2023 State Winners - Tasmania

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Accelerating Women Award. 

Audio – presenter: So the 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards, Tasmanian Accelerating Women Award winner is…if I can open it…The Bubble Launceston.

Audio – music: Upbeat music plays as the audience cheers and applauds. 

Footage: The recipients stand up and walks past tables of well-dressed people and onto the stage to accept their award. The footage cuts to show the recipients posing in front of a media wall with their award and certificate.

Text: Accelerating Women Award TAS Winner. The Bubble Launceston.

Audio – recipient: Thank you so much. I think I might cry. 

So, I mean, I thought the journey to get here was a tough one. But then the actual literal journey to get to this venue from West Hobart? Just think, scooter, me in my dress, on the back holding onto my husband for dear life. And anyone that knows West Hobart, it's all downhill to the Grand Chancellor. So anyway, I'm really proud of my journey.

Now I was terrible and didn't listen to the speechwriting workshops, so I think I've already stuffed up. This award is for all the women that have been told period pain is normal, hot flushes during menopause just needs to be tolerated, and being depressed in pregnancy is just a phase. Every day we are listening at The Bubble to women and reassuring them that they are not hysterical women, and it's not just in their head as they've been led to believe. 

The health profession needs to do better. We need women to feel heard. We need to provide an environment for women to feel comfortable in, and we need to provide better access to women's health services. Thank you to our community who have put their trust in us for their women's health needs. Thanks to the doctors at The Bubble, our allied health and our beautiful admin team who provide excellence in care at The Bubble Launceston. Thank you to Maddie, my practice manager, who is my everything and the best practice manager anyone could hope for. And lastly, thank you to my husband and my two young daughters who are fierce feminists, who have supported me on this journey and been my number one fan base. Thank you.

Footage: The audience cheers as the video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: The Telstra jingle plays. 

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Building Communities Award. 

Audio – presenter: The 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards Tasmanian Building Communities Award winner is - that was a mouthful - Bridgewater Police and Community Youth Club.

Audio – music: Upbeat music plays as the audience cheers and applauds. 

Footage: The recipients stand up from their table to hug each other and walk up to the stage to receive their award. The footage cuts to show the recipients posing in front of a media wall with their award and certificate. 

Text: Building Communities Award TAS Winner. Goodwill Projects. 

Audio – recipient: Thank you very much. I'm the manager of the Bridgewater PCYC, and I've seen the organisation really go through several really difficult years, just like the rest of society. But we've been really fortunate. We've got a great group of people out there, and that's our staff, our personnel, and they're largely responsible for making the most of the opportunities that have come as we've got back on our feet in a post-COVID world.

Working together with the community, as a part of the community, they've been able to increase our efficiency. The organisation's grown. It's a much more innovative platform than ever before. But they've done something else, something a little bit different, something subtle, something that really epitomises what the value of the Bridgewater PCYC is - and that, that's what it means to people, what it means to be a part of. 

Now that's difficult to define and it's almost impossible to measure, but you really don't need to because at the end of the day, that's something that you feel. It's the creation between an organisation and its community of an environment, an environment that's caring, that’s supportive. Something that offers hope, encouragement. It's the two organisations coming together to be able to better the local environment, and that's really why we're here tonight. It's the enormous effort that our staff have put in, and it's the huge contribution that the community continues to give us that has allowed us to be very successful, particularly in the last 12 months. So I certainly, on behalf of the Bridgewater PCYC, on behalf of our astonishing staff, who I just can't thank enough for their tireless efforts day in and day out, and on behalf of our agency, partners and the community, all of whom are critical for us to be a successful organisation to better our local environment - I'd like to thank you for this very prestigious award. Thank you very much.

Footage: The audience applauds as the video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: The Telstra jingle plays. 

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Championing Health Award. 

Audio – presenter: The 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards Tasmanian Championing Health Award winner is…The Launceston Health Hub.

Audio – music: Upbeat music plays as the audience cheers and applauds. 

Footage: The recipient stands up from their table and walks past tables of well-dressed people and onto the stage to accept their award. The footage cuts to show the recipient posing in front of a media wall with their award and certificate.

Text: Championing Health Award TAS Winner. The Launceston Health Hub. 

Audio – recipient: Thank you so much. I'll just love to start by thanking our fellow peers in the category - Nova Dental, The Bubble and Sarah's Wellness Centre. They've all really strived to make a big difference in having a positive message and a positive vision into health in Tasmania. 

And what we've really strived to do from day one is to really improve the health outcomes in Tasmania. We've now had over 100,000 patients attend the health hub in our eight years, and that's an amazing achievement for people that have entrusted their health with our fellow colleagues. I think there’s one big thing in having a vision for like, Tasmania being the healthiest island in the world, but there's another thing with people doing it, and the biggest thank you goes to the professionals, the admin team, the nurses that have always made a huge input into buying into that vision and making it happen. 

So once again, thanks to everyone on the night, Telstra, the judges for giving up their time and Tasmania. We're batting above our weight in so many categories. Health is well on the way with our four finalists tonight, so thanks again.

Footage: The video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: The Telstra jingle plays. 

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Embracing Innovation Award. 

Audio – presenter: The 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards Tasmanian Embracing Innovation Award winner is…Ellis Richmond.

Audio – music: Upbeat music plays as the audience cheers and applauds. 

Footage: The recipients rise from their table to walk up to the stage, as the audience around them applauds. The footage cuts to show the recipients posing in front of a media wall with their award and certificate.

Text: Embracing Innovation Award TAS Winner. Ellis Richmond Pty Ltd.

Audio – recipient: Thanks so much, it's obviously such an honour to be recognised here tonight in this category. 

Innovation is obviously a buzz word that we're probably sick to death of hearing, and what it actually means is everyone's guess. But in our view, innovation is about working out what really matters to the people that matter to you and to us - that is, our team, our community and our clients.

I think we started a pretty normal journey as an accounting firm and as not an accountant myself, I will say in some ways that's a relatively boring business. But I think when we started going on that journey, we realised that we're coming into a time in the world that is very challenging and very new to many business owners. And we're coming into a world where accounting for the success of a business in dollars and cents and profit and loss isn't necessarily going to be the future. We're going to need to account for things that really matter, and we wanted to start with carbon.

And for us, innovation in that space started early on. As an accounting firm, I think our fifth or sixth hire was someone like the wonderful Clint we have here with us on our team, who is in IT, building solutions and automating everything for our team so we could focus on what was next. We then realised that there was a big opportunity to support businesses globally in how they could actually account for these things that matter. And I think our maybe 15th hire was a software developer that we managed to convince to come to Tasmania over burgers at the Penguin Brewery. And recently I'm really proud to say that we've just secured venture capital investment from one of the biggest firms in the country, and that unlocks a whole other level of innovation for us - a capacity to hire some incredible talent to come here to Tasmania and help our current team to really take on this next wave of accounting and take on this next wave of meaningfulness in all of our businesses. 

And for us, that's innovation. It's testing something out, imagining what it could be, iterating, listening, going again and doing that as quickly as possible to add value to the people that matter. So tonight, that's really recognition that as a team, you guys are doing something exceptionally special, and we're really accepting this award on behalf of our team. So thank you for the work you've done.

Footage: The video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo. 

Audio – music: The Telstra jingle plays. 

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Outstanding Growth Award.  

Audio – presenter: And the 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards Tasmanian Outstanding Growth Award winner is…Ellis Richmond.

Audio – music: Upbeat music plays as the audience cheers and applauds.

Footage: The recipients rise from their table to walk up to the stage, as the audience around them applauds. The footage cuts to show the recipients posing in front of a media wall with their award and certificate.

Text: Outstanding Growth Award TAS Winner. Valenhold. 

Audio – recipient: Thank you. Obviously amazing to be here again in the second category. And obviously, innovation and growth generally do go hand in hand, and it's not lost on us how much of a great opportunity it is to be recognised in these two categories.

I think growth for us has been a really key focus from day one, and not because we are obsessed with revenue accounting FTEs, but in our field, obviously growth is generally the pathway to impact, which is obviously what we're most focused on. But I think growth as well, to Lindsey and I, is about personal growth of the team and when the business is growing, particularly in a place like Burnie in Tasmania, the opportunities for personal growth of the team that you bring on is so significant.

And to our team, Alyssa and James, Toby and Clint, who are here tonight and everyone back home, watching you grow and I have no doubt, especially with Toby's negotiation skills, he will be up here with his 10,000 splinter businesses over the next ten years, and I'm sure Alyssa will be following that.

Their opportunity to grow and be part of this as we go forward is what brings me a lot of joy. So from the very beginning, we were in a very small side office in Burnie. We had no bathroom and we all sat around a table and we started writing down the principles and the values that we would operate by.

And one of those principles is titled See You in Copenhagen, and it was around this view that that was going to be a city that we would expand to. And the principal reads that we're based on an island at the bottom of the world, and we strongly believe that we can do anything from here and that there is absolutely no limit to what we can achieve.

And so for us, going global has been something that's on our minds, and certainly this is just the very, very beginning of that journey, but we're certainly looking forward to what the next 12 months looks like as well. Thank you.

Footage: The video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo.

Audio – music: The Telstra jingle plays.

Footage: Upbeat music plays as the video moves from a blue opening screen with the Telstra logo to the presenter for the Promoting Sustainability Award. 

Audio – presenter: The 2023 Telstra Business - Best of Business awards Tasmania, Promoting Sustainable award winner is..Aqua Clean Tasmania. Well done.

Audio – music: Upbeat music plays as the audience cheers and applauds. 

Footage: The recipient stands up from their table and walk past tables of well-dressed people and onto the stage to accept their award. The footage cuts to show the recipient posing in front of a media wall with their award and certificate.

Text: Promoting Sustainability Award TAS Winner. Aqua Clean Tasmania. 

Audio – recipient 1: It's a great honour, I've haven't got a speech because I didn't have a clue that I was ever going to win anything, so…and even if wrote one, I can't read me own writing.

But anyway, we're only a small business that started in the Huon Valley, which we're very proud of. And we started very different than any company, I reckon. And my brother and I, I'm not joking, our first blueprints were drew on the back of a beer carton, which was five years ago.

Now we've got designers that work for us. Also, we use modelling and we're always producing new products and we're only a young business, but we are growing. I'd like to thank all the people that have helped us on the way. I'm not going to mention names because there's too many. I'd really like to thank our staff because we are a team, it's just not my brother and I. It is a team. And thank you very much.

Footage: The audience applauds as the video transitions to a blue end screen with the words ‘Best of Business Awards’ next to the Telstra logo.

Audio – music: The Telstra jingle plays.