A stakeholder engagement process is required to gather broad NT fishery and aquaculture sector input into the RD& E priorities of the region. This information will inform the eventual development of the NTRAC RD&E Plan in 2017.

This project addresses an immediate need to elicit stakeholder priorities and provide an analysis of these to the NT RAC on 20th October 2017.No NT RAC members are resourced to undertake the stakeholder engagement process. The committee considered that the use of an independent consultant would facilitate completion and enhance the transparency of the process.

A strategic RD& E Plan is needed for fisheries in the NT to focus and guide the investment of the small amount of funding available to the NT, ensuring efficient use of research funds and maximizing the value of opportunities.
NT RAC has not previously had a strategic RD&E Plan. Previously priorities of government and others have been used where available to inform the investment direction e.g. NT Fisheries Strategic Research and Development Plan. However, for most stakeholder groups, there are no documented strategic directions for RD&E, and the process has thus been ad hoc, prone to short term and knee jerk responses and could be subject to bias.

It is important for NTRAC to produce RD & E priorities that are representative of the sector so NTRAC can then feed them into the national focus and maximize the opportunity to contribute to national directions.
NTRAC wants to ensure all NT sector stakeholders have a say by eliciting priorities from different stakeholder groups, identify commonalties and opportunities for collaboration.

NTRAC will use the outcomes of this stakeholder engagement process to communicate RD & E priorities at the national level enabling opportunities for the promotion of collaboration and partnership across jurisdictions.