A New Grant Excellence Service Targets Success for Western Australia

The WA Grant Excellence Service - or WAGES - is a new three-year initiative running in Western Australia (WA), supporting researchers, innovators and start-ups to improve the competitiveness of applications to national grant funding programs. It’s helping to build WA’s health and medical research and innovation capacity and capability, working in conjunction with WA Life Sciences Innovation Hub (WALSIH).

WAGES is delivered by MTPConnect in partnership with WA-based Synergy Health Solutions and supported by the Western Australian Future Health Research and Innovation Fund.

In this episode, we meet the team behind WAGES –MTPConnect’s Dr Tracey Wilkinson (WALSIH), MTPConnect’s Dr Bahareh Badrian (WAGES Head), and Synergy Health Solutions’ Dr Graham Hall. 

They discuss the WAGES mission, how the service works and their collaborative workshops to help teams and individuals prepare funding applications. Tune in for insights on pitfalls to avoid, whether to use AI tools, and top tips on pulling together a competitive application to funding bodies. 

Visit the WAGES website to find out more and subscribe to receive information of upcoming workshops, direct to your inbox. 

Transcript

Open And Acknowledgement

Natalie Vella 0:01

This is the MTP Connect podcast, connecting you with the people behind the life-saving innovations driving Australia's growing life sciences sector from bench to bedside for better health and well-being. MTP Connect acknowledges the traditional owners of country that this podcast is recorded on and recognises that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are Australia's first storytellers and the holders of first science knowledge.

What WAGES Is And Why

Caroline Duell 0:33

Hello and welcome to the MTP Connect podcast. I'm Caroline Duell. Today I'm delighted to introduce you to a new three-year initiative that's up and running in Western Australia called the WA Grant Excellence Service, or WAGES. It's about supporting WA researchers and innovators to improve the competitiveness of applications to national grant funding programs, helping to build Western Australia's health and medical research and innovation capacity and capability. It's delivered by MTP Connect in partnership with WA-based Synergy Health Solutions and supported by the Western Australian Future Health Research and Innovation Fund. Let's meet the team behind wages and find out more about the services on offer to the life sciences sector in WA.

Tracey Wilkinson 1:23

I'm Tracy. I'm the National Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator for MTP Connect, and I head up our activities in the great state of Western Australia.

Bahareh Badrian 1:32

I'm Bahareh Badrian and I'm the head of the WA Grants Excellence Service, which is a new service recently launched as of December 2025.

Graham Hall 1:42

My name's Graeme Hall. I'm the director of Synergy Health Solutions, which is a bespoke health and medical research consultancy. And I've been lucky enough to partner with Tracy in helping to develop the wages program and of course working with Bahara in some of the early workshops that I'm sure we'll be talking about later.

Caroline Duell 2:02

That's great to have you as part of the wages team, Graham, and everyone at Synergy Health.

Speaker 1 2:07

Great to be here.

Caroline Duell 2:08

Let's have a look at this WA Grant Excellence service, which is what we're going to sort of delve deeper into today. Tracy, can you give us a sense of what this wages program is all about? What's the mission here?

The Mission Building WA Capability

Tracey Wilkinson 2:25

Sure can. So the overall mission is really capacity and capability building. And we're really supporting researchers and innovators to improve their competitiveness for national grant funding. That's the overall vision and mission of wages and why it exists. So we know that access to funding remains the biggest challenge facing innovators and startups, who are trying to develop and commercialize new products and services. And that's been a real area that we've focused in in WA in our activities as part of the WO Lifestyles Innovation Hub over the last seven years. And in that capacity, we've now supported startups and innovators who are yet to start up with over 150 different grant applications, and they've gone on to attract $55 million of funding. But what we also know is that this is definitely a challenge for medical researchers, and that senior researchers often spend the majority of their time writing grants, not doing research, which has always been a little bit of a bizarre situation. And we're really excited to take what WL Last Francis Innovation Hub or Wolvie has already been doing and to provide even more support to innovators and startups as well as to broaden that out to support medical research as well. And particularly if you think about that as the pipeline, some of that pipeline will come into our new commercialization opportunities in the future. So we worked with people experienced in academia and research development, such as RAM, to design like a specific program to combat this challenge. We know that this is a problem everywhere, but we're really focused on a solution that we hope would address this challenge in Western Australia. And we've tried to do something that's complementary but not duplicative with existing service officers and support that's available to these people. And thanks to funding from the Western Australian government through the Future Health Research and Innovation Fund wages as a three-year pilot operating in WA. But I'm pretty excited about the potential to expand this further afield.

Caroline Duell 4:34

So this program, you haven't seen it anywhere else in Australia?

Tracey Wilkinson 4:38

No, I think various elements of this exist. And maybe I'll hand over to the experts at this point to tell you a little bit more in depth. But no, we're not aware of something that's operating like this at a statewide level to support priority groups with their competitiveness applications.

Caroline Duell 4:54

Bahari, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about why the service was set up and who exactly can benefit from this program.

Three Support Tiers Explained

Bahareh Badrian 5:03

As Tracy mentioned, the main reason, the main aim for wages is to improve the competitiveness of WA grant applications to federal funding programs and hopefully bring more funding into WA to support health and medical research and innovation. And the service itself is a three-tiered or phased service. So the first phase are these regular grant development workshops that we're running. So these are roughly every four to six weeks. And the unique thing about these workshops is that they're meant for teams, ideally, not just individuals, because what the teams are doing in the workshops are developing a plan or a strategic plan for their grant application. So we've developed a template that's based off of a lean canvas that was with a lot of help from Graham and one of our colleagues, Tara McLaren, and we've adapted it to each specific workshop, and teams work through that template, and by the end of the workshop, they have a full plan for their grant application, including any challenges or gaps that they need to address. And so having the team members there really helps. It's like almost a mini think tank at each table in the workshops and really allows the researchers and entrepreneurs to work through their grant application. So that's tier one. And then what they can do is they can further develop that strategic plan or write it up as a one-to-do page proposal. They send it into wages and we will provide feedback on that for them. And that's the second tier of the service. And the third tier of the service is peer review where participants can submit their full grant applications and we will coordinate peer review for them so they get some expert feedback prior to submission. And so, really, the point of the wages program is that participants engage with us early and work with us and we identify any challenges and gaps early so they've got plenty of time to address them before submission. The other element to it is because between the three of us and the broader amazing MTV Connect team, we have some fairly well-developed networks across Australia. And so if we feel that a particular applicant could benefit from access to a service or a collaborator or a partnership, we'll help them make those connections. So, really, what we're hoping is that these grant applications are put in the best place or best position to be funded. And I think I said before, the earlier people engage with us, the better, because it allows them plenty of time to go through the program. And the other amazing thing about this is that because of our funding from the Future Health Research Innovation Fund, this entire service is actually free for WA researchers and entrepreneurs.

Caroline Duell 8:01

You know, both yourself and Graham, you've been there, you've done this, you've been in this, I guess, in this pipeline of academic research, you know, having your own research peer-reviewed. You know what this is like, you know the landscape, you know what it's like to work in in teams like this. So you both bring um, you know, a level of insight um and empathy, perhaps, which really makes this program special. So perhaps you'd just like to expand on that a little.

Graham Hall 8:34

Yeah, I guess the lived experience in the context of involving community, uh, the lived experience of you know knowing how research works, how to get funding into a program, um what good looks like is really important. And I think because our focus is on early and mid-career researchers, um, aside from the innovators, early and mid-career researchers and um health professionals engaging in research, they often don't have that sort of long-term perspective of you know what good looks like because they've not walked the walk long enough to have learnt those hard lessons. Uh, and so you know, our goal is to make sure that we've got facilitators, uh presenters, and panels that that can give them those insights so that hopefully they learn that's those uh faster than certainly I did.

Pitfalls Reviewers Notice Fast

Bahareh Badrian 9:34

Both Graham and I uh have experienced it from all sides. So we've both had to put in grant applications, we know how difficult that can be and how time-consuming. Um, we've also been on review panels, we've seen many, many amazing applications, and and so we kind of have a fairly good understanding of that entire process. So I think um we can sort of help participants as well throughout this process.

Caroline Duell 10:01

I I just would like to draw a little bit on some of those experiences and and perhaps Graham, you you might be able to um tell us what are some of the pitfalls to avoid when putting together a competitive application for grant funding?

Graham Hall 10:17

Yeah, that's the uh secret source, really, isn't it? So I think, you know, people come early in mid-career researchers, health professionals, they they nearly always come with great questions, and especially researchers with a deep understanding of their area of science or for health professionals, a deep understanding about what the clinical conundrum is and what the most important question is that requires answering. What's less common is turning that into a compelling narrative. Um, and you know, when we've had these workshops, and certainly when I was in research and talking to people about these things, I used to sort of the analogy I always gave was that all of the different elements of your grant have to weave together to give you a really rich tapestry. And often you see applications that have got a fantastic hypothesis, they clearly have all of the technical expertise to answer it, and then there's this little lean-to added on to this fantastic mansion of a house, and it looks added on. You can always tell it looks like it's been tacked on because someone said, Oh, it'd be really good if you could do this, and they go, I can make that work. And so they put this corrugated iron up against their beautiful brick and tile home. Uh, and it looks it looks tacked on, and of course, the reviewer then goes, Well, I'm now confused about this lean to, why is it there if I can keep pursuing this really bad analogy? Um, and it creates a perception of poor or reduced feasibility. And as soon as a reviewer starts thinking about poor feasibility and the ability to um deliver the outcomes that they describe, then the scoring drops. And of course, as soon as it drops in one area, people being people, it starts to drop across the other areas. Um, so the really good grants have all of the connections that they need that Bahare talked about. So it isn't just, you know, five people who all do the same thing, they have five people who do different things, and the sum of the whole is greater than the parts, but they weave it together into a compelling narrative where you read it and go, My God, that's a fantastic question. They've tackled it in a really interesting and innovative way, and this is actually going to work and make a difference, and we'll learn amazing things or whatever their outcomes are. And of course, earlier in your career, um, that's a skill in itself. Uh, and researchers and health professionals are not really trained in compelling narratives, they have to learn that skill as well. Uh, and so you know, some people do it well, some people need support, and and I think that's where MTP's connections will be really important because we can review, see where the gaps are, and go. There would be a lot of benefits speaking to these individuals. They will add to your skill set or your team in ways that will make a difference.

Caroline Duell 13:16

Thanks, Graeme. And Bahare, have you got anything to add? Any other pitfalls or things you've sort of seen, you know, that people need to avoid?

Bahareh Badrian 13:26

Absolutely. I will offer one, and it's more on the practical side, but it's really important, particularly for those that are new to grant applications, particularly the federal funding programs or some of the bigger funding programs, because unfortunately, I think the time it takes to pull an entire submission together is often grossly underestimated. And I can't stress that enough. These bigger funding programs often have an online system that you need to apply for or apply through. And depending on the funding body, they might require a lot of additional information. So it's not just the grant proposal itself that takes time and then all the supporting documentation that goes along with the grant application. It's all the information that needs to go into the system. And sometimes these are quite in-depth, like full profiles for everyone that's going to be on a grant, for example. And if they're not already in the system, this can take months to put together and compile. So I would just urge anyone that is considering applying for a grant, particularly if you're new and you haven't done it before, to really go and look at the funding body, look at the system that they use, and really just understand what it takes to pull a submission together because it can take months. And I think that's something that is often quite underestimated. Even perhaps by those that are more experienced, they might just not realize how much they need to put into the system for that particular grant application. So if you are a researcher, often your research office at a university or an MRI, Medical Research Institute, or the research admin team can really help. If you are an entrepreneur and don't have access to those teams, I would just encourage you to look and see who's won a grant before, reach out to them and see if they have any practical tips that you need to consider about pulling a submission together, because it can take a lot of time.

Caroline Duell 15:26

Great advice. Talking about sort of time-saving efficiencies, you know, dealing with, I guess, competing priorities with work, you know, if you're in the research space and you're having to put together funding applications. What's your views on using AI to help prepare grant applications? Obviously, AI at the moment with uh Chat GPT and Claude, you know, tools available now for people to be able to pull information together, to draft copy, to summarize all sorts of editing tools. Do you have any views on sort of you know whether we should be using that or not?

Graham Hall 16:10

So I guess I've approached AI in a slightly skeptical fashion. Um that probably is because I'm fairly skeptical. Anyway, um, but I guess the the concern for, I mean, there have I've seen anecdotal reports, particularly for some of the new tools, that AI tools that are are structured exclusively for research and research collaboration, um, where there's you know senior investigators who've put in, you know, a few key points, generate an idea, NHMRC ideas grant for me, a few prompts later, you know, two hours later they've got a full-fleshed grant. Um, and they've used a previous grant that they had been successful for as their test case, uh, and ended up with a grant that looked pretty much like the one they'd done before. So if you could write an ideas grant in two hours, you'd be pretty happy. Um, the caveat for me would be around the doing the due diligence on um is this an enterprise model that is sandboxed? Because the last thing you want to do is put your science into an AI model and then find it is training a whole bunch of other models. Um, so I would strongly encourage anyone that wants to use AI for for developing what is their scientific IP to ensure that they've spoken to their organization or MRI or grants office, um, or if it's an entrepreneur, whoever's providing their IT services around how sandboxed it is and where their ideas are gonna go. Um so that would be the first thing. I think secondly, AI is a support tool. It's not gonna write your I, it's not gonna give you, it'll help you flesh out your ideas. Uh, and so I think it can save lots of time if you're using it in a deliberate fashion. Um, and I think you know, I heard a fantastic podcast from the CEO of Thomas Reuters and how they're applying it globally. And he it was enterprise AI with human oversight. And I think if you're using AI to write your grants, um, critically thinking and reviewing the outputs and having human oversight would be probably my key advice. And yes, it can save lots of time, but if it sends you down the wrong rabbit hole, it won't save you any time and you might not get any funding. So take caution, caution up ahead.

Tracey Wilkinson 18:34

Absolutely. Like I just don't think you should outsource your thinking to to an AI. I think it's great what Graham says, I I agree with everything you just said, um, particularly that it's a support tool. Um, but it's there to support you in your thinking and your ideas and how you craft them or how you can improve or refine them, not to do it for you. Because you have to do the work at the end of the day if you're successfully funded anyway. So you really need to take ownership of that. Um that's kind of my so I think it's that's my general advice and thoughts about the site. You still need to do the work yourself, and it can be valuable to be supported in that, but don't just think it's to be outsourced. And as someone that's like looked at a lot of grant applications, oh, you can usually tell when they're drafted by AI, and that doesn't look good because you immediately think, oh, maybe you don't really know what you're doing if you've just outsourced it for the AI.

Caroline Duell 19:26

What are some of the clues tracing?

Tracey Wilkinson 19:29

The structure, the form, the the language, um often the vagueness where I actually understand every individual word, but I don't necessarily understand the message that a paragraph or a sentence is trying to convey. Like it it sort of looks fancy, but I find often from an SSF effective or when a reviewer perspective, actually quite confusing to figure out exactly what someone is saying. I would much rather really um direct plain language to plain language. If you work with an AI, it will generate that content for you, but you have to work with the AI and my comments around seeing it as a support, not an outsource.

Caroline Duell 20:12

Great tips. Thanks, Tracy.

Bahareh Badrian 20:17

I would caution the use of AI tools other than as support. Um and it can be quite powerful, but uh you are still doing all the thinking, you are still doing all the writing, you're still doing all of the all of the work. It is just perhaps helping you think through concepts or think on how to articulate something better. But uh ultimately, uh from my own experience, it still takes a lot of work to turn that into something that I would be happy with, for example, if it's a written piece of work. So um I would personally use it as a support tool only and um just go into it knowing that you're gonna have to put in a lot of work anyway.

Caroline Duell 20:59

You can't take shortcuts here, is really I think what you're saying. Uh, you've run a couple of workshops already this year, and they've all been sold out. Uh, you know, we've got waiting lists for these workshops, and the response from the WA sector has been fantastic. Graeme, what sort of feedback have you had from participants in these workshops?

Graham Hall 21:20

Um, I think, as you've mentioned, they were sold out. We put out an expression of interest for um one EMCR workshop at the end of last year, uh, expecting not much response because it was the week before everybody left for Christmas. Uh, it had a pretty big response in December and even more in January, such that we sold out two workshops and still had a waiting list for more. So, I guess that speaks to the need across the WA sector, especially for early and mid career researchers. So, we've run two workshops now. We had uh I think 12 or 13 teams in. Each of those workshops, so and they were full-day workshops, so that you know that's a strong commitment. Um, and of course, being data and evidence-driven kind of people, we had a fairly um not lengthy but comprehensive assessment um feedback from them afterwards, and so for example, um everybody felt more confident in their ability to um pull together an MRF grant after the workshop. This is one of the questions we asked them. Um, so most of them felt more confident, and a few of them felt much more confident. Um, and then I guess in terms of some of the other things, is as Bahareh mentioned earlier, we created an MRFF version of Lean Canvas, so a Lean Canvas page plan strategic plan on a page targeted for MRFF, and we did that in partnership with Tara McLaren, who's just amazing in this sector. Uh, and we had lots of feedback about the Lean Canvas, um, including one of the participants of the first workshop who was a um a research professor at one of our universities, said the lean canvas is fantastic and I'm going to use it in teaching all of my students. Um, so to have someone who's walked that talk for a long time pick up that tool and go, This is brilliant, um, was really pleasing to see. Um and of course, I think part of a critical part of the workshop is not only teams, but at least half of the time is writing. So, you know, we give them a bit of information and then say now go and talk and write and think tank together, as Bahareh mentioned. And we've had um, you know, lots of really positive feedback around that as well. So we'll tinker with it a little bit, but I think the focus will be, you know, building the right balance around writing time, providing them insights and information, um, and then using the lean canvas to help them focus their thoughts.

Bahareh Badrian 24:05

As Graham said, we've had a lot of uh very positive feedback. And I think one of the other positive outcomes was that at each workshop we had at least, I think we had one team that realized that perhaps they weren't ready to submit a grant application just yet, and perhaps it was a partnership they needed to work on a bit more, or the concept needed to be better developed. And I think that that's a really good outcome because it allows that team to now have plenty of time to plan and engage with us as well for feedback to make their uh application stronger for the next round of that particular funding program. So I just thought I'd add that as well.

Advisory Committee And Next Steps

Caroline Duell 24:45

Fantastic. So it really is one of those sort of uh make or break types of experiences where you get a true sense of how prepared you are and and you know how long it's going to take. Obviously, it's a bit of a reality check. You mentioned this input from colleagues in the sector as well. And I know Wages has a fantastic advisory committee, which has been set up to, I guess, temperature check the sector and to build those connections and those important allies. Would you like to just share a little bit about that?

Bahareh Badrian 25:18

Yeah, so we are very fortunate. We we have some uh amazing researchers and entrepreneurs that are very experienced and have been successful in their careers that are so passionate about sharing their insights with the sector, and they've committed to serve as our advisory committee, but also to help out with workshops or peer review or whatever we need, really. So we're very, very fortunate. Um we've already had one meeting with our advisory uh committee, and it was just so wonderful to hear uh all their thoughts and insights. They're very positive about the program, and it was a great discussion on just the realities and the challenges that researchers, particularly those that are early career, mid-career, face across Australia, not just in WA, but obviously in WA the situation is perhaps a little bit more challenging. Things like um, you know, we we need sort of um more funding to fund the entire pipeline of activity, including funding for things like pilots or seed uh research for researchers to be able to test out their ideas and you know, the support networks around researchers, how can we help them and develop them a bit more? So it was a really wonderful conversation. And um, the great thing about wages and MTP Connect is that we can be very flexible. We want to make sure that this service serves the needs of the sector. And so uh Tracy and I and Graham are always thinking about how best to deliver this service. And so if people come to us and want more of one workshop over another, or think there should be different content, or would like us to think about doing something else, we're very open to that feedback. And um, yeah, so we can be quite flexible and nimble when it comes to that element as well.

Tracey Wilkinson 27:09

The only thing I would say is that we're all aware that we're building something from scratch and doing something new. Um so it's really exciting to have the attitude of let's let's try, let's test, let's improve, and and let's see what this can become to make sure that it's really fit for purpose and delivers the most outcomes and the biggest impact for medical research in Australia and Western Australia and beyond.

Caroline Duell 27:38

What's coming up, Bahare, in terms of the the rest of the year, the rest of the program, um, 2026 and beyond, what can people expect?

Bahareh Badrian 27:46

So I'm very excited to say that we're going to have plenty more workshops. These are regular things that are happening every four to six weeks. So if you registered and you missed out, please know we're running more early and mid-career focused workshops. We're running workshops focused on commercialization grant development, we're running workshops focused on clinicians and lots of other uh really interesting ideas in the works here. So what I'm planning to do is to have a forward workshop calendar on our website soon so that um everyone can see what's coming up. But um yeah, there's plenty of more content coming up, and we're always thinking about what other resources we can provide to the sector. So I would really encourage anybody who's interested about anything we've said today to uh sign up to our mailing list on our website because then you can be directly informed whenever a workshop is announced or any other sort of resource is made available.

Final Grant Tips And Farewell

Caroline Duell 28:43

And there's also obviously a LinkedIn platform that you can follow for news and updates and the wages website. So just wrapping up, perhaps I can ask all of you could you give us your best advice on how to pull together a winning grant application? Tracy.

Tracey Wilkinson 29:01

Okay. So mine is to look at why the grant program was actually created and what the funder is trying to achieve from it, which is usually a high-level objective. Um, and to think carefully about your proposed project and whether it actually truly aligns with those objectives, and to do that in a really critical and honest way. If the alignment is not strong and you can't articulate it clearly, then it's probably just not worth applying to save your time and focus on something where you find a better chance. But also that the work that you do in that like that thinking of okay, how am I outlining the alignment will really help you craft that compelling narrative that will get broken through an application? Um, it's almost like this north jar that helps you kind of stay focused as you prepare and draft, and then makes it really easy for the assessor to go, yep, I can see why this project is worthy of being funded. So that's my topic.

Caroline Duell 29:58

Bahareh, have you got one?

Bahareh Badrian 30:01

Uh yes, I I'm gonna sound a bit like a broken record here, but I think just plan, plan, plan, plan ahead. Engage early, plan ahead. Um what you want to apply for, take the time to read all the documentation, as Tracy has said, take the time to reach out to senior people in your teams or um or experienced people in your teams or any mentors and get uh advice and help and uh make sure you leave plenty of time to be able to take the feedback on board as well. There's no point getting feedback a week before submission. You will not have time to make any decent changes to a grant application in that time frame. Plan ahead.

Graham Hall 30:42

Graham, uh what's your tip? I'm a big fan of uh Fran Johansson's book called The Medici Effect, um, which describes innovation at the intersection. And and at the intersection, he's really describing cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary engagement and involvement. So my tip would be, as both Tracy and Bahare said, start early, do the thinking, but engage with collaborators and partners to really question who do we need to have to answer this question? Who are the people who are going to be interested in the outcomes and how do we make sure that they're actively engaged in every stage of the research, not just when it's happening, but in during the ideation phase as well. And so when you capture that diversity, you end up with much better outcomes. So embrace diversity would be my concluding comment.

Bahareh Badrian 31:38

Can I just um add something? Because um wages would not work without the support of our amazing partners. And I just wanted to take a moment uh to just thank each specifically. So uh Dr. Graeme Hall, Synergy Health Solutions, we're so fortunate to partner with. Graeme's been facilitating some of our workshops and helping us develop content and also partnering with us to coordinate the peer review. Tracy and team at the WA Life Sciences Innovation Hub have just been amazing in their support of wages, in particular to for us enable us to support our entrepreneurs in WA. And then the Consumer and Community Involvement Program at the WA Health Translation Network, who are partnering with us to deliver content on how best to engage with consumers and community, which is so important for our workshop participants or wages participants to think about. And then just a shout out to our amazing sector, like the positive engagement has just been so um nice. Um and we've had so many uh experienced and amazing researchers, entrepreneurs, and professional staff who've presented at our workshops and um given their time to serve on our panel sessions at the workshops and also committing to um providing peer review for the grant applications. So very thankful to them and to the universities and medical research institutes here as well that have partnered with us to host the workshops, and I've just been so positive about the program and helping us get the word out there about the program. So I just wanted to give a quick acknowledgement and shout out because without all this engagement, wages just wouldn't be as successful as it is. And I think it's also such a great testament to how wonderfully collaborative the WA Health and Medical Research and Innovation Sector can be.

Graham Hall 33:31

We have a great program, we're supported by some fantastic partners. If we keep seeing the same feedback that we're getting now, then you know I'm really confident that it'll translate into a really vibrant and well-supported network of health and medical researchers across Western Australia that can answer some really important questions for the benefit of the community.

Caroline Duell 33:54

Tracey, do you want to add anything?

Tracey Wilkinson 33:56

It takes a village, and it's lovely to work with Bahari and Graham and the broader village on delivering this program. Um and just sitting here listening to them talk makes me realise how lucky I am to have founded them and got them to agree to work with me on delivering this program in Western Australia.

Caroline Duell 34:15

Well, it's been a delight to hear your your wisdom and your energies as you channel them into this WA grant excellence service. And thank you very much for joining us and for sharing your involvement in wages and and the plans for uh some of the activities that are coming up this year. It's it's going to be a fantastic program.

Speaker 4 34:38

Thanks, Caro. It really is. We it's all very meta. We had to write a grant to be awarded the funding, now help other people write grants. So it's really exciting to get have the program get started and actually all of the our planning and ideas um come to fruition.

Caroline Duell 34:56

You've been listening to the MTP Connect podcast. This podcast is produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people here in Naarm, Melbourne. Thanks for listening to the show. If you love what you heard, share our podcast and follow us for more. Until next time.