Implementing Australia’s National Biosecurity Strategy

Australia’s federal, state and territory agricultural ministers endorsed the 10-year National Biosecurity Strategy in August 2022, and more than a year and a half later, the Commonwealth government has released the plan for implementing the strategy.

That delay is more than 15% of the way into the strategy.

Now that we have an implementation plan, the National Biosecurity Strategy Implementation Working Group are tasked to develop the National Action Plan. If we see it by 9 August this year, i.e. in less than 6 months, that will be 20% of the way – one fifth of the way – through the life of the strategy.

DAF advises that a draft of the National Action Plan, comprising only an initial set of actions, is planned to be released for consultation in early 2024. That’s now, or soon.

Perhaps Department of Agriculture and Fisheries has been distracted from pursuing this in a timely fashion by the universal rejection of their so-called biosecurity levy to be imposed on all producers from 1 July 2024.

This National Implementation Plan details:

·         an implementation framework for the Strategy,

·         criteria for choosing which actions to include in the Action Plan, and how to report progress,

·         the structure and key bodies to oversee strategy implementation,

·         communications and stakeholder engagement objectives, including stakeholder input, and

·         expectations for monitoring and evaluation, and strategy reviews.

You can read more about the Strategy and Implementation Plan here Biosecurity