level. |
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| There may be insufficient whole-of-government co-ordination and/or commitment to the process from public sector agencies, or lack of communication between work streams and working groups. | Participation of the CEs of MAF and NZTE as full taskforce members will provide public sector leadership. In addition, as lead agencies, both MAF and NZTE will work to ensure a robust and effective process. |
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| Relationships between the participants may not be sufficiently constructive to enable us to make progress. | Place particular emphasis on the establishment and development of good working relationships between the participants, and on overall design of an effective process for the engagement. |
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| The process may become a semi-politicised talk-fest without adding any value to the work which MAF, NZTE, TEC etc already have in hand and/or the participants may have expectations that the engagement will lead to changes in areas of strongly held Government policy; | Ensure that this process, including the articulation of the terms of reference, focuses the participants on the achievement of practical results. This may need to include helping the Taskforce to identify the issues on which progress is most likely to be achievable and helping them to avoid getting bogged down in less productive areas. Choosing the right people to sit on the Food and Beverage Taskforce in the first place will obviously also be critical. |
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| The participants may have expectations that the engagement will lead to additional government resources being allocated to the sector and pressure from them may lead Government to decide in favour of such allocations even if this is not well justified. | Make clear that the results of the engagement will be used to improve coordination and utilisation of Government resources already available to the sector, and to improve generic policies, but that they will not be used to secure additional resources such as tax breaks/subsidies or other market distorting mechanisms unless there are exceptional or overriding reasons for addressing a market failure or spillover. |
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| The Government may find it hard to disengage at the end of the process | The timeframe for the engagement is included as part of the Terms of Reference (Annex 1). |
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