National Biosecurity Committee
On 1 July 2008 the National Biosecurity Committee (NBC) became the new advisory committee to the:
- Primary Industries Standing Committee (PISC)
- Primary Industries Ministerial Council (PIMC)
- Natural Resource Management Standing Committee (NRMSC)
- Natural Resource Management Ministerial Council (NRMMC).
The NBC was established to provide strategic leadership in managing national approaches to emerging and ongoing biosecurity policy issues across jurisdictions and sectors. NBC will take an overarching, cross-sectoral approach to national biosecurity policy, and will work collaboratively to achieve national policy objectives for biosecurity in Australia.
All biosecurity issues, including environmental, animal and plant biosecurity issues, will be considered by the NBC, with a view to resolution or for the development of advice to PISC/NRMSC and PIMC/NRMMC as appropriate. Given that the membership of the NRMSC and NRMMC represents both primary production and environmental, most issues will be directed to the NRMSC/NRMMC.
The NBC anticipates meeting three times a year in February, July and October/November.
For further information contact the NBC Secretariat.
NBC Update
The National Biosecurity Committee (NBC) met for the eighth time in Canberra on 29 July 2010. The meeting was chaired by Ms Rona Mellor, Deputy Secretary of the Biosecurity Services Group with the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.
The meeting focused on progressing key national approaches to enhance Australia’s biosecurity system including:
- Development of an implementation plan for the schedules to the Intergovernmental Agreement on Biosecurity (IGAB), an agreement between the Commonwealth, state and territory governments to strengthen the biosecurity system. The IGAB will be considered by the Council of Australian Governments later this year
- Consideration of implementation arrangements for the National Environmental Biosecurity Response Agreement (NEBRA), an agreement to establish national arrangements for responses to nationally significant biosecurity incidents with predominantly public benefits. The NEBRA will be considered by the Council of Australian Governments later this year
- Improved biosecurity information sharing arrangements and systems
- Consistency in approach for cost benefit analysis to support biosecurity decision-making
- A more co-ordinated and efficient approach to biosecurity research, development and extension
- Improving community engagement in biosecurity.
The next meeting of the NBC is on 28 October 2010.