Commercial Ready: Circles of Hell

Word has been reaching us of companies in the most perilous position with Commercial Ready.

Ever since the government decided (without consultation and without notice) to close the program in the 2008 Budget there has been a relatively quiet response from the press. Apart from a slight increase in newsworthiness around budget week, the topic has just not gathered sufficient momentum to keep it in the press.

This is a dimension of how many companies the program can support, however there is also the flip side to consider: what about companies that where part way through?

Various Circles of Hell

Commercial Ready had a process that went something like this:

1. Lodge Enquiry Form
2. Meet with AusIndustry Customer Service Manager
3. Receive forms and be "invited" to apply if eligible
4. Submit a draft application
5. Receive and incorporate feedback from draft application
6. Submit final application
7. Wait for relevant decision maker
8. Hear whether you were successful or not
9. Supply more (lots or a little) information on your company and project
10. Sign a contract with the government
11. Get grant funding, do press etc

The toughest positions to be in are really in steps 4 to 8 as in order to actually crank out a grant application can take months of person effort. (No, I'm not kidding, months.)

And the really interesting position is if you had submitted a final application, but had not yet got to a decision-maker before the program closed. This is the worst possible position to be in: you've invested all of the time and energy in a process with a legitimate expectation that the program would be around, and then it's pulled.

Never a good way to run a program, and never a good way for government to operate.

Not parliamentry process

There are some fairly stringent rules about what government can do where they want to make an immediate change in the tax field. Commercial Ready, of course, sits outside this process as it was created by a Ministerial Direction under the Industry Research & Development Act 1986 (Cth).

And this means that the action was considered purely administrative in nature, rather than legislative so none of this had to go through parliament in a formal sense. The Minister had merely to withdraw the direction or replace it with another. This obviously makes for interesting process.

How many companies are in these circles of hell?

Great question. As the government always kept the details of numbers of applicants, their relative progress through the submission process and the time taken relatively quiet (as well as the dates of Board and other meetings, but that's another topic), it's hard to know.

But between steps 4 and 8 above, I imagine the number of companies to be in the low hundreds, with the number actually with a final lodged but no decision made to be less than 50.

Does anyone else have any better information or more details on the companies?