Review of the Intergovernmental Agreement on Biosecurity

Is the IGAB effective and fit for the future?
Animal Health Australia submission
Animal Health Australia (AHA) is the trusted and independent national animal health body in
Australia, bringing together government and industry to deliver animal health and biosecurity outcomes. With our members we scan the horizon for threats and opportunities, advocate for and drive solutions and take a whole-of-sector approach to ensure the long-term success of Australia’s animal health and biosecurity system. AHA’s members include all Commonwealth, state and territory governments, as well as national peak industry bodies for livestock and associated industries.

AHA appreciates the opportunity to provide feedback on the ‘Is the Intergovernmental Agreement on
Biosecurity effective and fit for the future?’ Discussion paper.

4.1 Implementation and effectiveness of the IGAB agreement

In general, we feel that the IGAB is functioning reasonably well but is coming under increasing strain, with the escalating number of recent and concurrent emergency responses highlighting this. IGAB does promote collaboration amongst the governments, however with eight different state and territory jurisdictions, we are aware that there are often differences in the way departments of agriculture/primary industries implement national policy due to there being eight different
Biosecurity Acts (or equivalent legislation). This can lead to perverse outcomes for producers.

We note that the current cost sharing provisions for emergency animal disease (EAD) response is mentioned in Clause 33d (the Emergency Animal Disease Response Agreement (EADRA)), but we note that recent nationally cost shared responses have highlighted the increasing costs of response, and the unsustainable pressures placed on jurisdictions and industries to fund multiple, often concurrent responses. We believe that a future body of work needs to be undertaken to explore options for developing complementary arrangements to the EADRA to sustainably fund disease responses which may happen on a larger scale, involve wildlife and domestic animals, or may not be technically feasible to eradicate, but nationally coordinated containment and suppression activities may be in the public good. AHA is well placed to lead these discussions.

The preparedness (and surveillance) activities that occur within the livestock sector seem to be adequately covered under clause 16, which presumably also includes industry contributions, where they play a role in the biosecurity system. Clause 33a links to clause 16 however, as industry is not a signatory to IGAB, some might be considered there is a gap in terms of their contributions to preparedness. However, AHA believes that any perceived gap is addressed through ‘normal commitments’ under EADRA. So, while this could potentially be made clearer in IGAB, we feel industry preparedness (and surveillance) activities are covered.

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4.2 Cross-jurisdictional cost sharing and funding arrangements
We agree that ‘Funding is tight across the board, with the biosecurity system under significant stress as incursions and responses are growing in number and complexity’ and this is creating tension and pressure on the system.

We also agree that ‘there are gaps in the funding framework’ with funding for containment being a real issue and the threat of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) highlighting this gap.

‘There is an increase in incidents involving pests that affect multiple sectors including animals, plants, the environment and sometimes humans’ – we agree that the existing Deeds for cost sharing were not written with these situations in mind, especially as we seem to be facing more complex threats and also threats from agents that are not always possible to eradicate. These complex scenarios were not envisioned in drafting of Deeds. The fact that off-deed arrangements are being used to fund some responses is also a sign of this issue.

‘Response decision making needs to be completed earlier, with less focus on funding and more focus on the economic, and socio-economic impacts’ – we agree there needs to be a focus on immediate action and making sure there is not paralysis caused by concerns about how to fund a response. We believe the underlying processes of the EADRA support rapid decision making in response, but this may be impacted in the future if Treasuries’ support is lost in the future.

‘Limited funding in Australia’s biosecurity system significantly impedes government’s ability to effectively implement the obligations under the IGAB’ – this is of great concern to AHA as it is a nation-wide issue with no obvious solution. There are multiple high priority threats and risks which all need to be addressed, but not enough funding to do them all. It seems the only solution may be to focus on innovative solutions to reduce the cost of surveillance and response and empower stakeholders to help manage biosecurity risks themselves.

4.3 COVID-19 and the IGAB
We don’t have specific comments on this section but do agree that IGAB should be adequate to deal with future pandemics, especially where there is a zoonotic pathogen involved. We also agree that
‘COVID-19 showed that the country can work together and adapt to achieve results. The pandemic highlighted the magnitude of impact on Australia and shone a spotlight on the importance of biosecurity’ and with the other comments made under the ‘Early observations’ section of the discussion paper.

Animal Health Australia

12 September 2024

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