PC or not PC?
Having spent more than a decade covering different industries as firstly a newspaper and latterly a magazine reporter I have developed rather an extensive database of industry-type reports I like to avoid.
It goes without saying that just anything written by just about anyone who reports to, from or about state or federal government occupies a fairly prominent space on my black list index.
Take, if you will, The Productivity Commission (PC). While I have nothing against it per se, I believe its writers really need to learn how to inject a bit more colour into their reports. Granted, topics as stimulating as the regulatory burden on the upstream petroleum sector or behavioural economics and public policy may not always lend themselves to allowing report writers to show off their creativity.
But still, surely a few pictures and the odd bit of colour couldn't do any harm? And while we're on the subject, another issue I have with that particular group is the predicability of their prose. Almost without fail their reports end with the same conclusion - that for every group that is being productive there is another half dozen that are not.
However after reading the modelling research report 'the economy-wide effects of future TCF assistance' released earlier this month by the federal government group, it appears I may have to consider softening my stance.
Don't get me wrong the modelling report, timed to be released in tandem with the federal government's TCF Review led by Professor Roy Green, still failed to inspire me with its design.
I
t did, however, contain more than your usual stock-standard tid bits that meant not only did it hold my attention for more than three minutes, I actually learnt something.
For example, did you know the TCF sector accounts for less than 0.3 per cent of Australia's total gross domestic product? Or, astonishingly, that the textiles industry accounts for around half of the TCF sector with the remainder made up of clothing (only about 40 per cent) and footwear the remaining 10 per cent?
According to the bean counters/researchers working at the PC, the sector is also focused on producing for the domestic market. But did you know exports accounted for less than 10 per cent of the total output of the textiles and clothing industries? The news was slightly better when it came to footwear with exporting accounting for around 30 per cent of the footwear industry output. But still.
The report also stated that TCF industries in Australia have long received "comparatively high levels of [financial] assistance". Say what? While it admits this was mainly in the form of tariffs and voluntary export restraints and quotas in the 1970s and 1980s, it also suggested this was better than most sectors.
It drew this conclusion after revealing the value of assistance the TCF sector received in 2006/07 amounted to around $550 million, most of which was in the form of tariffs. What was of interest here was not the value of the assistance itself but the fact that the effective rate of 'assistance' was 12 per cent - nearly three times the manufacturing average.
Perhaps if the Productivity Commission keep up this type of creative information sharing - we may all find ourselves productively sharing a little more information - of our own. And in an industry as small as this surely that can't be a bad thing.
By Tracey Porter