Quarantine review 'may be rushed'

Report: Jane Bardon
As an isolated island state, Australia is in one of the best quarantine situations in the world.So the chaos caused by citrus canker, sugar cane smut and horse flu haven't been a good look for our quarantine agencies.The Federal Government's launched a review it hopes will fix the problem.In Senate Estimates hearings this week the head of quarantine for AQIS Jenni Gordon was among officers forced to admit there are gaps in the armour telling Greens Senator Christine Milne "its a risk management business, Senator, we can't guarantee that we are capturing 100% of quarantine risk items coming into the country".The Federal Government's investigation into the whole system will be carried out by an independent panel including a former department staffer, a farmer and a chicken industry leader. It will probe how decisions are made to allow products and animals in, and how ready we are to respond to outbreaks.The panel will also look at what's been done since the last major review by Malcolm Nairn in 1996.Professor Nairn now chairs the Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre.He had 12 months to do his review and is questioning the July deadline."It strikes me as a bit short, if you want to give plenty of time for people to give in submissions and for consultation, and we also found overseas trips very valuable as well, so I expect the panel will want to do that too."Professor Nairn says there have been some improvements in assessing risks, but other problems haven't been addressed.He says post border work picking up and stopping diseases and pests spreading when they have got in needs to be improved with a nationally coordinated surveillance system.There needs to be more development of a risk-based approach to make sure work done at borders is targeted at the highest risk areas.Malcolm Nairn says its not just enough to fix the system for now.There must be regular audit of decisions to make sure they're flexible enough to deal with changing trade and climate conditions, so that farmers and others in the community regain confidence that the system will safeguard their interests over time, rather than measures being diluted by changing circumstances over time.
In this report: Malcolm Nairn, chairman Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre; Jenni Gordon, AQIS