How might the results in this report be used?

There are many potential applications of the results in this report in the public sector, at an industry level, and down to company level. For example, the results and insights from the report could inform long-term priority setting and policy development at a federal level, such as for industry/productivity studies. They could also be relevant to very high level national policy discussions concerning such issues as carbon risk, water resource allocation and depletion of liquid fossil fuels. Addressing these issues will require considerable dialogue between government departments, industry associations and researchers for the development of satisfactory policy initiatives that are beneficial in both the short and long term. At the time of the completion of this report the authors are engaged in more detailed analyses with several industry bodies.

This analysis is static. How can it be relevant at all for policy instruments?

It is true that this type of analysis cannot be used for forecasting - there are no prices or behavioural variables in the model. However, this is not the motivation for the work. The work is relevant as a documentation of sectoral performance, with these benchmarks and results being very applicable to company reporting (see question below). Short-run policy analyses, looking at the effects of say a 20% change in the price of oil will still be made using such techniques as computable general equilibrium (CGE) modelling. However, these models also have difficulty in dealing with major technological change and price shocks.

How does this report relate to assessing company TBL performance?

There are three key links between this analysis and individual company assessment. First, the report provides sectoral data in a consistent framework, giving companies a reference point against which they may assess their performance. Second, the report reveals the extent and magnitude of the linkages between sectors. This may present new opportunities for management and innovation to improve corporate TBL performance through partnerships with suppliers. Third, the factor multipliers along with a company?s individual characteristics can be combined with their financial accounts to yield full supply chain reporting at a company level.

Would it be difficult for companies to use the report this way?

Our experience of consulting to organisations on boundary-free reporting suggests most of the data required to produce a TBL report for the company can easily be extracted from conventional financial information systems. Since this financial information has to be compiled in any case, only a re-classification into input-output categories is needed for the indicator intensities to be applied, and hence it can be accomplished relatively easily. New software, and standardised accounting data entry into I-O categories, both under development by the ISA group at the University of Sydney, will further expedite the application of the results in this report. Many organisations see the potential for this type of reporting to help them tell a much more complete story of their impacts. At present, the ISA group is undertaking social research on how organisations view the boundary free reporting that the present report can facilitate. It appears that education and awareness raising, along with organisation-wide engagement with the TBL concept, are the major barriers to companies reporting. The technical and data barriers are relatively less important.

How does this report relate to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)?

The GRI is a quasi-standard for undertaking TBL audits for companies. As with all audit techniques, a boundary is drawn within which the audit is undertaken. Whilst being able to deal with the specificities of companies, the audit approach cannot capture the full supply chain effects that is possible with the application of the sectoral I-O approach. However, the two approaches fit well together in that a local audit of direct impacts is made (say using the GRI framework), and then the remaining impacts outside the audit boundary are calculated using the I-O derived multipliers. This hybrid method is a logical combination of the approaches and one that produces much more consistent results for companies.