The 2008 Leadership Program review was conducted and provided information to the funders regarding the initial years of the leadership delivery. The present funding round will deliver another review of the program in the final report. This review will include graduates, program sponsors and industry organisations.

Rural Training Initiatives continues to anecdotally assess the processes and outcomes of the program through participant evaluations at the conclusion of each program residential and through conversation with the NSILP advisory group and industry stakeholders. This anecdotal feedback indicates that the program is much more than a positive learning experience.

The need for this project has been suggested in the above sections but there is further evidence of need provided by the goals of the FRDC’s People Development Program,
1. enhance industry leadership within all sectors;
2. build industry capacity to drive change to achieve goals

FRDC’s Working together: The National RD&E Strategy

Priority areas addressed through this project will be:
• identifying and understanding success drivers and factors in comparable industry and resultant opportunities for fisheries
• developing the leadership skills across all stakeholder groups
• understanding and developing strategies to enhance, decision-making and adoption practices
• developing business and business modelling capability
• building stakeholder capacity to move toward co-management of fisheries
• identifying and understanding factors that drive responsiveness or adoption of new practices and innovation and how these can be influenced
• building skills and networks that support knowledge transfer and R&D adoption
• building understanding, and commonality of objectives, between stakeholders, including researchers, managers, fishers and NGOs.

The success of the national seafood industry leadership program has seen a growth in support from industry and increased competition for places in the progam.

The seafood industry, will always face challenges where leadership is needed. Currently, many fisheries are facing the very real crisis of declining access to fishing resources. Investing in Leadership, and the assocaited networks and cross stakeholder understanding is seen as vitally important for all sectors to be able to contribute to debate, drive change and address challenges in order to enable the fishing industry to reach its potential.

The National Leadership Program has had considerable support from industry throughout the years from sponsorship of key events and in-kind contribution to provision of guest speakers. These areas of support and the ongoing funding as built a leadership program with significant reputation throughout the industry. Rural Training Initiatives is aware that this reputation needs to be protected and enhanced through the delivery of a 2008 program.

As mentioned in the background section, it is critical that the momentum for leadership development is not lost during a 'fallow' year.