A report into commercialising Australian Wool Innovation's often criticised WoolQ platform has been delivered to Senate's Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport committee with a date yet to be set for a private briefing.
Committee chair Susan McDonald said they would be prioritising having that briefing as soon as possible.
"A private briefing gives you more time, allows you to have greater examination of a topic than estimates, which, particularly if other sectors have run over, can be short of time," she said.
"I will make myself available as soon as we can get a quorum to have that briefing."
At Senate estimates on Tuesday night AWI acting CEO John Roberts said that the peak industry body had provided "a very mildly redacted version" of the report, prepared by Ernst & Young Port Jackson Partners, had been supplied to the committee on December 10 last year.
In response to questioning from Senator Perin Davey during Senate estimates about AWI's $6.8 million expenditure on WoolQ, Mr Roberts said a number of stakeholder groups approached AWI in 2014 about wanting to have a review of the traditional selling system, resulting in the convening of an independent panel.
"The panel saw opportunities to create those efficiencies and meet that shifting consumer demand and the key recommendation that came out of that was the wool exchange portal and the potential for that to be developed," he said.
"Then there was a panel of 16 people from right across industry, not AWI but facilitated by AWI and there was unanimous support to actually go ahead and build the platform.
"These are disruptive technologies and disruption is often quite confronting and I think the closer this became to a reality, the more people feared things like disintermediation and whatever else may be there.
"We have had a struggle gaining adoption... I actually think it is the bee's knees but we need to bring people along for the journey rather than just tell them that."
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Senator Davey said she had heard from members of the initial stakeholder panel that they felt sidelined in the further development of WoolQ, potentially contributing to the lower level of buy-in to the platform.
"I think that's a fair assessment," Mr Roberts said in response.
"We did go to great efforts, we got the support, we did the building and we tried to be as consultative as possible, clearly we needed to be more so and I think that's a key learning."
Senator McDonald said she was pleased to see what she thought was a new approach and tone from AWI in response to questions regarding WoolQ during Senate estimates
"Mr Laurie and Mr Roberts approached the committee in a very open and engaged manner," she said.
"The role of AWI is to ensure the future prosperity and success of the wool industry through technology and innovation and I think there's been a refocus on how that can happen."
AWI chairman Jock Laurie said the body hadn't actively put any wool onto WoolQ over the last three or four months, instead focusing on working with partners towards the potential commercialisation of the sales platform.
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