 Okay. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's Cattle Industry Fund public meeting webinar. I'm Eleanor Ania, Assistant Director in Ag, Food and Wine in Perza, and I'll be chairing the session today. Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands across the state on which we meet today and pay my respects to their elders past and present and extend that respect to other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are present today. So, I'm happy to know if I can hand over to Casey, thanks to the Industry Advisor for Perza to present an update on the Cattle Industry Fund Management Plan. Thanks. Thank you, Eleanor. So, the purpose of today's meeting is to prevent, present the revised Cattle Industry Fund Management Plan 21 to 2025-26. A copy of that plan is available now on the Perza website, the link listed there. Meeting today, I'll go through a little bit about the fund, then followed by a presentation and walking you through the management plan, and then there'll be some time for questions if there are any. So, the Cattle Industry Fund is established under the Primary Industry Funding Scheme Act, which is an act that enables the establishment of schemes to collect funds for primary industry purposes and for other purposes. The Act sets high-level requirements for the establishment of funds, how contributions to funds, application of funds, the management plan for the fund, which is what we're discussing today, and also annual reporting. In particular, the Act sets that the person administering the fund must make sure that management plans are prepared for the fund and that they're presented at public meetings. And also that the management plans, it also prescribes they must cover a five-year period and be revised and presented at least once every 12 months. And it also actually outlines a bit about what they must contain, an estimate of contributions, proposals for the investment of the fund and proposals for the application of the fund and the industry members must be consulted during the preparation of the management plan. The fund itself is established by its own regulation, so there's actually each fund is established by regulation, there's 15 funds established under the Act and we've got the reference to the Cattle Industry Fund regulations on the screen there. Those regulations give the fund its name, they set the fund administrator and state what the fund will consist of and in terms of contributions and interest and that sort of thing. They set the rules relating to contributions, refunds and how the fund can be applied or what it can be used for. So just some specifics about the Cattle Industry Fund as a summary of those regulations. The fund is administered by the minister. The contribution rate is $1.50 per permanent identification device or tag and that's for those tags that are purchased from an authorised manufacturer or recycler of devices. The contributions payable by a person who purchases devices for Cattle and that contribution is collected by collection agents who are the authorised manufacturers of those tags and they collect the contribution from the producer or whoever is paying for the tags and then remit it into the Cattle Industry Fund. So I'll move on to the presentation of the plan now and walk you through that. So the first section of the plan is actually there's an introduction and that covers off on many of the topics I've just outlined about the fundamentals of the fund. I'll move on to the estimate of contributions. So this is something that does change every year. We update the contributions based on the latest data that we've got available. So these estimates of device sales have been updated. They've actually been revised down a little bit and starting at around 500,000 devices and dropping to just under 450,000 devices by 2526. Now do you want to stress that these estimates only of device sales and also they're based on a five-year history of the tag sale data from the National Livestock Identification System, the NLIS and we've used that to create a forecast. So there is a slight downward trend in those tag sales over the last five years, which has then been replicated I guess as we've forecasted that out over the five years, which is where the decrease is coming from and just wanted to, that's all been done in consultation with Livestock Assay and the Cattle Industry Fund Board in terms of revising those estimates and agreeing on them. They do want to remind you that they updated every year. So every year we revise that data and revise the estimates. So the income in terms of the estimated income to the fund over the next five years, its forecast to be around 760,000 in this financial year dropping to around 670,000 by 2526. The next section of the fund, addresses the investment of the fund. This is one of the parts required by the Act. So and this is a statement, standard statement for all of our funds that are established under the Act that PERSA administers the financial operations of the fund on behalf of the minister and that's in accordance with the Cattle Industry Fund regulations and also with the Public Finance and Audit Act. Contributions are invested in a separate interest bearing account at the Department of Treasury and Finance and the interest is paid monthly on the money is held and that interest is treated as income to the fund. There has been a minor change this year just to recognise that interest is paid monthly previously. It was quarterly. Moving on to the purposes of the fund. So it's regulation 10 in the regulations that provides for how the fund can be applied by the minister. There's no changes to this part of the plan this year and the management plan itself is a direct read of the regulations. So just to paraphrase and summarise that the fund can be applied for the payment of compensation. There is no compensation being paid at the moment. The second application is essentially payments to a body that in the opinion of the minister represents cattle producers. Then also there is the minister can apply the fund for other purposes for the benefit of the cattle producers for the repayment of contributions or for refunds. There are specific requirements relating to refunds outlined in regulation 7 of the Cattle Industry Fund and also it can be applied for the payment of expenses of administering the fund. I'll just highlight that the majority of funds for this financial year are paid out to a body that in the opinion of the minister represents cattle producers and this year that was livestock SA work in conjunction with SARDA, the SA Dairy Farmers Association to represent cattle producers. This section of the management plan also outlines some investment priorities. So these have been identified with industry and also reinforced through the consultation that we did this year as well through the Cattle Industry Fund Board of Livestock SA. The investment priorities for the Cattle Industry Fund are maintaining market access and securing new markets. The second one is efficient and sustainable production. The third is business management and skills development and the fourth being advocacy and you can see how the projects that are funded do align under those investment priorities and details about the projects that are funded are available via the PERSA website but also in more detail on the Livestock SA pages. I've got pages for the Cattle Industry Fund and outline the projects and each of those projects aligns under one of those investment priorities. In terms of there's also eligible activities and ineligible activities, really the eligible activities are just activities that comply with the regulations in the management plan and they also outline management plan also outlines the criteria that projects are assessed against. If you're interested in that you can have a look at more detail in the management plan itself and also outlines the ineligible activities which are up there on the screen in terms of things that won't be funded. There's a funding guideline section. Now these guidelines apply only to payments under regulation 10.1B and that's the regulation I highlighted earlier as being the payments to a body that represents Cattle producers. So to be eligible you have to be a body that in the opinion of the minister represents Cattle producers and that's both beef and dairy cattle and the other main eligibility criteria is that that organisation must be a legal entity. The management plan sets the application process. The main points from that are that an eligible organisation may request a payment from the fund each year via an application in May. But the minister may consider applications for the funds at other times of the year if there are extenuating circumstances. The management plan also outlines the requirements for and the form of the application that's required by the minister and what's required to be in that application. In terms of the application approval, the applications are assessed and approved by the minister and if that is approved the organisation is expected to undertake the activities that are outlined in the application and also post the details of any activities or projects that are funded on their website so that it's publicly available for contributors to view. The management plan has information about the amount that's available for payment and the main, the key point is that the amount available for payment cannot exceed the fund balance. There are also, yeah, there's further information, there are some more specifics in the plan as well around what needs to be taken into account when calculating how much is available. And it also highlights that on, that we're possible and subject to seasonal variability in tag sales that a closing balance of approximately one year of contribution is made in the fund and that just assists with managing very, any variability in funding come. It provides a reserve for industry to draw in order to respond to any unforeseen circumstances which may and particularly for this fund it may include a disease outbreak. You may have noticed, remember earlier there is provision in this fund to pay, that the minister may pay compensation. If those compensation provisions were to be enacted there would need to be, you know, that's obviously would likely be an unforeseen circumstance. And then, yeah, so there's having a balance in the fund enables payments for that purpose if it was ever needed and that of course would be done in consultation with industry. And also having that balance also assists in managing refund payments. The management plan outlines reporting requirements for a industry body. So there's a progress report due to the minister 31st of January and an annual report 31st of July. And then finally also outlines payment terms. Now there's been, yeah, just a minor change to this in this revised plan. The content of the plan now outlines that the payments made under regulation 10-1B of the cattle industry fund are GST exclusive. And then also to assist with managing the GST exclusive nature of that payment we have shifted some of the payment schedules in our 50% is payable in July. That's up from 40% last year. October is a 30% payment and then February and April is a 10% payment of the approved annual amount that the minister has approved. And the final section of the fund management plan deals with some more administrative matters. There's a paragraph around grievances outlining that concerns about the use of the fund may be raised in writing with the minister. That it's also sets a process for changing the contribution rate and outlines the process for updating the management plan. There's an annual schedule in there that we run through every year. We aim to start the consultation in October. That normally happens yet towards the end of the calendar year and then following through the minister approves the plan and we hold the public meeting in March. We just missed March this year but not by March. And that is the end of the presentation of the plan. Now open it for any questions. Thanks, Casey. Just checking there's no questions and nothing in the chat box at the moment. No, nothing's come through. Right, so I think that concludes our meeting. I'd like to thank you again for joining us for this public meeting today. If you do have any questions or would prefer to ask questions directly to Perza, please contact Casey via her e-mail address that's on the screen now. Or via the website. There's contact details there as well. And under that, we just thank you for your time today and we wish you a safe and enjoyable Easter weekend.