Quarantine Responsibilities and National Biosecurity Governance

Many people are concerned about the avian influenza outbreak especially its potential impact on wildlife which is necessarily complex. Responsibility is distributed across several intergovernmental bodies and portfolios:

Function	Responsible body or authorities
Technical coordination	Consultative Committee on Emergency Animal Diseases (CCEAD), comprising the Australian Chief Veterinary Officer, state and territory Chief Veterinary Officers, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry representatives – including the Chief Environmental Biosecurity Officer – and CSIRO.
Major policy and cost-sharing decisions	National Management Group (NMG), chaired by the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and comprising senior Commonwealth, state and territory officials.
Wildlife and biodiversity matters	Commonwealth, state and territory environment departments and ministers.
Human-health risks	Commonwealth and state health authorities, including public-health representatives.

These arrangements illustrate both the necessity of cooperation and the risk that legal authority, operational responsibility, funding and public accountability may become fragmented. Section 51(ix) of the Constitution gives the Commonwealth Parliament power to make laws with respect to quarantine. The power is concurrent rather than automatically exclusive: states retain relevant public-health and quarantine powers unless a valid Commonwealth law is inconsistent with a state law, in which case section 109 gives the Commonwealth law priority to the extent of the inconsistency.

The constitutional argument should therefore not be expressed as a claim that the Commonwealth must perform every operational task. The stronger and more defensible proposition is that the Commonwealth’s broad legislative and financial capacity makes it the logical government to provide clear national leadership, while drawing on state and territory legislation, personnel and local knowledge for implementation.

The paper at the link examines this issue through Australia’s experience of COVID-19 border controls and considers its wider relevance to animal disease, wildlife incursions, pests and weeds. It argues for nationally coherent emergency triggers, standards, cross-border arrangements, data systems, funding responsibilities and accountability.

The COVID-19 pandemic also demonstrated the need for a Royal Commission to examine the issues raised in the attached paper, identify any uncertainty or fragmentation in the respective quarantine responsibilities of governments and agencies, and recommend reforms that would enable Australia to respond more effectively to future epidemics and pandemics.

AWS would welcome your comments.