Agency overview and resources

1.1 Strategic direction

Biosecurity Australia (BA) is a prescribed agency within the Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry portfolio. It provides science-based quarantine assessments and policy advice that protects Australia’s favourable pest and disease status and enhances Australia’s access to international animal and plant related markets.

BA’s role is to:

• undertake import risk analyses of proposals from other countries or importers who wish to import animals, plants or their products into Australia in order to identify any quarantine risks associated with proposed imports and propose quarantine measures that could be applied to mitigate those risks to an acceptably low level
• provide biosecurity policy advice and recommendations to Australia’s Director of Animal and Plant Quarantine and to the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS)
• provide day-to-day advice to AQIS on biosecurity issues, including on the implementation of biosecurity policy and the consideration of more specific applications for import permits
• provide scientific and technical advice underpinning Australia’s proposals to other countries to obtain and/or maintain market access for exports of animals, plants and their products
• contribute to the development of international standards relevant to biosecurity policy and implementation.

The Australian Government has accepted, in principle, the 84 recommendations from the Review of Quarantine and Biosecurity report, One Biosecurity: a working partnership. A key recommendation is the establishment of a national authority that brings together the major functions of the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS), BA and relevant parts of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF). Interim administrative arrangements will take effect from 1 July 2009. A key activity for BA in 2009–10 will be to assist in the implementation of the reforms.

Other important work for BA in 2009–10 will be managing and monitoring the regulated import risk analysis (IRA) process, continuing to strengthen engagement with stakeholders and the completion of major import risk analyses. In 2009–10, BA intends to finalise the IRA for prawns and prawn products which will be completed under the pre-regulated process because it was well-advanced.

1.2 Agency resource statement

Table 1.1 shows the total resources from all origins. The table summarises how resources will be applied by outcome and by administered and departmental classification.

Table 1.1: Biosecurity Australia Resource Statement—Budget estimates for 2009–10 as at Budget May 2009

1.3 Budget measures

BA is not affected by any 2009–10 budget measures.

1.4 Transition from outcomes and outputs to outcomes and programs

From the 2009–10 Budget, all General Government Sector (GGS) entities will be reporting on a program basis. The table below outlines the transition from the 2008–09 Budget year (as at Additional Estimates) which was presented in administered items, outputs and output groups to the program reporting framework used for the 2009–10 Budget. The table also captures revisions made to GGS outcome statements under the Operation Sunlight Outcome Statements Review.

Figure 2: Transition table

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