Director General’s report (extract)
The 2022-23 financial year was one of improvement and achievement for DPIRD in the face of ongoing change, challenges and opportunities.
We welcomed a new Minister and portfolio changes, new Corporate Executive team members and other key senior leadership appointments, and participated in several public sector-wide initiatives to help us better serve the WA community as a whole.
This included being asked to take part in the Public Sector Commission’s Agency Capability Review Program. This review is designed to give us a greater understanding of what we are doing well and areas where we may need to improve.
It has been a positive process and I look forward to seeing the findings and implementing any recommendations.
We also continued to build our relationship and collaboration with the state’s 9 Regional Development Commissions (RDCs) and harness their knowledge and expertise to ensure we can get bigger and better gains across the Regional Development portfolio.
It is by building partnerships and exploring ways to improve what we do and how we do it that we will be able to get some great wins – and we had more than a few of those in 2022-23.
Our investment in research and development (R&D) continued to help grow and future-proof WA’s valuable grains industry, with growers harvesting the state’s second consecutive record crop, surpassing 26 million tonnes in 2022-23.
Our R&D efforts across the agriculture sector will only get stronger through the new Western Australian Agricultural Research Collaboration with the CSIRO, Grower Group Alliance (GGA) and major universities.
To top it off, we welcomed the WA Government’s support for our new metropolitan biosecurity and research facility to be built at Murdoch University, with funding allocated in the 2023-24 State Budget to progress design and prepare for the next phases of this important project.
