AVA Submission on Sustainable funding and investment to strengthen biosecurity

The AVA has made a formal submission on the Government discussion paper on sustainable funding and investment to strengthen biosecurity.

The AVA thanks the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry for the opportunity to comment. We have the following comments related to the discussion paper. Our submission considers the key questions of the discussion paper.

Key amongst these is the question of where funding should be sourced. As the bulk of the benefit of a robust biosecurity system goes to the community in general, the Australian economy and public good (health), a large component of the cost-sharing responsibility needs to be borne by the government (federal/state or combined) via the tax system. Consideration should also be given to imposing biosecurity levies on incoming goods and visitors (who do not contribute to the tax system) entering Australia.

Read the full submission here.