CSIRO and NIAA Webinar

C SIRO and National Australian Indigenous Australians Agency NIAA Webinar 14.05.2024

 

 

[Image appears CSIRO logo, National Indigenous Australians Agency logo, image of person looking in telescope. Text on screen: CSIRO-NIAA Webinar. Science, Knowledge, Business - How CSIRO partners with First Nation’s enterprises. 14 May 2024]

 

Terry Sparrow: On behalf of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, CSIRO, and the National Indigenous Australian’s Agency, NIAA, hello and welcome to today’s webinar on Science, Knowledge, Business - How CSIRO partners with First Nation’s enterprises.

My name is Terry Sparrow, I’m a proud Ngarrindjeri man from the Coorong region of South Australia where the fresh water meets the sea. I live and work on Kaurna country here in Adelaide and I’m the Executive Manager for Indigenous Partnerships here in CSIRO.

I’ll be supported today by a number of talented facilitators and speakers throughout today’s webinar. The agenda is pretty ambitious. It’s broken up into six parts - Housekeeping, Panel One Scientific Speakers, Panel Two Funders and Entrepreneur Speakers, Panel Three Indigenous Business Partners and speakers, Feedback and lastly, Final Comments. There will be a ten minute break in between.

So on that basis, let’s begin. I’d first like to do an acknowledgement. Next slide please, Ellie.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Acknowledgement. An indigenous design is on the right side of the slide. To the left is text: I would like to begin this webinar by acknowledging the Kaurna People as the Traditional Owners of the land and the seas that I am video conferencing in from, and I’d like to pay my respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging.]

I would like to begin this webinar by acknowledging the Kaurna People as the Traditional Owners of the land and the seas that I am video conferencing in from, and I’d like to pay my respect to their Elders, past, and present. I’d also like to acknowledge the land and the seas around Australia, from wherever today’s attendees of this webinar are video conferencing in from and I’d also like to pay my respects to those Elders, past and present, from those diverse lands and seas we call Australia.

Next slide please, Ellie.

[Image changes to slide with heading: House Keeping. To the right is a screenshot image of land, rivers and underwater. This is sharing a screen with people around a table. Underneath is an example of how to get to layout views with the text “Layout Views” circled in red. Text on left of screen: Please note this webinar is public. For a better viewing experience, click the “Layout Views” icon at the bottom right of the video player to switch between full screen or split screen modes. See the example image on the right for guidance.]

Housekeeping. Please note that this webinar is public and is expected to last for about two hours approximately. It will be recorded and copies of the recording and the Powerpoint presentation will be made available to those persons who register with CSIRO to attend today’s webinar.

To maximise your experience you can change the presentation or the video view by clicking the Layout Views icon in the bottom right hand side of the video - you can see the red circle to your right - for either a full screen or a split screen presentation. Again, you can see the example so you’ve got a choice whether you want a full screen or a split screen.

Next slide please, Ellie.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Interactive Q&A. On the right of the screen is a QR code and text: Join at slido.com #8899. Passcode: csiro. Text on left: We will be using Slido for today’s Q&A. To join you have 2 options: Choice 1 - QR code. 1. Using your mobile phone, scan the QR code for access (see image to the right). 2. Enter the passcode which is “csiro” (not case sensitive) Choice 2 - via a browser (the internet). 1. Go to www.slido.com 2. Join as a participant by entering code #8899 3. Enter the passcode which is csiro]

Today’s webinar is going to be an interactive question and answer. We’ll be using Slido. To join Slido you have two options. You can scan the QR code with your phone on the right hand side of the screen or you could go to www.slido.com and enter the code #8899 followed by csiro as the passcode. We’ll give you a few minutes to do that, just to give you the opportunity rather than feeling pressed for time. So we’ll give you a couple of minutes.

Pauline, do you have anything to say in terms of Slido?

Pauline: Oh, you’ve put me on the spot. No, I can see that we’ve got people joining in, we’ve got at least 40 people who joined now but there should also be a link that Eric pasted into the chat for people to click on if they prefer to join that way.

Terry Sparrow: So there you go, you’ve got three choices. So we’ll still give you a couple of minutes, just for people to connect to Slido and have the ability or opportunity later on to ask questions of any of the three panels plus provide feedback towards the end of the webinar to provide advice to CSIRO in terms of what we can do better to provide support going forward. I hear crickets.

Okay, hopefully you’ve got access to Slido and you’ll have, you’ll be given the opportunity to ask questions of the speakers later on.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Who is CSIRO? Subtitle below: We are Australia’s national science agency. Underneath are four images - radio telescope at Parkes, group of people in lab with female facing camera, ground of three people facing camera behind equipment, solar panels. Below these are text: One of the world’s largest multidisciplinary science and technology organisations. 6300+ dedicated people working across 51 sites in Australia and globEllie. State-of-the-art national research infrastructure. We delivered $10.2 billion of benefit to the nation.]

Okay, who is CSIRO? We are Australia’s national science agency. We’re one of the world’s largest multidisciplinary science and technology organisations. We have 6300+ dedications people working across 51 sites in Australia and globEllie. We are a state of the art national research infrastructure and we delivered $10.2 billion of benefit to the nation. So we’re doing okay.

Alright, next slide please, Ellie.

[Image changes to slide with heading: CSIRO’s Indigenous Science and Engagement Program (ISEP) On the right of screen is an image of land meeting sea with text: Caption: Djarindjin Dampier Peninsula in Western Australia, where land and sea meet. On the left of screen is text: CSIRO’s values include people first; further together; making it real; and trust. CSIRO lives its values. In alignment with the Reconciliation Action Plan (2021+), CSIRO recognises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as Australia’s First Scientists. Our vision prioritises respectful collaboration with Indigenous Australia for impactful, Indigenous-led initiatives. In partnership with Indigenous communities, we integrate Indigenous leadership and knowledge into science delivery through respectful engagement. This ensures that solutions align with Indigenous science and research needs, demands, and priorities.]

Now, I’ll briefly introduce the Indigenous Science and Engagement Program. One of the things I’d like to say firstly is that the organisations values are important to CSIRO. CSIRO’s values include people first; further together; making it real; and trust. CSIRO lives its values. In 2021 the Indigenous Science Engagement Program was established. In furtherance of its Reconciliation Action Plan (2021+), CSIRO has organisationEllie acknowledged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as Australia’s First Scientists. As an organisation we’re driven by a vision of investing in the science landscape in respectful partnership with Indigenous Australia with a particular emphasis on Indigenous-led impact and mutual benefit. We do this in partnership with Indigenous people through respectful engagement and active listening and embedding Indigenous leadership and knowledge into science and research and, more importantly, co-deliver in a way that meets Indigenous peoples science and research needs, demands, and priorities.

For many indigenous people ISEP is the first and sometimes only experience they’ll have with CSIRO. FundamentEllie ISEP and CSIRO collectively connect indigenous communities, government and industry to science and research. Currently the ISEP team comprises 25 staff, including indirect reports, and noticeably all positions within ISEP are held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

ISEP is steadfast in its commitment to enable and facilitate indigenous people, businesses organisations and communities to maximise their benefit as it may relate to their indigenous land and sea estates and/or from their innovation, creativity and ingenuity. This support is provided in a culturally respectful way.

You’ll hear examples of this throughout today’s webinar and going forward I’d like to now hand over to Mr Shane Dexter, the Branch Manager of Business and Economic Policy with NIAA. Shane?

[Image changes to slide with heading: Our Strategy - Indigenous Science and Engagement (ISEP). Underneath are the purpose, vision and indigenous science and engagement goal subheadings. Slide is broken down into objectives, challenges, impact areas and strategy milestones.]

Shane Dexter: Thanks very much, Terry. I’d also like to acknowledge Country. Today I’m dialling in from Ngunnawal Country but I know we’ve got people dialling in from all over Australia. So I’d like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of lands and waters, from all the places that we find ourselves dialling in from today. I pay my respects to the Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge their continuing connections to land, waters and community.

[Image changes to slide with heading: First Nations entrepreneurs: leaders and innovators - NIAA. Text underneath: Mr Shane Dexter, Branch Manager, Business and Economic Policy Branch, National Indigenous Australians Agency. To right of screen is a log and text: National Indigenous Australians Agency.]

On behalf of the National Indigenous Australians Agency I’d like to welcome First Nations entrepreneurs who are currently operating businesses and those who aspire to turn their ideas into business opportunities. I’d also like to welcome our many partners representing government and non-government organisations who are in attendance today.

As Terry said, I lead the Business and Economic Policy Branch for the NIAA. The purpose of this branch is to support the development and growth of First Nations businesses. We know that First Nations business owners are innovators and leaders. Every day we meet with First Nations entrepreneurs who work in a range of fields, showcasing what First Nations businesses can do and can achieve.

We know that successful First Nations enterprises are pivotal in building stronger communities, broadening opportunities in training and education and in creating jobs. But not just any jobs. Indigenous businesses successfully and sustainably employ First Nations people in culturally safe workplaces at far higher rates than other organisations.

The success of these businesses has an enduring impact on First Nations communities and plays an important role in supporting all of us to deliver on Closing the Gap targets as well as the priority reforms.

Today you’re going to hear from First Nations entrepreneurs who have built successful businesses, representing a range of industries including agriculture, aquaculture and skincare. You’ll learn more about how scientific partnerships are helping to build on brilliant ideas while assisting First Nations communities to safeguard traditional knowledge.

We hope that everyone uses this seminar to learn, to be inspired, to generate new ideas and, most importantly, to build connections. It’s a please to work with the CSIRO to deliver this presentation and this webinar and I’ll hand back over to Terry and our partners. Thanks, Terry.

Terry Sparrow: Thank you, Shane. Next slide please, Ellie.

. On left is text: Facilitated by Ms Allison Hortle (Deputy Director, Energy). CSIRO Scientists and Researchers: Mr Ivan Martinez-Botella (Manufacturing) in lieu of Dr Katherine Locock, Dr Brendan Trewin (Health & Biosecurity), Dr Cathy Robinson (Environment), Dr Tansyn Noble (Agriculture and Food).]RV Investigator[Image changes to slide with heading: Panel Discussion 1 - CSIRO Scientists and Researchers. On right of screen is a picture of

Okay, I would now like to hand over to Ms Allison Hortle, Deputy Director of Energy, to facilitate this part of today’s webinar. Allison? All yours.

Allison Hortle: Thanks, Terry, and thanks everybody. I’m really glad to be here today and I’d also like to pay my respects to the Traditional Owners of the lands in which I'm sitting on today, which is the Whadjuk, the lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation, and pay my respects to their elders, past and present.

So as I said, I'm really glad to be here today and to give you a bit of a bit of a taste of what CSIRO does and the work that we do across the, across the nation. I'm from the Energy Business Unit, my name is Allison Hortle. The Energy Business Unit looks at all aspects of the energy transition from renewables, gas, hydrogen, ammonia, etc., etc.

But today we've got a taste of some really excellent research and some really good projects that have been happening from other parts of the CSIRO organisation. So we've got Mr Ivan Martinez-Botella from the Manufacturing Unit. And he's talking in, in regards of Dr Katherine Locock who was unable to be with us today unfortunately. Then we have Dr Brendan Trewin from our Health and Biosecurity business unit, Dr Cathy Robinson from Environment and Dr Tansyn Noble from Agriculture and Food.

Each speaker will speak for about five minutes, give them, give a brief introduction of themselves and then talk about their project. We'd really like to encourage a conversation here today. We really want you to to feel that you can ask questions and put your questions in Slido and just make this really a conversation rather than just us talking all the time.

So without further ado, I'll hand over to the first of our speakers Mr Ivan Martinez-Botella, and he will speak to us about some of the really exciting stuff he's been doing. Next slide please. Ellie.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Nature-Inspired Medicines. Below this is a graphic that features three vertical images labelled Plants, Microbial Fermentation and Fungi on the left, four horizontal images labelled Extraction, Analysis, Biological Testing, Transfer Technology to Partner. From the final image are three others branched to the right, on top is Complementary Medicine, a the bottom is Registered Medicine and in the middle is a picture of sunscreens with a caption of www.ochresun.com]

Ivan Martinez-Bottella:  Hello everyone. I would like to begin by acknowledging the Bunurong people of the Kulin nation as the traditional owners of the land where I'm presenting from today. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present. I acknowledge the connection of First Nations peoples to the land, oceans and waterways. I acknowledge in caring for country and that they are the first scientists of this land. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people attending today.

My name is Ivan Martinez. I'm part of the Botanical pharmaceuticals team led by Dr Katherine Locock, who unfortunately couldn't attend today. Our team focuses on plant based medicines. We can investigate methods of extraction and analysis of active ingredients. We work closely with biologists to test for things like antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and toxicity properties. We have expertise in scaling up processes from small batches to large scale manufacture, and transferring the technology to our partners to achieve the goal of providing new products to market containing native plant extracts for the benefit of First Nations businesses, organisations and communities.

At CSIRO, we have worked closely in partnership with indigenous businesses like Native Secrets and Ochresun on Native Botanicals. You'll hear about their experiences a bit later.

When we work… can you, next slide please, Ellie? Thank you.

[Image changes to slide that has text on one side: We respectfully bring together First Nations & western science. First Nations governance. ICIP protection. Transfer IP to First Nations partner to derive full benefit for their community. Main part of slide is a diagram done in Aboriginal style by Maddie Fulton illustrating the journey of scientific discovery]

When we work with First Nations partners, we ensure we do it respectfully. We recognise how valuable cultural knowledge is and hold ourselves legEllie accountable for protecting this knowledge through indigenous cultural and intellectual property or ICIP clauses in all our agreements. Which means that all IP generated by our research and the traditional knowledge shared with us will remain the property of our First Nations partners for the benefit of their communities.

We also recognise the depth and wisdom of over 65,000 years worth of continuous living knowledge that First Nations people hold. Our science will be far richer if we find ways to bring our two knowledge systems together respectfully. To do this, we are changing how we approach science.

On this slide, the artwork of one of our talented researchers is shown. Maddie Fulton is a Djaara and Bunurong woman. Maddie created this artwork thinking about the circles and spirals to show healing and meeting together under river showing the journey we are all taking in scientific discovery together.

On a personal note, interacting with our First Nations partners has been an enriching experience and combining traditional knowledge with Western science to benefit indigenous businesses and communities is a privilege and an honour. Thank you very much for your time and feel free to contact us if you'd like to find out more about collaborating in the Botanical Extracts space.

Allison Hortle:  I thank you, Ivan. That was a really nice presentation.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Zenadth Kes Invasive Mosquito Control. Underneath are images of scientists and First Nations people, mosquitos and images relating to the work]

And again for the audience, we have ten minutes at the end of the Slido session for questions, so please feel free to ask any questions of any of our speakers. So now I'll hand over to our next speaker, which is Dr Brendan Trewin. Thank you.

Brendan Trewin:  Thanks and good morning everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to present our Zenadth Kes Invasive Mosquito Control Project. I am presenting from the lands of the yuggera and Turrbal people here in Brisbane, and I'd like to acknowledge all of the First Nations lands from which we are meeting today.

My name is Dr Brendan Trewin and I'm a senior research scientist in the Health and Biosecurity Business unit here at CSIRO. I've been working for over 15 years on invasive and life threatening mosquitoes, such as the yellow fever mosquito and the Asian tiger mosquito shown here and which is currently found in a in Australia and Pacific communities.

Our Invasive Mosquito Control project is focused on partnering with the indigenous communities in the Torres Strait. Over the past two years, we've been engaging with key stakeholders like local councils, Queensland Health and the Peak Native Title Authority, Gur A Baradharaw Koo, GBK, to explore the potential for indigenous mosquito control of these invasive and non-native mosquito species found in the Torres Strait.

They spread diseases such as Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya. The Torres Strait is still vulnerable to these diseases, with the last Dengue outbreak occurring in 2017 and there were two deaths caused by the disease in 2003. So these indigenous communities are considered vulnerable to vector borne diseases.

Over the past two years, we've had commercial conversations with key indigenous stakeholders in the Torres Strait around their interest in preventing mosquito borne disease. Our goal in these conversations was to ensure that we were working with a free, prior and informed consent or FPIC strategy. We were invited back by communities to continue conversations, which has led to an expression of interest with GBK that focuses on four pillars of our partnership seen here in the bottom right of my slide.

These pillars include pillar one, openly exploring mosquito control technologies that will benefit indigenous communities. Pillar two, working together in partnership with all stakeholders. Pillar three, jobs, training and educational opportunities such as sending students to our partner organisation in the North, James Cook University. And finEllie, pillar four, sustainable enterprise ensuring that whatever is created is sustainable into the future.

Conversations have recently focused on a genetic biocontrol technology already being deployed commercially in other countries, such as the US and Brazil. CSIRO has invested in the creation of an Asian tiger mosquito self-limiting system with our commercial partner Oxitec. This is the most advanced genetic biocontrol technology of its kind in the world that empowers communities to deploy, maintain and protect themselves from mosquito borne disease, preventatively and sustainably.

The Asian tiger mosquito is also threatening to invade the Australian mainland and if it did, this mosquito could spread from the Torres Strait all the way down the East Coast to Melbourne, spreading Dengue through our cities once again.

The genetic biocontrol technology is designed to be deployed into remote areas by sending mosquito eggs through the mail, where these eggs can be hatched and deployed locally by communities. Technology is 100% environmentEllie friendly. It only releases male mosquitoes which don't bite. And these males then go on to mate with wild type female mosquitoes, which then produce more males and so on.

In this way we can suppress or even eradicate an invasive mosquito population. So these life threatening mosquitoes can no longer spread disease. You can see here on my slide are some photos from our latest adventures on Boigu and Saibai Islands in the Torres Strait, where we are partnering with indigenous communities by training and employing local communities. We are hoping it will be these keen individuals will assist us in the development of an indigenous business to deploy the biocontrol technology once we pass regulatory approvals in the near future.

As such, it is still early days for the commercial opportunity, but we're hoping to announce a new partnership over the next two months. If you have any questions or interest in being part of our journey, please reach out to either myself or the CSIRO Indigenous Science and Engagement Program, and we'll be happy to help. Thanks very much.

Allison Hortle: Thanks, Brendan. That's a really interesting piece of work.

[Image changes to slide titled: Digital Women Ranger Program. Subheading is: Learning digital skills to care for the Country together. There is a logo for www.healthycountryai.org and an image of four indigenous women who are all looking at a camera trap attached to a tree or fencepost]

Can I now pass over to Dr Brendan, sorry, to Cathy Robinson from the Environment Business Unit to talk about one of her projects, please. And again, if you do have any questions or have any thoughts, anything at all that you'd like to ask any of our presenters or any of us really, please feel free to put them into the chat.

Cathy Robinson: Thank you, everybody. So I'm Cathy Robinson, and I'm the Research Lead of the Digital Women Ranger program, and I want to acknowledge the on behalf of the 91 indigenous women Land and Sea Managers we have across 13, I think ten communities at last count across West Arnhem Land and Kakadu, that this, that is part of this program. It's going to be funded for the next few years, and we're really keen and interested in building that network. So please reach out if you're interested to join us.

This program began in 2022. And it was formed following requests from indigenous women rangers to offer a culturally safe way to collect, use, and share data to tell a story about country. Part of that is thinking about digital skills and confidence to do that. And we're governed by a digital boss lady committee, that’s made up of representatives from across those groups. Together we're applying and trialling and co-designing innovative ways to enhance the confidence of indigenous women to use data and AI and also build really unique ways of applying that to support on-country monitoring and management programs.

If you see the link on this slide, all that is shared that is part of that so that everyone can utilise that material. Including, there's some just training resources that came up yesterday from Wardekken ladies who are really doing some great work with using AI to support their range of work with camera traps.

The program supports on-country learning workshops and peer-to-peer exchanges, and we're really focusing here on enabling women rangers to learn and share those ranges of digital skills in a culturally responsible way. This is things like drones, camera traps, touch GISs, and other skills that are needed to monitor significant species and places.

We've also done a partnership with Charles Darwin Uni so that those modules, and when you've completed those you earn digital badges and they're co-verified by cultural and technical authorities. And again, all those modules are available on this website.

What's been exciting about this, I think from  all of our point of view is that we're really starting to think about the practice of what culturally responsible digital skills and AI looks like and actually how to apply that in a really practical way to support on-country land and sea management programs.

It’s also started to think about principles like care principles of data sovereignty, and what does that actually look like when we start to set up data partnerships as part of that on-country care. And, last but not least, is how do we then pipeline that talent that we're building through these digital badges, peer-to-peer learning, and on-country experiments to be able to provide a pipeline of talent which has got an educational pathway and also to build digital jobs on country.

I'm really happy to answer any questions. And do reach out and our websites and socials are coming out live as of Friday. So reach out if you want to join the gang. Thank you.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Low-input Prawn Farming. Below that is a graphic of a river like timeline with various points along the timeline from 2021 through to 2024. These are labelled partnering, engagement, relationship building, co-design, sustainability.]

Allison Hortle: Sorry, I forgot to unmute. Thanks, Cathy. That's a really nice presentation. And again, questions, please put them into the chat.

And so our last speaker is from the Agricultural and Food Business Unit, and it's Dr Tansyn Noble. Thanks, Tansyn. Tansyn, are you there? We seem to have lost Tansyn.

Tansyn Noble:Can you hear me?

Allison Hortle:Yes, yes, yes, we can hear you now.

Tansyn Noble: Sorry about that. So. Hi. Hi, everyone. I'm Tansyn. I'm calling in from Larrakia country up here in Darwin, and I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to our Tiwi partners.

I'm the local Darwin girl, having grown up here and feel very lucky and privileged to be working on this project that is so close to home and with such a potential for a positive impact to local communities in the North.

So the project is around developing low-input prawn farming that we believe is suited to coastal indigenous communities across northern Australia. To do this, we're building a demonstration prawn farm to assess viability and community readiness. The long-term vision is that the demonstration farm will grow into an indigenous-owned and operated aquaculture business, and other communities across the north can also develop similar enterprises.

The concept has been within the program for over a decade now, but I'm going to share with you a shorter version. So on the slide here is a bit of a roadmap of how our northern low-input prawn farming project has gone so far, with some of the highlights I've put in the bubbles there that you can see.

So in 2021, we began a new approach to identifying potential indigenous partners. This was through an open expression of interest call rather than directly seeking out partners directly. We believe that this EOI process was a more open and fair process for identifying possible partners. And this is where our partnership with Tiwi Resources and the Portaminni Trust began.

Tiwi resources represent the eight clan groups on the Tiwi Islands and were the successful applicant of the EOI process. In the early phase of the project, we did a lot of stakeholder engagement, working closely with Tiwi Resources who facilitated many of the community meetings, director meetings, meetings with Land Council, and so forth.

In the early days, we also did a lot of site suitability assessments. This started off with a more of a desktop approach that then grew to on-the-ground field trips and sample collection, and you can see in that second bubble there that was a photo taken from Bathurst Island on a soil sample collection field trip. Throughout this process, we've incorporated local knowledge such as areas of play, site accessibility, cultural significance, etc., to identify a single site on the Tiwi Islands to work with. This ended up being an area in Warankuwu on the western side of Bathurst Island under the Portaminni Trust.

In 2022, we secured access to a local aquaculture facility in Darwin, and this has been really important for the project. It's enabled us to carry out relevant research at a commercial scale, and by doing so we've been able to identify some of the local challenges and find solutions to these. The goal is that this knowledge can be transferred from the Darwin site to the demonstration farm at Warankuwu, Bathurst Island.

We've also carried out a series of workshops with our partners mapping out what the demonstration farm might look like and an ongoing project. And I'm happy to share with you that the farm already has a name, Mapurlarri Prawn Farm Warankuwu. You can see that in the top right there.

Another highlight during this project has been travelling to Vietnam last year. Ron and Anthony from Portaminni and Tiwi Resources joined us on this trip, where we visited a range of prawn farms and were able to listen and learn from Vietnamese prawn farmers and their shared experience of low-input prawn farming. And there you can see a photo of Ron over in Vietnam.

Right now, we're intensively trying to finalise concept engineering designs, project costings, and planning in preparation for the next phase of our project. This next phase will hopefully see a new prawn farm being built at Warankuwu on Bathurst Island, producing big delicious tiger prawns like you can see on the screen.

I just want to finalise by saying throughout this process, we've built strong relationships with all the partners, but in particular, Ron and the Warankuwu Clan group who have been open, enthusiastic, and, most importantly, patient with us.

We're at a pivotal but exciting time in the project where we're seeking funding to develop the Mapurlarri prawn farm, and hopefully, this will come to fruition later this year. Thank you.

Allison Hortle: Thanks, Tansyn.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Panel Discussion 1. Subheading: Q&A via Slido. Facilitated by Ms Allison Hortle. Image is a split circle of the sun and sky to the left, solar panels to the right.]

So, this concludes the presentation from our researchers. We now have a few minutes for questions and discussion. Please put your questions into Slido. I hope you've enjoyed these presentations. Just to let you know, this is just a taste of some of the exciting work we're doing in this space with our Indigenous partners. We're always looking for more opportunities, so this is just a glimpse. There are many more exciting opportunities that you'll hear about as the seminar continues.

But I'll now turn to the questions. I'll just go to the top one on Slido. This is for Brendan. Can you please talk a little bit about how Indigenous science is integrated into the Western science methodologies in the mosquito workplace?

Brendan Trewin: Okay. It's a good question. It's still very early days in the science. The last two years have really been around the commercial opportunity because our intent here is to build an Indigenous capacity to deliver the service, which will then go on to preventatively protect communities. So it's still very early days in how we integrate traditional knowledge and scientific practices into the way we would do it through our Western ways. Obviously, there's a lot of traditional knowledge around stories and mosquitoes and those cultural stories and dances. We're looking to integrate that into how we do our communications more broadly but also into educational activities but those are still to be developed. And we are working in partnership, obviously led by GBK, on how best to integrate.

Allison Hortle: Thanks, Brendan. Now we have a couple of questions for Cathy about the work that the Rangers do. And how does digital literacy help with that or what's the thinking around digital literacy?

Cathy Robinson: Thank you. So part of our programs allows anyone with digital skills or confidence to be part of that. So we encourage everyone, even if you're just at the starting journey, to be involved right to the other end, which is trialling out, you know, AI programs to support your camera trap data. Workshops start to work out what our digital confidence is, which is self-assessed. And part of that effort is about, you know, being a woman ranger, part of that's about your digital literacy and skills, and part of that's about your country and access to country and how confident you are. And together then we start to tailor those programs so that that really fits in with that particular context.

We also then support a very small story about country with data. So, for example, we've got the program set up so that you can go from green blue to really, you know, high levels. So the first step is even just setting up a drone in the sky and thinking about some of the cultural protocols you need to do to think about it. So that very, very first step allows us to have a conversation around that very starting point or when we started to use touch GIS skills, for example, how do we think about what a dot on the, you know, which we put on a screen? What does that mean for both in terms of cultural protocols about representing that dot, sharing that data around that dot, and also some of the other species that might be around that dot that we want we're really curious about.

We go from that scale right up to trialling how rangers can apply AI tools to help process that data. So we're really keen to think about that from not only just collecting data but also caring for that data and sharing that data. So we take people through that whole part of the journey with each group guiding that way and happy again to respond individually if that's if needed.

Allison Hortle: Okay. Thanks, Cathy. I'm sure there's a couple more questions coming up for you. And this is a question for Ivan. From anonymous. I'd like to hear more about natural medicines and how you find plants which might have which might be beneficial and how do you find those ones as opposed to some ones that don't?

Ivan Martinez-Botello: Thanks for the question. Well, we don't really look for plants. We just engage with businesses and communities, and they do have the knowledge about the plants and they have the knowledge about the medicinal properties of the plants. So basicEllie, we just corroborate using Western science what the properties of the plants are, what the medicinal properties could be, and then ways of combining the traditional methods of extraction and the way they apply the extracts again, combining with the Western science. So we pretty much follow the direction of our Indigenous partners.

Allison Hortle: Well, that's great. Thanks, Ivan. Another one from Chris for you. Cathy, curious if East Arnhem ranger groups are participating in the Digital Women Ranger program. And if not, Chris is happy to make introductions and promote the program.

Cathy Robinson: Yeah. Thank you. Well, I was actually on the phone with the Southeast Arnhem landers this morning. And I guess this is a classic case of some groups are going, “well, how do I even start?” And so we actually support and resource a digital plan with those groups. So you can actually just even have that meeting together to start to think about what is our first steps on that data journey.

And that's been quite a critical entry point because if we start this conversation it can be a bit overwhelming for many groups. So we sit down, and we think about what our assets are. We think about what the stories we want to tell. We think about who wants to be resourced to be part of that, and which cultural authorities also want to be resourced to make sure that that's not only technicEllie safe and able but also also culturally safe. So yeah, East Arnhem Lands is the other part of that journey has been I think that the East Arnhem Landers have turned up to our annual NTNRM digital women's workshop that brings everyone in and we resource people to come together. And that's really to celebrate those stories we've told about country with data and also to start to plan together about what we all need as a collective so that we feel really confident to work together.

Allison Hortle: Thanks, Cathy. There's a question here that's come in which I think is really important, which is about how traditional knowledge and intellectual property and research IP is protected for the community. But I think that's going to be addressed in the next couple of panel sessions, am I right? Terry.

Terry Sparrow: ICIP. No, it wasn't planned, but Louisa may be able to provide some light in relation to ICIP development across CSIRO.

Louisa Warren: Sure, would you like me to do that now, Terry?

Terry Sparrow: If you like. Yes, please.

 

Louisa Warren: Okay. Hi, everyone. I'm going to facilitate the next session, but I'll just quickly respond to the question. So recently we have just released a set of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property principles. We will share a link to that document in the chat function so you can all view the ICIP principles. And those principles really set out how CSIRO collaborates with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and how we recognise ICIP, and how we will look after and reflect those commitments in our contracts and our ways of working. So really great and really exciting news that we finalised and launched that at in November last year. So we're really proud that this document is now public and available for everyone to use. And if you have any questions at all in terms of ICIP, please don't hesitate to reach out, and we'd be happy to have a conversation out of this session. Thanks, Terry.

Allison Hortle: Thanks, Louisa. I've got a couple of minutes left, and I have a lot more questions, so I'm going to apologise to all those people in advance for those whose questions I don't get to, and encourage you again to reach out to us directly for those, for some of those to answer those questions, we're more than happy to chat about these things. So a couple of questions I'm just going to quickly select. So Sarah has asked if there are opportunities for Indigenous students to participate in work experience at the prawn farm, and are there are other aquaculture research projects on the horizon?

Tansyn Noble:  Yep, that one's definitely for me. So yes, there is an opportunity for work experience at our current local site in Darwin. We're always willing to take on more hands to help us there. And yes, there are opportunities for other aquaculture species across the north. So prawns are what we're working with, we believe there is potential for them to be farmed with low input. But there are many other great species such as a local oyster, the blacklip oyster, which is also being trialled by Tiwi and other communities across the north. From a freshwater perspective, there's Red Claw and Cherubin that I know of. So there are other species though this project is currently looking at or focusing on, such as tiger prawns. But that's not to say in the future that this model might be adapted and to other species.

Allison Hortle:  Thanks, Tansyn. There’s just a quick comment. Cathy, there's a question around. Are you working with Renee Dodd, whose work is facilitating a women's biosecurity rangers program in the NT? But before you answer that, I'm actually going to skip to a perhaps a more important, not a more, a bigger question for the panel about what do you, what, for each of the researchers, what are the indicators that you use to measure how successful or what improvements need to be made to with your Indigenous engagement and partnership? How do you measure how it's going and look for ways to make it better? Just I'll open that up to the panel for whoever.

Cathy Robinson:  Maybe I'll kick off as a starting point. So for each group, we have principles behind this digital women's ranger program that was co-designed with our Indigenous partners and after each session we asked those Indigenous partners to evaluate us, and in the spirit of learning and improvement. We’ve also contracted an independent Indigenous evaluation of this program, and that's just coming out hopefully next week. And part of that's because we can tell each other we're awesome, but it's really nice to have someone else to come in and do a yarning approach so that we can just support some of the perspectives. We thought given that's halfway through the program, it's a good chance to do that.

We're networked across the program. So we're also starting to work in Queensland, and I think really keen to be connected with other groups. So please don't feel like this is just West Arnhem/Kakadu. For example, next week there's a digital, there's a Women's ranger conference happening in Northern Queensland and with Renee and our partners, there's going to be a a session there about using digital skills as part of that. So we're really keen to connect and value add to existing programs. And that's another example of what we do for that.

Allison Hortle:  Thanks, Cathy. Any of the other three presenters quickly want to, because we're about to wrap up and move to the next session. Any of our other three presenters like to make a quick comment on, on that question? Okay. No. That's fine. We're actually at. Oh, sorry. Did you want to say something? Brendan?

Brendan Trewin:  Just, I just wanted to say that because we are we are just working in a commercial space at the moment and applying our FPIC strategy for prior informed consent. It really has been up to the communities to invite us back to continue conversations and, and ensuring through any process and MOU process that we are aligning with the priorities, particularly around everyone might have heard the message from [indistinct 41:18] statement trying to align with strategic documents like that.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Panel Discussion 2 - CSIRO Funding Programs and Entrepreneurial Services. Text below: Facilitated by Ms Louisa Warren (A/Deputy Director - Strategy & Engagement), CSIRO Funders and Entrepreneurial Services: Dr Megan Sebben (Kickstart/SME Connect), Dr Cas Sedran-Price (Indigenous Research Grants), Ms Penny Harth (Strategic Delivery) in lieu of Ms Phoebe Jackson - Morison. Image to right is an image of a rocket and satellite above the earth]

Allison Hortle:  All right. Thanks, Brendan. And again, thank you all for all of you for your attention. And thank you for those who put questions in Slido. And I'm sorry we can't answer them. We will endeavour to get back to those questions and answer them off offline. But again, thank you all and all the presenters for a really interesting presentation. And now I'll hand over to my colleague Louisa Warren to talk about the next session. Thank you.

Louisa Warren:  Thanks Allison, and good afternoon everyone. My name is Louisa Warren. My family are from Badu Island up in the Torres Strait and I am dialling in from Turrbal, Jagera and Yuggera country here in beautiful sunny Brisbane where it's a lovely 24 degrees outside. So I just want to acknowledge Country and acknowledge all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples on the panel here today and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples who are dialling online.

So I have the great pleasure of facilitating our next discussion, and it's really great to see a number of the questions that are coming through in Slido, which hopefully this session will address some of your questions. So really great to hear to kick us off in terms of some of the examples of the research projects that are currently happening within CSIRO.

So the big question will then be how do we apply for funding? What sort of programs are available? How can my community get involved because we've got a similar priority that we would like to address within our community? So this is what the next session is about, which is about what funding programs are available and entrepreneurial services that CSIRO has to offer, whether you're a small to medium business, whether you're an Aboriginal organisation or a corporation. This session will give you some insights in terms of what support is available.

[Image changes to slide with heading: SME Connect Programs. Under this is a graphic naming the program horizontally - Innovate to Grow, Generation STEM Links, CSIRO Kick-Start, RISE Accelerator. Below are several other headings which address the information contained in the graphic. They are labelled: Summary, SME eligibility, Project/Program length, Research Organisation, Matched funding or grant.]

So without further ado, my role before I jump into where I'm from and where my mob is from, my role as the Deputy Director for Indigenous Science and Engagement. I'm currently acting in this role.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Panel Discussion 2 - CSIRO Funding Programs and Entrepreneurial Services. Text below: Facilitated by Ms Louisa Warren (A/Deputy Director - Strategy & Engagement), CSIRO Funders and Entrepreneurial Services: Dr Megan Sebben (Kickstart/SME Connect), Dr Cas Sedran-Price (Indigenous Research Grants), Ms Penny Harth (Strategic Delivery) in lieu of Ms Phoebe Jackson - Morison. Image to right is an image of a rocket and satellite above the earth]

But back as of next week when our Director is back on board, I'm also the Executive Manager for Indigenous Engagement and led the work around the ICIP principles, which I mentioned earlier.

So without further ado, I would love to introduce our panel here this afternoon. So joining us on the line, we have Dr Megan Sebben who will talk us through the Kickstart and the Small to Medium Enterprise Connect program that we have available within CSIRO. Shortly followed will be by Dr Cassandra Sedran-Price, who is the lead for our Indigenous Research Grants program and followed by Ms Penny Harth from our Strategic Delivery team in lieu of Ms Phoebe Jackson, who couldn't be here today but does send her apologies. So next slide, Ellie, and I will throw over to Dr Megan to introduce herself. Thank you.

[Image changes to slide with heading: SME Connect Programs. Under this is a graphic naming the program horizontally - Innovate to Grow, Generation STEM Links, CSIRO Kick-Start, RISE Accelerator. Below are several other headings which address the information contained in the graphic. They are labelled: Summary, SME eligibility, Project/Program length, Research Organisation, Matched funding or grant.]

Megan Sebben:  Hi Louisa and thanks everybody. It's great to be here. I'm travelling today so it's a pleasure to join you all from the traditional lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation here in Sydney. And I'm very lucky to be here on such a beautiful day as well.

So so my as I said, my name is Megan. I'm the program manager of CSIRO's Kickstart program. So I will give a really quick high level overview of SME Connect so you know where we sit in the organisation.

So essentially our team exists to support small to medium sized Australian businesses to be able to work with CSIRO in a number of different ways. So if you can see the table in front of me, we've got four key programs that we deliver in SME connect. Innovate to Grow is really focused on sort of that training and development in the sense of, you know, maybe you're a small business that thinks you'd like to get support from a research organisation like CSIRO, but maybe you don't know where to start. Maybe the idea of approaching the organisation, something like this is quite overwhelming. Innovate to Grow is a free ten week training program that will actually put you in touch with mentors, give some course structure on how you would go about developing a project that a university or CSIRO, somebody like that might be able to help you with. And then at the end of it you sort of walk away with this this document that you can go and take to a potential research partner, in many cases that might actually be CSIRO.

So that leads me to the Kickstart program. So number three there in in those columns which is the the program that I currently run. And essentially what we do is we're not really a grant. We call ourselves a voucher because we're not paying cash to the company. What we do is we provide dollar-for-dollar matched funding to support the cost of a project that you would like to do with CSIRO's researchers. The idea is that this project will help you fast-track your pathway to commercialising your product or taking a product to market.

So, later in the third panel today, where you're hearing from some of our indigenous business partners, I'm really excited that three of our Kickstart alumni will be speaking as part of that. So, I won't deep dive too much, but basicEllie what happens with Kickstart is a business, an eligible business—so they need to be a company—will come to us and say, "Hey Megan, we really want to do X, Y, and Z." You know, maybe you want to look at what components of a plant that you use for medicinal purposes, maybe you want to find out how to extract it or what parts are anti-inflammatory, something like this. So, you'll do an expression of interest to the Kickstart program, and then my job is to go and find who in the organisation might be able to do that piece of work for you. And if we can find someone, then we'll connect you to them. And from there, you'll work together to come up with the idea of a project, what the deliverables from that might be, and then you would apply to have up to half of the cost—so 50% of the cost of the project—funded by Kickstart. And we offer a maximum of $50,000 per project, and you can do that twice.

So, eligible companies could access up to $100,000 from us to support these research collaborations with CSIRO to help develop your product or what it is that you want to take to market. And so, we're open all year round. That's the other really key thing about Kickstart. We don't have due dates, we don't have specific intake. Whenever you're ready, you can reach out to myself or my team, and we will, for lack of a better word, kickstart the process for you. I'm sorry, I had to throw that one in.

And I'll just—I know we don't have a lot of time, so I'm just going to really briefly touch on the other programs that we run. Generation STEM Links is specific to New South Wales, and that's more of a business internship for New South Wales STEM undergraduate or equivalent students. So, if you're interested in, say, like a placement or an internship as a student in a company, this is a really great way. And there is funding and support of a $250,000 grant to put that together.

We then have our newest program that's just launched this year, and that's for slightly larger companies who are at the moment in more of the environmental circular economy climate tech market that are maybe looking to expand into India. So, this program, the RISE Accelerator, will support Australian and Indian startups to do that sort of cross-border expansion. And there's cash funding of up to $75,000 to support that as well.

So, if any of those sound interesting, whether it's some initial training, how do I go about these sorts of collaborations, through to I've got a business and we really need to, you know, refine our product, we want to put AI into our app, whatever it is, we can support those sorts of things. And then for those companies that are a little bit bigger, if you're looking at going maybe into another market, then we possibly have an offering there as well. So, we're really happy to connect with you, and you know, you can reach out to us, and if it's not my particular program or my particular part of the organisation that's the right one, we can still be that connector and get you talking to the right people that might be able to help your business take the next step. Thank you.

Louisa Warren: Fantastic. Thank you so much for talking us through the programs. There's quite a lot of options there, and no doubt a lot of people will be taking notes online and perhaps reaching out afterwards, where we will share everyone's contact details. So, thank you.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Indigenous Research Grants. Subheading: Address priorities raised by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, voices, knowledges and perspectives. Below this are three icons explaining the three main principles of the program.]

My next speaker is Dr Cassandra Sedran-Price, who I will now throw to to talk to us about the indigenous research grants. Over to you, Cas.

Cassandra Sedran-Price: Thanks so much, Louisa. I’d just first like to acknowledge that I'm coming to you from the lands of the Bunurong people here today in sunny Melbourne. And Melbourne's really put on a nice show of weather this week, so it's been great. I'm a proud Muruwari woman of the Gunggari clan, so I've led and helped develop the indigenous research grants and in CSIRO as well I also lead some of the indigenous data sovereignty work that's up and coming.

So, these Indigenous Research Grants, at the moment it's been an internal process, and because it's sort of been like a little bit of a pilot study over the last sort of four or leading into the last four years, so it'll be, they were launched in 2022, and at the moment we've got over 30 research projects funded through the IRG, which is about $6 million of funding.

So, the purpose of these research grants is really to increase Indigenous leadership and partnership with CSIRO researchers as well as the community. And it's based on a research paradigm that really reflects and responds to the development of cultural, social, environmental, and economic priorities identified by our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their communities. So, I just want to really stress that point that it's not CSIRO going into a community and saying, "Hey, we're here, we're scientists, we're here to fix your issues." What we're actually supporting in this research grants is actually the community's needs and priorities.

We're hoping that this program actually creates a different, a two-way learning opportunity to help advance indigenous science, indigenous capability, and support the self-determination of our communities. So, when we're going through this research grant and the different sorts of questions that we've come up with for the assessment, we're actually looking at how our indigenous scientists such as Cathy are looking at building that community capability around indigenous science and also bringing in and supporting postdocs or PhD students or honours students within this sort of area or even technical offices.

And what we're with this research grants as well, it's really a one-of-a-kind, purposely designed and supported grant process which is delivered in a culturally safe way. The research grants are also embedded with the care principles. So, we've got pathways in here, and particularly through the assessment criteria where we asked our indigenous scientists how is intellectual, cultural, and intellectual property or indigenous cultural intellectual property being protected, and what avenues have you taken to support indigenous data sovereignty and indigenous data governance throughout the project?

The IRG has several different categories. We've got a $50,000 project planning stage, and that's really, you know, like I was saying before, it's one of a kind because other grant processes don't actually provide a start-up sort of project money. And that's really to really embed in those indigenous governance processes, but also to have those conversations around and and with the communities around what the needs and priorities are.

All aspects of the grants process from design through to delivery, assessment, and ongoing management is indigenous led. So, we have an all-indigenous panel that assesses those grants and myself and previously it's been Fiona Smallwood, but now we've also got Talitha and Shari, have been assisting with those grants to help manage them. As I said, like we've delivered, there’s over 30 successful projects on the go at the moment, and they range from everything from health and biosecurity initiatives right through to environmental, and even Alana has just been really successful. She's been supporting her next phase from Kickstart into the research grants as well. So, hopefully, Alana can touch base or touch on her next part of the project which is being supported through the IRG, and yeah, that's the IRG and a bit of a nutshell. Thanks, Louisa.

Louisa Warren: Thanks, Cas, and thanks for talking us through some of the design and the thinking that's gone into the development of the Indigenous Research Grants, and yeah, it's really great to see everything that we spoke about earlier in terms of protecting indigenous cultural and intellectual property.

[Image changes to slide with heading: ON Innovation Program. Below is a table comparing focus, duration, effort, delivery, cost, incentive, IP, venture equity and annual intake between ON Prime and ON Accelerate. There is a graphic to the right of screen explaining highlights since 2015]

I saw there were some questions coming in about indigenous data in the Slido. So, really great to hear that coming through in terms of how applications are supported and assessed. So, thank you. So I would now like to introduce our final speaker for this session, which is Ms Penny Harth. Ms Penny will be talking us through the ON program that we have available at CSIRO. So over to you, Penny. Thank you.

Penny Harth: Thank you, Louisa, I’m delighted to be here today. I would also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands from where I am joining you all from, the Turrbal, Jagera, and Yuggera peoples in Brisbane. And I pay my respects to their elders, past and present.

So the ON program, the ON program is a federally funded initiative which is part of the University Research Commercialisation Action Plan. Now under this funding, we deliver two programs as you can see, ON Prime and ON accelerate. Some of you might be familiar with on we have been around since 2015, and we exist to help brilliant Australian researchers to create impact through their science and their technology. Since the program began, we've helped over 4800 people in over 1300 teams better understand their stakeholders by undertaking more than 38,000 customer discovery interviews. Seventy teams have gone on to create ventures, who are employing over 700 people and have raised over 320 million in capital.

So who is ON for? Under our current funding arrangements, each program requires at least one team member to be a researcher at an Australian research organisation - a university, a medical research institute, a publicly funded research association or CSIRO, for example. For ON Prime, we're looking for teams of two to five people. Alongside the one team member being from an Australian research organisation, the rest of the team can include people who are of value to you and your team. So it could be your colleagues, people from other research organisations, industry partners, communications professionals or someone from a technology transfer office. We find that cross-functional teams with a mix of technical and non-technical skills are ideal. All team members do need to be based in Australia for the duration of the program.

For ON accelerate, we're looking for teams of three to six people with a similar makeup of team members to ON prime - teams from an Australian startup or an SME that have licensed or acquired intellectual property from an Australian research organisation are also eligible to apply.

So ONPrime is our free pre-accelerator program. In this program, teams undertake customer discovery and market validation activities that enable them to take their research further. We work with researchers at any stage of their project and across all disciplines, mainly looking at early stage technology readiness levels. ON Prime is delivered over nine weeks in a hybrid model format with in-person and online facilitated sessions. Teams receive one on one guidance from their facilitators and their assigned mentors. At the end of the program, teams participate in a showcase event, which is a platform to present their progress and to network with the innovation ecosystem. The program is delivered across multiple cohorts across Australia depending on where we find the teams are located. Now each team's pathway through ON Prime is different. We've seen teams attract new funding, establish new partnerships, increase their industry engagement and improve the clarity around the focus of their research. Prime is run twice a year and we take approximately 50 teams through each time, so 100 teams per year. We have a program running at the moment that will wrap up from late June. The next intake will be open for applications shortly and that program will run from mid-September. If you're interested in knowing more, the Prime Showcase events are coming up, which I encourage you and welcome you along to attend. This time around they'll be delivered in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and virtuEllie.

ON accelerate is our free three month commercialisation acceleration program for entrepreneurial researchers who are looking to form a company. So in this program we focus on business models, market validation, storytelling and capital raising. Teams have access to venture capital partners and networks to help them secure capital for business development. Now important to note that with both our programs, all IP remains the property of the team or their sponsoring organisation. There is one intake of ON Accelerate each year for ten teams. We commence with a boot camp where we bring 20 teams along and select the top teams that progress through to the program. Similarly, Accelerate is delivered face to face and online. It ends with an Investor Demo Day, which is coming up on the 23rd of May in Sydney, followed by the Grand Finale Showcase event on the 5th of June in Melbourne.

Again, if you're interested in attending either of those events and finding out more, you are so welcome to come along and check them out. The next round of accelerate will open up in the first week of June and as you can see in both ON Prime and ON accelerate, teams have access to incentive funding based on their engagement and goals achieved throughout the program.

Regarding Indigenous teams, I'll just briefly touch on this. For the majority of our programs, unfortunately, we haven't been able to track teams or participants that have come from an indigenous background. This has changed recently, however, which we are really excited about. We are incredibly grateful that Darryl and his amazing team from Rainstick, who you'll hear from in another panel, came through ON Accelerate last year. We learned so much from them about engagement and the support provided to indigenous researchers and that's nothing to say about the incredible wisdom that they so generously shared with us in our program. We've been consulting with them and others in the innovation ecosystem and as part of our strategic priorities this year, we'll be reaching out wider to consult with indigenous peoples to try and address some of the challenges we know exist.

Championing diversity and inclusivity is a huge part of our programs, and something that myself and my team genuinely feel truly passionate about. We acknowledge that we're not quite there yet, but we are learning and we are listening and we are committed to reimagining how we deliver our programs. Thanks, Louisa.

Louisa Warren: Thanks, Penny, for talking us through the ON innovation program. It's a really great to hear.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Panel Discussion 2. Subheading: Q&A via Slido. Facilitated by Ms Louisa Warren. To the right is a split circle graphic of the sky, sun and clouds and then solar panels.]

And no doubt I was going to ask you to give me an example, but we've got Darryl on the line, so I'm going to save that space for for Darryl to speak first hand in terms of his experience for the ON Innovation program. So that brings us out to the close of our session. But before we do have a break, we now have time for questions and answers. So please, everyone use this time to really put forward in the Slido any questions that you have.

We do have a few coming through, so I'll start working through them. But by all means we've got about ten minutes for this session. So we really want to try and address some of your questions while we have the panel who are live here today to answer some of those questions. So I will start with the, there is a question here around the indigenous Research grants program. Cas. So how do, how can communities get involved? So you mentioned 30 projects earlier today. How if there are people on the line who have a particular priority that they would like to explore and want to partner with CSIRO, how do they get involved?

Cassandra Sedran-Price: Yeah. So the best thing at the moment, Louisa, as I explained this has been a bit of a pilot IRG like round and setting up. So at the moment a lot of our priorities have been coming through some of the established relationships or community getting in touch with the CSIRO researcher. So I think for the moment going forward, it'd be best to reach out to Terry's partnership team and then we can help facilitate the the right people to put you in touch with at CSIRO and in the right team there. So I think that's the best way going forward.

Louisa Warren: Fantastic. Thanks, Cas, because yeah, we do recognise our organisation is very large. We have, you know, over 6000 staff across the country, over 50 sites. So it's really great for community on the line in particular or any indigenous businesses have a point of contact. So Terry, no doubt you'll get a range of enquiries after today. So for Megan and Penny similarly. So if people are pursuing financial support, so we've heard from the IRG, any advice on how best to get in contact with you to understand some of the requirements for the program eligibility? What's the best way? I'll start with you, Megan.

Megan Sebben:  Thanks, Louisa. Yeah. So we've got, when you received the invites for today, that will be some links and things that come out. So one of the best places to start is our Kickstart website. That will go through what the eligibility criteria are. There's like a little video introduction and then the expression of interest form. But then also you can reach out to us directly. So Kickstart@csiro.au is our direct email to the whole team. And then either myself or a member of my team will organise a time to have a chat with you and discuss what your, your exact requirements are. And we can send you any of the documents and things you want to look at as well. But essentially high level overview, our website is a great place to start. There's also a FAQ section so Frequently Asked Questions, and it will go through some of those really key things about, you know, business type what happens with the IP, all those sorts of things. So you can start to get a feel if, if, if that one sounds like it might be a good fit for where your business is currently at.

 

Louisa Warren:  All right. Thanks, Megan. And Penny?

Penny Harth:  Yeah, thanks, Louisa. Similar to Megan, I'm more than happy to be contacted directly after the presentation to talk through the ins and outs and different specific eligibility criteria or benefits around the program, but also on the CSIRO website you'll find the innovation programs listed up there. There's a page for ON Prime and for ON accelerate as well that goes into a little bit more detail otherwise there's our general email address to ON@csiro.au, but more than happy to discuss individual sort of requirements. I know that they can sometimes vary and be different from person to person.

Louisa Warren:  Fantastic. Thanks, Penny. Megan, I'm going to come back to you. We've got a question here around the internship. One of the rounds open for businesses.

Megan Sebben:  For the generation Stem links, internships.

Louisa Warren:  I'm gathering. Yes. Yeah, yeah. The business internship.

Megan Sebben:  So I'll have to clarify whether or not they're a rolling program. So Gen Stem Links were also has its own website, but I'm very happy to follow that up, to see like if what if it's a rounds in terms of the matching. But we can certainly share some more information about that. And the website also will keep, the innovate to grow and those other programs it will put sort of when the next due dates are and if they're focusing on a specific topic as well.

Louisa Warren:  Right. Thank you. Just trolling through some of the questions. Really great comment here for the panel  - program sounds fascinating. The dynamics of the model is really exciting. So as a panel we can only see each other. So it's really nice to see some of this commentary coming through in the chat function for everyone that's online and watching and engaging in the webinar today.

There's a question here, and I think it's probably more of a comment as well. And it's really great that this webinar is being hosted in in collaboration and in partnership with National Indigenous Australians Agency. So it's just a general question around how can small businesses that are established that keep falling through the gaps since Covid and don't fit the large scale turnover. So any thoughts from anyone on the panel on this particular question around your criteria and eligibility?

Megan Sebben:  I can drop that in for Kickstart, so you don't need to, you can have no turnover and apply for Kickstart. So that, you would need to have some degree of investment to make the dollar matching. So that's generally starts at around sort of 5 to $10,000. But the way that businesses, you know, where businesses get that funding from can be varied. They might have secured a community grant. They might have maybe they've got a little bit of product on retail already. But you know, if the business is less than three years old, then as long as they're sort of a registered and registered for GST, they automaticEllie qualify. We only take the turnover and the income of the business actually only comes into consideration once they're older because we want to make sure that they're still a small business. So yeah, we're really here to service the small end of the market. The key thing being that they're still a company. So what that would exclude is say like a sole trader type business. They do need to be either a private company or could be a corporation. It could be a social enterprise as well, as long as they have that GST registration. So yeah, certainly don't let the the degree of establishment of the company put you off from having that conversation because we do have a few options available that can be quite suitable to really small businesses as well.

 

Louisa Warren:  Fantastic. Thanks, Megan. And that pretty much brings us out to time. So for those who have put questions in Slido, we will respond to those questions out of session. So thank you everyone for engaging in this really exciting conversation today. I've done my job, so I'm now going to hand you back to Terry. Thanks, Terry.

Terry Sparrow:  Thank you, Louisa. And to all our speakers and panel two discussion.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Break (10 minutes). To the right is an image of a CSIRO designed machine]

It's very, very interesting listening to to each of the discussions about your research and the the excitement going forward and the ability to finance that research to deliver on indigenous peoples research and science needs and priorities. So thank you.

The questions come up a fair bit in terms of being able to make contact. Now, in addition to what Megan said about going to the websites on the web link in the Expression of interest, which is always a good starting point, for those people who've registered for today's webinar that will include access to the PowerPoint presentation, all of the contact details for all of the facilitators and for all of the speakers is contained within the PowerPoint presentation towards the back. So people can contact you directly to expedite whatever query they may have. So there is the information to enable people online to, to follow up and have a further conversation with our scientists and researchers, our funders and our entrepreneurial services. So that information is definitely there.

I'm just going through my notes and I see that we've got a ten minute break. So this might be a good opportunity to let people replenish or refresh themselves. And we should meet back in ten minutes from now. So enjoy the ten minute break. Thanks, guys.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Panel Discussion 3 - Indigenous Business Partners. Text below: Facilitated by Mr Terry Sparrow (Executive Manager - Indigenous Partnerships, Strategy and Engagement.) CSIRO Indigenous Business Partners: Mr Darryl Lyons (Co-Founder and Chief Rainmaker - Rainstick), Ms Alana Kennedy (Founder and CEO - Ochre Sun), Mr Phil Thompson (Co-founder and Group Manager - Native Secrets), Mr Ron Poantumilui (Director, Portaminni Trust) and Mr Anthony Venes (Project Manager, Tiwi Resources). To the right is a split circle image with an underwater scene to the left and a land and river scene to the right.]

And please note that Mr Ron Poantumilui is an apology today due to family circumstances on the Tiwi Islands. There's going to be a slight change in the order of presenters and we're going to invite Mr Phil Thompson to talk about his research project and the nature of his engagement and partnership with CSIRO And the reason for that is, Phil, as I understand it, you got to catch a plane. So time is of the essence for you, so go for it.

Phil Thompson:  Thanks, Terry. Appreciate the flexibility, but for the first time in history, a Qantas flight is rocked up early.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Rainstick. Text below: We directly address the need for climate friendly interventions that increase crop yields so that farmers can be part of the solution. By treating seeds with electric fields (inspired by thunderstorms) we target enhanced yields in food crops without changing on-farm infrastructure. Behind the text is an image of a field of wheat with lightening striking in the far corner]

[Image changes to slide with heading: Native Secrets. Text below: Let us share our ancestors secrets with you. Sharing untold stories from Aboriginal culture to invigorate the body and restore its natural balance with mother earth. To the right of the text is an image of four bottles labelled body wash, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion.]

 So. I'm a Bidgara man. I'm acknowledging that I'm on Wiradjuri country today and I pay my respects to elders past and present and also acknowledge my brothers and sisters on the call and all the expertise that have dialled in today, I really appreciate the opportunity to share our story.

We are biodiversity managers at heart, that’s our core business. But what's unique about us is the trees that we thin out that have become invasive here in western New South Wales, we extract essential oil from and all based off traditional knowledge. And that oil then goes into our skincare brand, Native Secrets. We've had some success as the brand is growing and getting some recognition around the world now. We thought it was time for us to really have a look at how we can take our business to the next level.

And that's where we found the Kickstart program. And we applied for and the first round of Kickstart, we're in our second round now, but in the first instance we engaged CSIRO to have a look at extraction, extraction methodology with some of our native plants, or one particular native plant, actually, and how that could be transferable to other native plants that we work with. We've done that. It was hugely successful because the technology I thought we needed was no, it was probably the least effective. So it was, as far as we're concerned it saved us a lot of money in doing that research in the end and completely different to what we expected. So that was one great outcome for us.

The next round of Kickstart has started and we're looking at our essential oils and what's looking at that and what's, you know, the active bioactives in that and what that looks like. And we're also bringing the technology in-house. So we're vertically integrating our whole business. We could be cutting trees in the morning, extracting oils in the afternoon, making skincare at night, and extracting the bioactives of our native plants all at the same time. We're going to do that end to end. So we suspect in 12 months we'll be not only doing that for our own business, but we could be contract manufacturing for other indigenous communities around the country, using world-class technology.

Our goal was right from the beginning is to become world leaders in what we do. And that's why we partner with CSIRO. You know, we're bringing our Australia's first scientists and our information, and we're partnering with what we consider the world's best scientists to come up with some products that we can share with the world.

And for us, we've always wanted to come from a position of strength, so we're drawing on our 65,000-year knowledge and traditional knowledge where we can share with not just Australia, and for us it's the real Australian story is our last 65,000 years, but also around the world to build economic prosperity in all our communities. The model we've built here in Dubbo on Wiradjuri Country can be replicated in any community. And we're learning more and more about export every day. We literally had a conversation with Chinese exporters today here in Dubbo, they were visiting. So we're learning more and more about export. It's a difficult world, but hopefully we can lead the way in that as well.

And at the same time, really promote reconciliation where it becomes Australia's story, where we're all talking about, we're all talking about the last 65,000 years of occupation and what we can learn and share from that and reconcile this country. So that's what we're really passionate about. Thanks, Terry. Thanks, everybody.

 

Terry Sparrow: Look, Phil, thank you for that. Thanks for sharing, I really do appreciate that. And look, I know you're pushed for time because you want to jump on that plane, so look, if you need to go, go. But look, we do appreciate your time and thank you for sharing your knowledge. And again, like as I said earlier, it's very much appreciated. So thank you. Thanks, Terry.

Phil Thompson: I'll hang on as long as I can.

Terry Sparrow: Okay. No worries, mate.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Rainstick. Text below: We directly address the need for climate friendly interventions that increase crop yields so that farmers can be part of the solution. By treating seeds with electric fields (inspired by thunderstorms) we target enhanced yields in food crops without changing on-farm infrastructure. Behind the text is an image of a field of wheat with lightening striking in the far corner]

We'll turn now to Darryl Lyons if we could. Rainstick. Darryl, if you could just talk about your research needs and your lived experiences with CSIRO, what that entailed and more generally about the business itself, that would be welcome. Thank you.

Darryl Lyons: Yeah. Thanks, Terry. Hi, everyone. I'm glad to be a part of this webinar today. So I'm a proud Maiawali man. I'm dialling in from Yirrganydji country up here in Cairns.

Rainstick is using electricity to mimic the natural effect of lightning to grow crops bigger, faster and more sustainably. And that's really coming from the Maiawali heritage. We’re from the Channel Country in southwest Queensland. We’re a rainmaking tribe where the rainmakers use the [indistinct 1:17:09] which was our rainstick to influence the system to create rain.

So when thunderstorms come through, like that picture, actually create electric fields in the air. So we've developed a very novel technology globEllie that creates variable electric fields, that stimulates biology to grow bigger and faster. So our experience with CSIRO, we had a hunch on this and we worked out of our garages for about a year and put this together. And we were getting some remarkable results. And we started to share that story with a few people, and they really prompt us to have a conversation and apply for the CSIRO ON accelerator. And then we formed a company in December in 22 and applied for the ON accelerate and went to the boot camp as Penny was mentioning, 20 teams. And we got a lot of got a lot of interest and we were lucky enough to get into the accelerator with the top ten teams.

So that was a game changer for us. That started, one, getting some recognition and belief in what we were doing. And the other, which was a really important is, as Phil mentioned, really to start working with world-leading scientists and researchers. So that was, quite successful in that program. We went through and did all the things Penny mentioned. We were lucky enough to have Main Sequence Ventures invest in us, who are CSIRO’s own venture capital firm. That gave us a lot of credibility where we're talking to a lot of venture capitalists around the world.

We're classed as a deep tech company. So we've probably got a few years of research, of developing our technology before it is commercial scale. So we have to have venture backing to to put into our research and product development. We raised just over $1 million to date and we're going out to raise more this year. That money has now enabled us to set up a lab and hire some research staff. And, one, going through the ON program has started to give that credibility to talk to other researchers around the country and around the world. A s we now embark on where we're aiming to set out a ten-year research program or work and want to develop the IP to ensure that this novel technology is kind of owned and protected in Australia.

As we went through this process, we've also ensured we have a percentage of our company that goes to the Maiawali Foundation. So that's in their perpetuity. So as every, as we go through capital rounds to improve the value of the company, we always putting back into our cultural heritage. We're very excited to see the ICIP paper that come out from CSIRO the other week and the great work from Louisa and the team. So we're very excited around that.

We ensure we have that written into our Constitution and our shareholder agreement and all of our customer contracts, to ensure they acknowledge and abide by that cultural heritage. We think that's very important. As we went through the ON accelerate, then we applied, we met the lovely Megan and applied for the Kickstart program. We're just about to complete our first program report in June. And that was getting our technology in the hands with those world-leading researchers and we've got a very exciting report that we'll be sharing next month that shows that CSIRO have really acknowledged our technology and shows the potential. We’ll be avidly looking to apply for the indigenous research grant when it comes out at the end of the year. So Cas, we’ll have a really solid application coming your way. So hopefully we can be a part of that.

And yeah, I guess the next step is also engaging. I was in Canberra a week ago and engaging a lot of the research teams in Canberra in how we can get validation of that technology and validate that to large commercial partners around the world. We're currently working with two of the top ten agricultural agricultural companies in the world, and testing on their seed to ensure we've got a pathway to market. But I'll leave it there. I've been very grateful for the support and we wouldn't be where we are over the last 12 months without that CSIRO support. Thank you.

Terry Sparrow: Thank you very much, Daryl. It's a wonderful example of applying traditional knowledges with Western science, so good to see.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Ochre Sun. Text underneath: Broad Spectrum Sunscreen Infused With Healing Botanicals. Ochre Sun high protection SPF50+ formula is enriched with Indigenous botanicals that heal and nurture your skin while protecting you. Image to right of screen is of five products containing Ochre Sun SPF50+ - a spray bottle, a tube, a large pump bottle, a small tube in a container with carabiner to attach to a bag and a smaller pump bottle.]

Correct me if I'm wrong. Youse have been having conversation with the Trade Commission in Singapore about extension in the South East Asian markets. Is that what I heard?

Darryl Lyons: Yeah. Yeah, we have.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Rainstick. Text below: We directly address the need for climate friendly interventions that increase crop yields so that farmers can be part of the solution. By treating seeds with electric fields (inspired by thunderstorms) we target enhanced yields in food crops without changing on-farm infrastructure. Behind the text is an image of a field of wheat with lightening striking in the far corner]

Terry Sparrow: Is that, is that correct?

Darryl Lyons: That's correct.

 

Terry Sparrow: Fantastic. All the very best, good to see, good to hear. Okay.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Ochre Sun. Text underneath: Broad Spectrum Sunscreen Infused With Healing Botanicals. Ochre Sun high protection SPF50+ formula is enriched with Indigenous botanicals that heal and nurture your skin while protecting you. Image to right of screen is of five products containing Ochre Sun SPF50+ - a spray bottle, a tube, a large pump bottle, a small tube in a container with carabiner to attach to a bag and a smaller pump bottle.]

The next speaker I'd like to introduce is Ms Alana Kennedy, founder and CEO of Ochre Sun. So over to you, Alana. In terms of introducing yourself, talking about your lived experience with CSIRO and about your business more generally. So thank you.

Alana Kennedy: Yeah. Good afternoon everyone. I am super privileged. I don't even hold a candle to my other counterparts, from whom I've been really privileged to kind of glean from their leadership, in Daryl and with Native Secrets. So I feel super privileged to even be invited on this call, but so I am lucky enough to be sitting on Gubbi Gubbi Country. I'm not on home country. I'm a [indistinct 1:23:10] Eastern Islander woman from northwest Queensland, out near Mount Isa. So I'm in the beautiful Sunshine Coast and the weather's terrible. And just for anyone down south, sorry. Yeah.

This, you know, we have a really quite a unique business model with Ochre Sun and I'm, you know, we've been privileged to work with CSIRO and it's been a really beautiful collaboration because Dr Megan and her team have really been so patient with me in terms of learning what the marketplace is like, particularly in cosmetics extraction, you know, working with botanicals but particularly working on country. We really wanted to design, or I wanted to design, a unique model that's an outsourced resource kind of model. We are a vertically integrated personal care model. So we specialise in soil to skin.

First of all is our lead product, which you see on the screen, which is our sunscreen. And what makes the sunscreen so amazing is nothing to do with me and everything to do with the people that have been stewarding over the plants for eons and that have offered that knowledge, offered the raw material that we get to utilise in these products. And we arranged a sunscreen as a hero and a lead product here in Australia because I've been in the industry now for 15 years and focusing for about 11 on anti-ageing skincare and the skin in aesthetics. Obviously from the cosmetic industry standard standpoint, Australia really championed sunscreens. But I don't know that we've been doing that very well, to be honest.

Skin health supersedes sunscreen. And that's where our people have known the and have been benefactors of that knowledge now for years. So our model for the last six years has been on building trust out in the regions and learning about the botanicals that are grown in all of those regions and really partnering from a heart posture first to learn about what they're stewarding over on country, what's important to them, and then showing them the small infancy of our model and then inviting them to participate on what will be an internationally scaled model next year.

So for the past six years, we've kind of done business differently. It's been a trust game to build rapport with people, to get them to share knowledge because that's not something that Western civilisation here in, in in our nation, sorry, have done very well. And I'm, I guess to lead this venture I'm more of a hope sower and a value seeker rather than a CEO. So that's been what's most important to our business model, is to really ensure that we drive, showcase and showcase the amplified kind of marketing from the regions then into the skincare. So we really want to be great storytellers, first of mobs that are doing the heavy lifting around knowledge and land preservation and care. And then obviously our job is quite simple, is to formulate and put it in to the skincare and the sun protection.

So I guess some of the things that have been really advantageous for us are to partner with CSIRO to drive the trust narrative back to the region. So we do reverse engineer things and do things quite differently at Ochre Sun. Usually people would partner with corporates and then just go but we've actually partnered with CSIRO and been taking that knowledge about how CSIRO work back out to all the tribes in the regions and, again, giving them small bits of information at a time to digest, to build trust and then to then bring them and continue to participate within our model to see them grow. And then as they've grown, we've tested the different types of yields in a couple of different botanicals to see how long it would take them to grow that particular botanical. And then for us, you know, that's been across several different regions.

But now for us, the next step for us is, and a part of the indigenous grant, is to now look down the road of an extraction facility on country and also then obviously to to scale up our employment for mob on country and then put an IP protection strategy in place. So we're currently in a capital raise at the moment to obtain a little bit more capital to solidify that IP protection strategy. And I know some people would say six years, Alana, you should be in a different position. But the one beautiful thing about this is it's been a remarkable learning journey for not only the state but the nation. And now we are launching this beautiful ancient pathways kind of trading position as I hold a seat as the Australian rep for the International Intertribal Trade and Investment Organisation.

So what's beautiful about it is we've in the reverse engineered mechanism, we’ve really learnt how to grow strong so that as we get to extraction and then to skincare, we can adequately scale our business and a whole lot of tribes businesses, whether that be from marketing, whether they do yeah, marketing, digital photography, whether they provide raw materials, whether they provide employment directly into our model. But we want to scale sustainably. So we're about to scale through the IDIOs(?) for international tribal trade platform next year. And we're taking another nine indigenous businesses with us that aren't directly related to our business model. And I think that that is what we're truly about is breathing on ancient trading boundaries and trading lines. And just like, you know, Darryl, it's its about international scale. So growing strong locally and then taking mob with us as we scale internationally.

And so yeah, our next you know, Cas and the team with the indigenous science grant, and it's really exciting. Dr Catherine's actually been more than a friend in this space because obviously it's me and going through a capital raise, she's partnered on a personal and professional level. And I think that that's another thing about CSIRO. They're not just a corporate business or that's not what I found anyway. You know, Dr Megan and her team have really partnered on on a true cultural integration level, which is personal before it's professional and that's what family is and that's what mob is. So it's been really culturally respectful right down to the core.

So there are a couple other things that we're doing. And yeah, really looking to cross partnerships. So I don't know if Native Secrets are still on the line, but something that's really exciting is that our formulations in time, I've always had a heart to work with Native Secrets, but there's many, many people, even Darryl and his team. But there will be many avenues for us to scale internationally using so many different extracts, essential oils, other bioactives from other mob across Australia.

So that's what I guess the true essence of indigenous entrepreneur essence is all about. And that's where we're headed and and really excited about the indigenous Science grant and how we can leverage that. And also I'm super excited to maybe learn a little bit more about the ON accelerate as well. So that's our business model in a nutshell.

Terry Sparrow: Okay. Alana, look, thank you for sharing. Listening to, you know, your talk obviously, first thing came to mind was from small things big things grow and no doubt, hopefully, in your case, that's exactly what happens. And given the product and the point of difference in terms of other products, one would hope that there's broad scale appeal and demand for your projects, local, products, sorry, locally and internationally. So look keep keep fighting the good fight and crack the market internationally and you know, make a dollar or two, which is a good thing.

Okay. Thank you. I'll move on to Mr Anthony Venes.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Tiwi Islands. Underneath is a map of the Tiwi Islands]

He's a project manager manager for Tiwi Resources. As I mentioned earlier. Mr Ron Poantumilui is a late minute apology due to family ceremony on Tiwi Islands. Ellie, could we just go to the next slide, please?

[Image changes to slide with heading: South Vietnam - Aerial View of Prawn Farms. There are two photos, one of land that is divided into prawn farms and the other is a man in a CSIRO shirt looking at the prawn being held by Mr Ron Poantumilui]

So if you're wondering about Ron and who he is, Ron's the one there holding the tiger prawn. It's unfortunate he's not with us today. He has such an infectious personality and people warm to him. That said, we've got Anthony and Anthony will do a fabulous job, no doubt. So over to you, Anthony.

Anthony Venes: Yeah, thanks very much, Terry, and thanks for the pressure there. [Laughs] So yeah. Yes, Ron does send his apologies, the passing of his nephew, so he’s, obviously it was a bit tough for him. So but anyhow, we'll move on.

We're here on Larrakia country, so I'd like to pay respect to the traditional owners past, present and emerging and obviously also to the traditional owners of the Tiwi Islands, which encompasses the work that I undertake. So my role at Tiwi Resources, excuse me, is project, administration and project support. Tiwi Resources supports eight of the eight Tiwi family groups on the islands in coming up with social and economic opportunities. So it's like a business arm that originated out of the Tiwi Land Council and out of each of the family groups have established different organisations within themselves. And the one that Ron is the chair of is Portaminni Trust. Ron is also a director of Tiwi Resources as well. So he and he's involved in many other objects on the aisle… Tiwi Resources is concerned.

We apply for we put in for the expression of interest with CSIRO that the, the, for the prawn farm project. We looked at it as a way, for Tiwi Resources we have to look at okay, how can these projects benefit benefit culturally? You know, they need to be able to provide opportunities to help assist with ceremonial costs. There's always things like sporting programs and other community programs, events that that the Tiwi families are searching for funding to assist.

So the business models that we look for need to be able to provide both socially and economicEllie, and economicEllie in the fact that they, you know, they obviously need to be a successful business and employ Tiwi people with and the aim for Tiwi resources is to have majority Tiwi employment and in some instances this happens and in some instances it doesn't but it is working towards it.

The Mapurlarri prawn farm, so Ron will the the this is actually Mapurlarri as Ron's uncle, that's his Tiwi name. And Ron's uncle was heavily involved in projects on the island, including the market garden. He also helped set up the alcohol reform site just out of [indistinct 1:36:17] known as Four Mile. And so Ron looked as his uncle, as a strong leader and all the rest. And that's what Ron is trying to achieve as well in his role as a director for Tiwi Resources and also the Chair of Portaminni Trust.

So when we put into the expression of interest you know, we obviously met, Tiwi Resources put in for it, but Ron was only involved as the Tiwi Resources director at that particular time. There was a whole heap of meetings that were held on the Tiwi Islands that went through each of the eight family groups talking about the prawn farm project and every single family group wanted to be involved in one way, shape or form. So and when it actually came to the point where we had to choose one and tell the others, that that was a pretty hard conversation so, and it and it was upsetting to some of the family groups as well, who is some family groups that have got some existing businesses and set up and there's others that have nothing.

The people of Warankuwu, the Portaminni Propriety Limited, they have, they seemed to be the one that had a little amount of economic stability at this point. So this was a project that fitted with them, not just because they fitted that category, but the location through all the site sampling and so forth that was undertaken between CSIRO and Tiwi Resources and the Tiwi Land Council.

So the area you know, the idea with what we're doing now with CSIRO as far as the islands are concerned is to develop a, a a commercial prawn farm. Obviously the initial stages will be a pilot program that will continue the research and development, but also show us how to establish a prawn farm that Tiwis can work and Tiwis can manage and Tiwis can you know, run and operate on their own. So I suppose working and if we look at work the actual work that we've been doing with CSIRO over this stage and, certainly don't see it changing any different, it's been very it's been very positive and it's also been very engaging. I mean, the Vietnam trip was obviously you know, it was obviously a great opportunity for Ron and myself to attend, but just the work that CSIRO’s been doing both you know, through the [indistinct 1:39:00] Springs site at this point, but also the stuff that they've been doing with the Tiwis on on the Islands, the connection like so the engagement is very high. Everyone wants to be involved with it and obviously this is just one family group now that say that you know, that does shrink that level of engagement, but it is still very high within that particular family group. Everything that that CSIRO does, there's it's also very inclusive.

[Image changes to screen sharing with Anthony Venes on screen and other participants included below]

So there as far we had a directors meeting and a last Thursday, Friday we did a prawn harvest…

[Image changes to screen sharing with main screen blacked out with “Noble, Tansyn (A&F, Darwin)” on screen and other participants below]

… out of [indistinct 1:39:39] Springs and then we had a directors meeting the following day.

[Image changes to screen sharing with Anthony Venes on screen and other participants included below]

The questions coming from the directors. You know, their desire to find out more information and all the rest just highlights the fact of how inclusive CSIRO have been during the process and how the engagement that they've put in has ensured that that those, you know, the people that, you know, are making the final decisions for their family have a clear understanding of what the project looks like and what its aim is going forward.

And the other part about the connection is developing an understanding about what a prawn farm is. And obviously there's still more things to go in that. Going forward, Portaminni on the Tiwi Islands in general, but Portaminni are certainly hopeful for you know, some positive training, some traineeships. It would be great it would be a great opportunity for a school leaver to commence a traineeship in this with with CSIRO in the prawn farm industry and, you know, progress through to eventually being, you know, potentially the coordinator or maybe even higher in that point over a few years. That would be a massive outcome for Tiwi people.

The pilot program itself, once we have undertaken it, it's a five year commitment. So once we've undertaken that, we'll be able to then make those next steps about turning it into, all the information that we gather each year be able to turn it into a commercial identity, which will provide a lot more of those cultural ceremonies, sporting and community projects that the that Tiwi rely on. And then, of course, you know, as a result of that, those five years there'll be an extensive amount of research and development.

But going forward, there obviously needs to be well, during that time, there are also needs to be research and development in the actual sale of the product and you know, where it's to be sold. Where's the best [indistinct 1:41:50] because we are going for a premium product. We're not you know, we're looking at high rates of return. There's also a branding program operating behind the scenes on the islands where, you know, it's a Tiwi brand that the Tiwi Islands would be, the Tiwi people would be hoping is is popular as Coca Cola or Nike.

So that sort of stuff sitting there, buy a product with a Tiwi brand on it, you know that it's it's a Tiwi fresh product or it's a Tiwi produced item. It comes with a story. It's about the the people themselves, what they're doing, how they're doing it and and how they're achieving it.

[Image changes to slide with heading: South Vietnam - Aerial View of Prawn Farms. There are two photos, one of land that is divided into prawn farms and the other is a man in a CSIRO shirt looking at the prawn being held by Mr Ron Poantumilui]

Really, I suppose the prawn farm is just one aspect of everything that goes on in the Tiwi Islands. There is many other businesses that are being established or attempting to be established including oysters, the commercial fish trap. There's also multiple tourism operations that have been going for a while, but also the new ones that are being established at this point as well. So ,but those businesses, they all have a, that social component and the fish traps actually a good example because the another part about what is happening in the background is the Feed Our Families program.

There’s still an issue with food security in remote communities. So, you know, one of the family groups has established a fish trap. And what that fish trap is, it captures the fish every Sunday and Monday and helps feed the community. The with the CSIRO prawn farm model, there’s also a fish trap included into that which will provide the same service for the people of [indistinct 1:43:52] on Bathurst Island.

I don't think I have too much more to say on that. But yeah, hopefully that gives a good overview of where we're at. And as I said, Ron sends his apologies and is sorry that he can't be here today in person.

Terry Sparrow: Thank you, Anthony, thank you for sharing. It's well appreciated. You can see the size of the talk, tiger prawns in Ron's hand. Having seen the prawns up close, they're actually quite big and very delicious. And it was just amazing how the prawn farm owners could simply throw a net into their pond and it'd be full within a minute. It was just amazing just how many prawns each of these prawn farms had. And you can see from the aerial view as far as you can see in southern Vietnam, it was just prawn farm after prawn farm after prawn farm, there's literally thousands of them. It's just amazing.

Darryl, Alana, Phil and Anthony, look, thank you for sharing. It's well appreciated and very enjoyable to listen to and quite inspiring as well, to be honest with you.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Panel Discussion 3. Text below: Q&A via Slido. Facilitated by Mr Terry Sparrow. To the right is a split circle image, the left half is sun, sky and clouds and the right side is solar panels.]

We're going to get into some questions, and you can choose amongst yourselves perhaps who answers, unless the question is specific to you.

Darryl, we've got a question for you. It says Rainstick sounds incredible. What have you learned so far about lightning stimulating plant growth?

Darryl Lyons: I would learn a little bit and we’ve got a lot more to learn. So we've got a lot more research to get in there. But we have developed a novel technology in which we create these variable electric fields which we deliver frequencies and waveforms and time durations. And we found yeah, a variation of those recipes we call them have a profound different effect on biology. I’ll give you one example where we're able to accelerate mushrooms to grow really fast, at the same time, a slightly different frequency totEllie inhibited mould and stop mould growing at all. So that's an example of we think this harmony of these different recipes and frequencies have a huge effect on turning on and off biological switches in plants and all living biology.

Terry Sparrow: Thank you, Darryl. There was a question for Phil, and the question was what are your plans for growth opportunities/markets? Unfortunately, Phil's left because he's caught his Qantas flight that left earlier than scheduled. But the answer Phil gave was we've done multiple going global programs with Austrade. We have targeted Vietnam and China in the first instance. We have trademark approvals in both countries. So that would clearly demonstrate that the business is looking to expand internationally. So we wish them all the best of luck in that regard.

Here's a question more generally for the panel, what was your experience of applying to CSIRO support programs? What was the process like? There's three of youse. So don't be shy.

Alana Kennedy: I'm waiting for Darryl because he always speaks…

Darryl Lyons: … you go first…

Alana Kennedy: … more interesting than I. Darryl, you're always more interesting. Look, I'll be honest. I'm a visionary. I am not in the detail when it comes to paperwork, but I am when it comes to formulation and skincare. So I really needed the support in terms of the layers of what I was really like, spelling out, really what I'm trying to achieve in terms of the end to end vision, but also for our IP protection strategy, how to work so that we don't water down the bigger picture of what we're really trying to do in the detail with mob on country.

So it really took Dr Catherine a lot of time that she invested to help me walk through that process. And that's what I mean by it's kind of personal before it's professional because I one, I was still learning about CSIRO because it's just such a large organisation, but also, two, I was learning about what elements I really needed to talk about in the application process. So I think I had a lot of support just to step through every single facet of the application process, both in the Kickstarter and also with the Indigenous Science grant. So I hope that helps to answer that question.

Terry Sparrow: Thank you. Darryl, did you want to elaborate or?

Darryl Lyons: Yeah. We had a similar experience where we, you know, it was a very step by step process and everyone was open and helpful all the way.

Terry Sparrow: Okay. Thank you. Another question. I've sort of cherry picked this question, so I apologise. Anthony, what did you learn from your participation in the Vietnam research delegation?

Anthony Venes: One thing was not to let the CSIRO staff have management over the menu at dinner time. So we're eating some pretty interesting things. But no, seriously, the the whole delegation, the whole, that whole trip was very eye opening and the fact that we looked at small, these small family run farms mum and dad operations, it just showed that you know, the ability to be able to operate a farm as a within a small indigenous community in a remote area with, you know, a small number of staff involved would be is has potential to be successful. So the and also the quality of the the product that they could produce. But and with the, you know, the work hours that they had to commit to it and they were very simple farms the majority of them and yeah, it just highlighted you know, what can be achieved with with little.

Terry Sparrow: Thank you. Anthony, I think this question might be for you as well. It says was the one family group choice because of the physical location or just the challenge of working with so many groups.

Anthony Venes: Yes. So it was definitely the the physical location. So to be able to put the farms in there needed to be a high quantity of of clay in the soil. So obviously then that required soil testing. And this site which is sort of central Bathurst Island and it also has a barge landing nearby. It also has an airstrip nearby. There's a small community, so there's a nearby. So that worked quite well.

So some of the other family groups that were disappointed that they didn't get a look in, you know, that the there was no no, none of those other ancillary components to be able to establish a business that were close enough to be able to, you know, because obviously you want it to be successful. So and it it felt we felt that it would be too far, you know, that the distances would you know.. not that they'd halt to the success of the business or the potential business opportunity.

So if we look at, there was a map up there before of the Tiwi Islands, which had each of the eight family groups on there. And they were one of the biggest family groups they've got as a result of township leasing. They have the the community of [indistinct 1:52:16]. And so what's that, that has increased their ability to be able to set up businesses because they've got some revenue coming in on a on a twice a year basis. So there was a site that we looked at, you know, on their country which potentially could have worked, but the, the actual ground was, you know, it was too high. There were other aspects to it that made it difficult to be able to operate there. The site, in the end was a perfect fit.

Yeah, like other family groups are still keen to try to do set up established prawn farms. But instead of because of the high requirement of, you know, like the infrastructure digging the holes, the ponds and all the rest. We're probably going to look as a Tiwi Resources thing, we will look at other other avenues towards establishing aquaculture businesses in those areas. And one of those we've come across is the the oysters. You know that they're pretty low, low levels of infrastructure that can be set up in pretty much anywhere. And as long as we can access the area and get the oysters back to a central point before exporting, it'll be able to they'll have success there. So that's a long answer for a pretty short question.

Terry Sparrow: No worries. Thanks, Anthony. Look I'll ask one more question, and it can go to all of our indigenous partners if you like to chip in, if you like. The question is, how has the commercial ready natural product supplies protected their IP overseas from people manufacturing the same product using synthetic compounds? It's other words how are you protecting the integrity of your product from fraudsters overseas?

Alana Kennedy: That's a great question and something that is why we haven't scaled internationally yet, because we want to make sure the people that we work with are protected in all the transactions and all of their knowledge is protected. And that's what we're doing the capital raise to do is combine our ICIP with a traditional IP protection strategy. But also the value proposition proposition of Ochre Sun is that it's a handheld model. So that's what's beautiful. And that's probably what I love to champion, is the fact that these plants come directly from country. And it's just the stories of tribes that we get to tell as we scale.

And we're doing a rebrand so that you know, the sunscreen will be truly a sunscreen that the entire nation can back and beautiful stories will come out of that. And then our skin care, again, we're either partnering with Mecca, Sephora and Adore Beauty to tell the stories internationally about all of the many different ingredients that will come as that range evolves. So that's what's really cool, and that's probably why we've grown slower than other businesses because we haven't gone to use too many other synthetic ingredients, that we've waited on tribes to ensure that they've got enough yield to be able to participate, to scale.

Terry Sparrow:  And Darryl, do you have anything to add that add to that in terms of broadening into the international markets in terms of your ICIP trademarks and the like?

Darryl Lyons:  Yeah, definitely. We're very focused on getting global protection with a really detailed IP strategy. We are partnering with global large agricultural companies now. That is a risk to expose our technology to them early until we have that adequate protection. So we have patents written ready to be lodged around our hardware and how we apply the variable electric fields. But the big gap which we'll be engaging with CSIRO is on a body of research around the mechanism of action that happens at a cell level in the biology from the effect of our technology. That's the golden prize that we want to partner with researchers to ensure we have that global IP protection around that which is in enshrine the ICIP in that for anyone that wants to use it. So that's that's what we're really putting a lot of work in to ensure we yeah, can take this globEllie and have that protection.

Terry Sparrow:  Okay. Daryl, Alana, Phil and Anthony, look, thank you for sharing, it's truly inspiring. And it sounds as much as there's optimism optimism going forward, there’s also risk that's to be managed as well to to ensure that the integrity of your product is is preserved and your traditional knowledges are maintained and well preserved as well.

Look, I think I'm from all of us listening today, particularly from CSIRO and NIAA, we would wish you nothing but the best going forward. So thank you today for your contributions. Truly appreciated. Thank you. Next slide. Ellie. Thank you.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Feedback, Q&A Open Question. Text below: Facilitated by Mr Terry Sparrow. Open Question: In your opinion, what could CSIRO do better or differently to engage, support and partner with Indigenous businesses, organisations, communities, as well as like-minded institutional stakeholders? To the right of the text is an image of the CSIRO logo and the text: CSIRO, Australian Science, Australia’s Future.]

Now we all realise that we can all do better and be better. So this is an opportunity for those online and others if you like to, provide some feedback to CSIRO in terms of what we can do to to offer a better service to engage better and what that may look like. So I would invite everyone to go to Slido and provide some feedback over the next five minutes.

And the question simply, in your opinion, what could CSIRO do better or differently to engage, support and partner with Indigenous businesses, organisations, communities, as well as like minded institutional stakeholders?  So quite simply, what can we do to do things better and be more efficient and productive in that support?

So if you could use the next five minutes to go to Slido and give us some thoughts that would be fantastic. And I can assure you that we would consider all feedback received in order to build our impact, to grow mutual benefits and to strengthen collaboration and partnerships. So even though at CSIRO, we think we're doing okay, we know we can do better. So let's not be shy.

Now this this question is also open for CSIRO and NIAA employees as well if you have food for thought, you can be anonymous although it’s online. If if there's no feedback in the next few minutes, it’ll imply that we're doing okay and we can continue to go down that path. That said, if if you like to provide feedback at a later date, as I mentioned earlier, all the contact details of the facilitators and presenters are contained within the PowerPoint presentation. So more than welcome to receive any commentary or thoughts you may have at a later date. So that option is always available to you. But as I said earlier this is just to provide some guidance and assistance and support to CSIRO in terms of how we can do what we do even bette again. So it looks like there's crickets happening there, but that's okay. We can move on to the next slide, thank you. Ellie.

[Image changes to slide with heading: CSIRO Final Comments. Text below: Mr Terry Sparrow, Executive Manager, Indigenous Partnerships, CSIRO. Image to right is a helicopter drone]

Oh, final comments, look, she's already ahead of me. Thank you. Ellie. Okay. This is me. Look, I put a little bit of thought into it this morning and want to share these thoughts with you.

Today's webinar reinforces CSIRO’s commitment to partnering with indigenous businesses, organisations and communities in the co-design and the co-delivery of indigenous peoples, culturally determined science and research needs, demands and priorities. And as other speakers have mentioned, this is really indigenous led and that's one of the essential ingredients.

Today we've heard from some talented, highly motivated and enthusiastic speakers talking about the lived experiences working in partnership with CSIRO. The feedback has been positive and promising, insightful and and encouraging. We hope this is a start of much more to come. CSIRO was highly motivated to build and grow its level of meaningful engagement and interaction with Indigenous Australia. For example, CSIRO sees members of the various indigenous business networks and other indigenous peak body affiliates as a valuable and reciprocal pipeline of supply that may be converted into science and research demand driven sorry, into science and research driven demand. So there's opportunities there to build synergies and to leverage mutual benefit from that synergy.

Similarly, CSIRO, more broadly is keen to maximise opportunities to leverage collaboration, leverage partnerships and investment, including co-investment from like minded institutional stakeholders to collectively enhance CSIRO’s indigenous science and research capabilities whilst meaningfully contributing towards achieving community driven, sustainable self-determination and economic empowerment.

In short, CSIRO is always looking to partner with like minded stakeholders who could value add in support of enabling indigenous science and research needs and demands as determined by indigenous people. As I mentioned we earlier, we have included the contact details of today's fellow facilitators and speakers, and we invite you to reach out and directly engage and interact with CSIRO and with NIAA and our other indigenous partners for information, guidance and support and furtherance of your indigenous science and research priorities. I just ask that you please be patient in waiting for a response because as we all realise, emails back up every day of the week, so just be patient. But here is an opportunity to engage with CSIRO and with NIAA direct in furtherance of today's webinar. And if you can go to the next slide Ellie, if you could contact us.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Contact Us. Also pictured is a light bulb, the inside of a light bulb has a tree with the background of the sky at sunset or sunrise]

And the next slides.

[Image changes to slide with business cards for CSIRO facilitators Terry Sparrow, Allison Hortle and Louisa Warren. Also displayed are business cards for CSIRO Panel 1 Speakers - Katherine Locock, Ivan Martinez-Botella, Brendan Trewin, Cathy Robinson, Tansyn Noble]

So you'll see that's essentially the business cards for the facilitators, the speakers and our indigenous partners.

[Image changes to slide with business cards for CSIRO Panel 2 Speakers - Megan Sebben, Cas Price, Phoebe Jackson Morison, Penny Harth. Also displayed are business cards for Indigenous Business Partners - Panel 3 Speakers - Darryl Lyons, Alana Kennedy, Phil Thompson]

So you can reach out to directly and make an inquiry or a follow up question from today…

[Image changes to slide with business cards for Indigenous Business Partners - Panel 3 Speakers (cont.) - Ron Poantumilui, Anthony Venes. Also displayed are business cards for NIAA Contacts - Roslyn Richardson, Shane Dexter]

… including any advice you may have in terms of enabling CSIRO to do what it does even better again, always welcome.

[Image changes to slide with heading NIAA Final Comments. Text underneath: Mr Shane Dexter, Branch Manager, Business and Economic Policy Branch, National Indigenous Australians Agency. To right of screen is a log and text: National Indigenous Australians Agency.]

That said, I'd now like to hand over to Mr Shane Dexter from naive for his final comments. Over to you, Shane.

Shane Dexter:  Yeah. Thanks very much, Terry. So on behalf of the National Indigenous Australians Agency, I'd just like to thank you, Terry, and your team and all of our speakers today for such an engaging series of presentations and discussions.

Thanks everyone who joined us and contributed to this important conversation as well. We had several hundred people online, so I think we peaked just over 300 people participating at different times through the webinar, which is a which is a great number. It speaks to the goodwill, the interest and the desire to learn about bringing together traditional knowledge, scientific endeavour and support for First Nations entrepreneurs in these types of ways.

I just wanted to recap. So we heard from the CSIRO scientists and researchers about some of their projects that are afoot. The nature inspired medicines, Mosquito Control, the Digital Women Ranger Program and the low impact prawn farming at Warankuwu. Then and I think everybody’s ears pricked up a little bit with the second the second panel, which was about the funding programs and the entrepreneurial services that were available. So we heard from Louisa and the team about the SME connect program, the Indigenous research grants, and then of course the ON Innovation program with some specific examples about how that's benefited First Nations entrepreneurs. And then for me personEllie, that that final panel that that Terry, that you facilitated with Darryl and Alana and Phil and Anthony was really inspiring to to hear some of the lived experience about some of the experience of First Nations entrepreneurs and engaging with the these these programs, but also how they're leveraging that to actually deliver successful businesses that are that are going to hold them in good stead going forward.

I hope that like me everyone online is has come away from this webinar feeling a little bit inspired, a little bit more informed about the opportunities and the support that's available, a little bit curious about the role that you might have or your organisation might have in this space. And also I'm hoping that everyone's taken away a little bit of a motivation to action. So whether that's to go and find out a little bit more about one of those projects or one of the programs at CSIRO are running, or to reach out to one of these fabulous entrepreneurs that are online today to, to to suck up a bit more of their knowledge in terms of how they've got to where they're going and what you could learn from it. If you’re like me, then you've probably got a little list of things that you're going to follow up on following the webinar.

 Like Terry said, the NIAA is going to continue to explore further opportunities to bring people together so that First Nations entrepreneurs can continue to showcase their innovative work whilst spreading the word about funding and other opportunities that are available for support. That's it for me. Thanks so much again. I hope you all enjoyed the webinar as much as I have.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Appreciation. Text below: Today’s webinar owes its success to a robust support network. Recordings of today’s webinar, including the PowerPoint presentation and links to the three panel presentations on YouTube, will be shared with registered attendees via CSIRO in the next few days. To the right of text is an image of scientists at work in a lab, the scientists are all wearing full coverage suits and helmets.]

Terry Sparrow:  Okay. Thank you. Shane, it's thank you for your kind words. We’re nearly at the end of the webinar, I just noticed there's a number of questions that came through via Slido in relation to feedback for CSIRO. I will go through those questions and provide a response where I can. But do be rest assured that the feedback will be given due consideration as part of the Indigenous science and research as as part of our thinking going forward. So if you don't hear directly from me, but I will reply where I can, I can assure you that it will be part of our thinking going forward because we're always welcoming of any feedback that enables us to do our job even better again. So thank you for that.

Okay. Look, as you can imagine there's literally an army of support, assistance and guidance in putting together today's webinar. Accordingly, I'd like to acknowledge and recognise the invaluable contribution from everybody, particularly those that work tirelessly behind the scenes. And I'll start with our NIAA partners, and of course, that's Dr Roslyn Richardson and Mr Shane Dexter so thank you guys. Our talented facilitators, Ms Allison Hortle and Ms Louisa Warren, thank you. All of our three panel speakers, especially our Indigenous partners, our Indigenous business partners for the inspirational and intellectual contribution to today's discussion. And then, of course, if you want to contact our Indigenous partners directly, their contact details can contained within the PowerPoint presentation. And you've got that opportunity at your disposal ,again, just please be please be patient in getting a response because the emails tend to bank up as we all understand and acknowledge.

I want to also thank our IMT colleagues, Mr Eric Weckman, Mr Tony Pinkpaint and Mr Tom Barry. Tony in particular, he’s been absolutely swamped with last minute registrations and and Tony, I feel you, I'm sorry, but in a good way. Also, I'd like to thank Ms Pauline Pearson for managing Slido. Thank you, Pauline. And Ms Ellie Walker and Ms Shari Saunders for managing the PowerPoint presentation and keeping for time keeping and for formatting. To be honest, when I put this PowerPoint presentation together, I didn't quite get the lines lined up, so I had to get people in to show me how to do it properly so thank you, ladies. I do truly appreciate that. And Ms Monica Anderson, Ms Shari Saunders and Miss Alexandra Cleary from NIAA for Corporate Communications and Promotion. Thank you, ladies.

And of course, each and every one of of you for registering your interest and participating in today's webinar. And as I mentioned earlier on and it's been captured in the PowerPoint presentation itself, please note that copies of today's recording inclusive of the PowerPoint presentation with contact details and a link to the YouTube videos of today's three panel presentations will be made available to those persons who registered with CSIRO to attend today's webinar. And I'm advised that this should happen within the next few days so the information will be available.

And as I say, you can engage with the facilitators and with any of the presenters direct and it's on that basis this brings the CSIRO/NIAA webinar to a close. So Ellie, the last slide. Not quite there. That's the one.

[Image changes to slide with heading: Thank you. Logos of CSIRO and NIAA are above the text. Right side of slide is a graphic of a painting titled “Sharing the knowledge for caring for our Land” by Emma Burchill.]

So look. Thank you. It is appreciated. I know we had about 800 registrations just prior just prior to the webinar beginning. So that's a wonderful achievement. And I'm sure I'll find out in terms of how many people logged in. But look, that information could be included in the the bulk mail out email to go. That'll go to all people who registered. So on that note, thank you very much. And it's truly appreciated for all of the people who contributed to today's discussion. It was very enlightening. I certainly enjoyed it. And and I hope that for all those people listening online, we all got a little something from it. So thank you. And I'm going to give you a few minutes back in your day.

 

[End of transcript]