This week is Australia’s inaugural National Biosecurity Week (NBW). The event serves as a vital reminder of the importance of safeguarding our nation’s unique ecosystems and agricultural industries from harmful pests and diseases, underscoring our collective responsibility to preserve Australia’s natural heritage for future generations. Biosecurity is a fundamental enabler for Australia’s food security, a critical but often overlooked element of our national security, and it is time for it to be treated accordingly.
Australia’s biosecurity system is one of the most formidable yet largely unseen and unappreciated elements of our national defence, one that even has the power to compel great powers into compliance when conducting exercises in Australian territory. Most of us interact consciously with the system only when we re-enter the country and fill out our incoming passenger declarations. This interaction represents the tip of a system that cuts across every level of government and society.
It is this tip that is safeguarded by biosecurity arrangements designed to halt exotic pests and pathogens from breaching Australia’s borders. Producers and governments face costs in a breach, and prices rise. We see this now with recent egg purchase restrictions due to the H7 high pathogenicity avian influenza outbreak, which is likely to cost industries and governments more than $100 million. When the primary driver of domestic food insecurity has been the cost of living, that financial impact ultimately increases food prices that only expand the cohort of food-insecure Australians, leading to suffering and discontent.
Varroa mite, fall armyworm, foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus, Xylella fastidiosa, and citrus canker are only the best known among many pests and pathogens that threaten Australian primary production. Australia suffers about 40 new pest incursions every year, and some intruders, like fall armyworm and varroa mite, are now here to stay. Others, such as FMD and Xylella, have been kept out, but should they breach our borders, their impact would be devastating to livestock and plant production industries and the broader economy. The range of exotic pathogens beyond our borders is significant, and many are unheard of by most Australians. They remain unfamiliar because of a combination of luck and a biosecurity system under increasing pressure; the recent incursions of fall armyworm and varroa mite demonstrate that vulnerability.
It is this system that protects and enhances much of Australia’s national power through the protection of our way of life and hundreds of billions worth of economic benefits to the Australian economy. By underpinning our food security, it underpins fundamental pillars of social order, sustainability and national security. To safeguard it, Australia’s biosecurity arrangements must be fiercely protected and enhanced.
But taking biosecurity for granted surrenders to the strategic naivety that has left the world ill-prepared for crises previously considered preventable. A global pandemic, war in Europe, the spectre of nuclear war, kinetic war between Middle Eastern powers and increasing climate threats are all features of our contemporary reality. These threats demand that we avoid strategic missteps by not ignoring the factors that enable them and avoid the agonising between government and industry over what constitutes sustainable resourcing that is leaving the biosecurity system’s future in the balance. That uncertainty is stifling progress on implementing the 2022 National Biosecurity Strategy, a document released with the endorsement of the Australian government and all states and territories.
A strategic and coordinated approach matters because the system protects our heavily trade-oriented agricultural industry’s contribution to global food security via a production surplus far above domestic demand. However, this surplus is also the source of a misguided assumption that Australian food security is guaranteed.
Food security is defined by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as: ‘when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.’ Under these terms, the Foodbank Hunger Report 2023 found that 36 percent of Australians faced food insecurity in 2023, underscoring the socioeconomic factors at play. Similarly, the number of food-insecure people worldwide has increased since 2020, driven by conflict, climate shocks, economic downturn, growing inequality and Covid-19. Complacency in addressing food security will only drive strategic challenges that contribute to instability and armed conflict.
In this way, the system is equally affected by the same pressures as Australia’s defence organisation. It bears a similar responsibility to protect Australia’s national interest. It therefore must be valued as such and should become subject to the same conventions: that is, to fund the system as a percentage of GDP that reflects its true value to our economy, our environment, our food security and our way of life.
There will always be many competing priorities, but if we are serious about returning to fundamentals to enhance Australia’s national power, our biosecurity system must be accepted as a pillar of our national security.