Australia’s Biosecurity Future: Unlocking the next decade of resilience

Freight & Trade Alliance (FTA) was proud to collaborate with CSIRO in the production of Australia's Biosecurity Future: Unlocking the next decade of resilience report

The report is available HERE
 
Please refer below to an extract of the executive summary.  

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased community and public awareness of the importance of biosecurity and has enhanced familiarity with broad biosecurity concepts. This presents a unique opportunity to make transformational changes to Australia's biosecurity system while engagement levels are comparatively high. 

Preparing Australia for biosecurity resilience in 2030 will require setting nationally coordinated goals across the  One Health spectrum (human, agricultural, environmental and marine health sectors). To assist with these discussions, this report describes potential 2030 scenarios for a 'business as usual' and 'transformational' trajectory 

Pursuing the transformational trajectory will require stronger collaboration across governments, industry, research and the community. This report provides 20 recommendations which aim to highlight priority areas for system improvement. While suggested lead stakeholder groups are provided for each recommendation, all require deeper cross-disciplinary discussions and planning.

Recommendations fall under three themes:

• System connectivity – Digitising processes, enhancing partnerships and greater data sharing across supply chains and the One Health sectors to facilitate market access and ensure the system is capable of understanding and managing emerging risks and established pests and diseases.

• Shared responsibility – Harnessing the collective knowledge and capability of citizens, communities and industries to ensure national biosecurity efforts are optimised; and that all Australians are aware of, and value, their role in managing biosecurity risks.

• Innovation in science and technology (S&T) – Creating national innovation platforms for developing and commercialising next-generation technologies and services that target priority biosecurity risks and can be sold globally.

FTA looks forward to ongoing collaboration with the CSIRO, the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources and members in establishing innovative and practical reforms to safeguard against biosecurity risks.