The Independent Member for Denison, Andrew Wilkie, joined Business Mentor Services Tasmania (BMST) manager, Andrew Windle, to criticise the State Government’s ongoing mishandling of business mentoring in Tasmania.
In essence, hundreds of small businesses in Tasmania rely on mentor services by BMST but funding for that organisation runs out on Monday with no replacement announced, and no likelihood of any replacement service being up and running any time soon.
BMST has been operating these services since 1994 and has 130 volunteers providing specialised direct mentoring to over 300 Tasmanian businesses. Mr Wilkie secured stop-gap federal funding for BMST for the 2012/13 financial year but without ongoing funding BMST will cease operations on 30 September 2013.
The Tasmanian Government has not yet announced what service will replace BMST. The State Government put a contract for business mentoring to tender and BMST applied but have been informed they were unsuccessful. But two months have now passed and the successful tender has not been announced.
Mr Wilkie said the Tasmanian Government needed to take business mentoring seriously and urgently announce BMST’s replacement.
“Any new business mentoring service will doubtless need time to ramp up and build a network of quality mentors,” Mr Wilkie said.
“Frankly I believe the Tasmanian Government should support Mr Windle and BMST to continue their work given their decades of experience in mentoring Tasmanian businesses.
“However if not it’s crucial that the Government develops a sense of urgency and announces what services will replace BMST on 30 September because quality mentoring is simply crucial to the ongoing success of some Tasmanian small and medium businesses.
“I also note that both major parties have said much about Tasmanian jobs and Tasmanian businesses this election campaign. If they’re serious about jobs then they should get on the front foot and commit funding to continue BMST’s service model.”
Mr Wilkie recently wrote to Economic Development Minister David O’Byrne asking him to urgently intervene but did not receive a response in a satisfactory timeframe. A copy of Mr Wilkie’s letter to Minister O’Byrne is attached.
“The issue here is the provision of effective support for Tasmania’s 32,000 small businesses, many of which are doing it tough right now. That makes a mockery of the State Government’s professed support for the sector,” Mr Wilkie said.
Andrew Wilkie MP, Independent Member for Denison
