Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment
On 1 September 2021, the Government introduced the Biosecurity Amendment (Enhanced Risk Management) Bill 2021 into Parliament.
The Bill will enhance the operation of the biosecurity framework to strengthen the management of human health risks across maritime and aviation pathways, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of administration, and increase a range of civil and criminal penalties.
Amendments to the Biosecurity Act will provide for human biosecurity group directions to be made to manage the risk posed by classes of people who have, or may have been exposed to, a listed human disease such as COVID-19, and have travelled to Australia, such as passengers on board a cruise ship.
The Bill will also expand pre-arrival reporting requirements under the Biosecurity Act to ensure accurate and up to date information is available to assess biosecurity risk.
The Office of Best Practice Regulation (OBPR) assessed the Regulation Impact Statement (RIS) prepared by the Department as good practice in meeting the Government’s RIS requirements. To be consistent with exemplary, the RIS would have to have needed to more definitively demonstrate the claim that the benefits outweigh quantifiable increases in the regulatory burden for businesses. More details on the assessment of this RIS are provided in the OBPR’s advice (also linked below).
The RIS estimates a one-off regulatory cost to regulated entities of $0.275 million per annum.
Revised RIS
On 28 September 2022 the Government introduced the Biosecurity Amendment (Strengthening Biosecurity) Bill 2022 (bill) into Parliament. This bill includes provisions relating to pratique and pre-arrival reporting similar to those previously introduced into Parliament under the Biosecurity Amendment (Enhanced Risk Management) Bill 2021, which lapsed at the end of Parliament on 25 July 2022. A revised RIS was assessed by the OBPR to reflect the changes between the two bills. These changes included the removal of the human biosecurity group direction and the modification of the status quo option to reflect the following changes in circumstances:
- The amendment of the Biosecurity (Negative Pratique) Instrument 2016 in March 2022 to provide that all cruise vessels arrive in negative pratique;
- The resumption of international travel: and
- The ceasing of a declared human biosecurity emergency
The revised RIS estimates the the regulatory burden of the revised amendments at $0.75 million over 10 years. The revised RIS was assessed by the OBPR as good practice.