Page 2542 - Week 07 - Thursday, 18 June 2009
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The AUSVET plan for equine influenza was the blueprint for how all jurisdictions managed the quarantine restrictions that were required when the horse industry was brought to its knees during the horse flu outbreak in 2007 and 2008. When horse flu broke out in eastern Australia and the relevant AUSVET plan was activated, lawyers for the Department of Territory and Municipal Services had to check that the various agreed response actions under the plan could be done under the Animal Diseases Act.
Most of the actions were easily linked to provisions of the act, but some actions required a degree of legal gymnastics to identify the source of power under the act. I hasten to add that, in most cases, people with horses were only too happy to cooperate with authorities to control the spread of the disease. Fortunately we did not have any outbreaks of the disease here in the ACT. But it was a close call, with the disease moving gradually south towards us, until it petered out in the hotter weather in late 2007. It was both fascinating and frightening to look at the weekly outbreak maps and watch how equine influenza was spreading through New South Wales and getting ever closer to the ACT, how the disease was following the Hume Highway and along the Olympic Way and the other main roads and realising that it was people, wittingly or unwittingly, transmitting the disease as they moved their horses.
After the equine influenza outbreak was brought under control, the Department of Territory and Municipal Services reviewed its response to the outbreak. In doing so, there were a number of aspects of the Animal Diseases Act that were identified as needing clarification to ensure greater certainty and to simplify steps that may need to be taken to manage future animal disease outbreaks. I consider it vital that, in an emergency situation, the underpinning legislation provides as much clarity as possible to attend to these serious and urgent issues.
As I mentioned upon tabling the bill, there is an expansion to the object of the act to ensure there is no question that the Animal Diseases Act provides protection for all animals from exotic and endemic disease and not just providing protection for animals used to produce a product. Currently the purpose of the act is to protect human health and markets for animal products. The bill expands this object to clearly state that the act is to protect the health and welfare of humans and animals, as well as protecting all animal-related industries. There is no question in my mind that we should protect the health and welfare of all animals and not just those that have the potential to enter the market as an animal product.
The equine influenza outbreak was instructive. The 2007 quarantine could be entirely justified on the grounds that Australia’s horse breeding industry had to be protected. But there are many horses, indeed most horses, that are not involved in that industry—from horses kept as pets to horses at riding schools to farm horses.
The bill amends the title of the Director of Veterinary Hygiene to the Chief Veterinary Officer. This amendment is appropriate and sensible in order to remove ambiguity and ensure there is no uncertainty in an emergency situation. All other jurisdictions use the terminology of Chief Veterinary Officer as a title description for that position, and it is impractical for the ACT to hold on to this outdated carryover from commonwealth administration when there is the potential for jurisdictional confusion
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