Information for people invited to the Biosecurity Parliamentary Forum

Hosted by the Australian Biosecurity CRC

Parliament House, Canberra

Tuesday 16 September 2008

**Australian Biosecurity Forum Report**

Program 

Accommodation information

Speaker biographies

Media briefing for journalists

Program
8.45-9.00am	Arrive in foyer for security clearance
9.00-9.15am	Coffee
9.15am	Introductory comments	Stephen Prowse, CEO, Australian Biosecurity CRC Mal Nairn, Chairman, Australian Biosecurity CRC
9.20am	Ministerial opening
9.30-10.15am	Session 1: Current biosecurity issues for Australia Chair: Mal Nairn, Chairman, Australian Biosecurity CRC
	Current threats to Australia's livestock industries: foot-and-mouth disease and others. What are the lessons from the equine influenza outbreak? What are the benefits of disease freedom?	Nigel Perkins Program Leader - Technologies to Enhance Detection, Australian Biosecurity CRC
	Emerging diseases: lessons from Hendra virus and other emerging disease threats.	Ron Glanville Chief Veterinary Officer, Queensland
	How can we identify and deal with disease threats to native wildlife?	Karrie Rose Australian Registry of Wildlife Health, Taronga Conservation Society Australia
	The bugs within - the continuing threat of antimicrobial resistance.	Peter Collignon Infectious Disease Physician, Australian National University/Canberra Hospital
	Discussion
10.15-11.00am	Session 2: Future threats to Australia Chair: Prof Warwick Anderson, CEO, National Health and Medical Research Council
	Climate change and the risk to livestock health and trade - lessons from bluetongue in Europe	Martyn Jeggo Director, CSIRO Livestock Industries' Australian Animal Health Laboratory
	Climate change and the increasing risk of insect-borne diseases to humans	Moira McKinnon Director of Research, Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre for Emerging Infectious Disease
	The nature of risk - balancing trade and threat	Mark Burgman Director, Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis
	Bioterrorism - the real threats	Lyn Gilbert Director, Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Laboratory Services, Westmead Hospital
	Discussion
11.15-11.30am	Morning tea
11.30-11.45am	Launch of the Biosecurity Risk Intellegence Scanning Council
11.45am - 12.30pm	Session 3: Pushing back the barrier - biosecurity threats in our region Chair: Mr Peter Core, CEO, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research
	Quarantine and the likely threats - the role of the Northern Australian Quarantine Strategy in pushing back the barrier.	Tom Aldred Executive Manager, Product Integrity, Animal and Plant Health Division, Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
	Australia's role in South-East Asia in protecting livestock industries, improving living standards, and reducing the risk to Australia.	John Edwards Murdoch University/Australian Biosecurity CRC
	The coming plague: emerging diseases in developing countries. What's happening, why and how do we prepare for the unknown?	Peter Daszak Executive Director, Consortium for Conservation Medicine (USA)
	Human health issues in South-East Asia.	Julie Hall World Health Organisation
	Discussion
12.30pm	Closing comments and discussion
12.45pm	Lunch
1.45pm	Forum concludes

Accommodation Information

A block booking of 50 rooms has been secured with Rydges Capital Hill in Canberra for all guests attending the Parliamentary Biosecurity Forum who require accommodation for the nights of 15 and or 16 September 2008. 

The reference to quote when booking is: G-1509 QLD.

Rooms will only be held until 1 September 2008 after which they will be released for general uptake. Note that accommodation bookings will be accepted on a 'first come, first served' basis. As this is a Parliamentaring Sitting week accommodation in Canberra may be difficult to find.

Please note that you are responsible for settling your accommodation/hotel account for attending the Forum. The AB-CRC is not paying for accommodation or travel for invited guests.

Speaker Biographies

Tom Aldred Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
Tom was appointed as the Executive Manager of the Product Integrity, Animal and Plant Health Division within the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) in late 2007. Tom has been a Senior Executive in DAFF for eight years, including in the Natural Resource Management (NRM) policy taskforce that designed the National Action Plan for Salinity & Water Quality and recently as Executive Manager of the NRM Division. He has also managed the rural support and adjustment area of DAFF, including the Agriculture - Advancing Australia package.  Tom has been a Liaison Officer in offices of the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and worked on secondment with Land & Water Australia, one of the rural Research and Development Corporations. [back]
Mark Burgman Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis
Mark Burgman is Director of the Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis and the Adrienne Clarke Chair of Botany in the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne.  He works on ecological modelling, conservation biology and risk assessment. He received a BSc from the University of New South Wales (1974), an MSc from Macquarie University, Sydney (1981), and a PhD from the State University of New York (1987). He worked as a consultant ecologist and research scientist in Australia, the United States and Switzerland during the 1980s before joining the University of Melbourne in 1990. He has published four authored books, two edited books, over 140 research papers, and more than 50 reviewed reports and commentaries. His most recent book Risks and decisions for conservation and environmental management appeared through Cambridge University Press in 2005. [back]
Peter Collignon ANU/Canberra Hospital
Peter Collignon is Director of Microbiology & Infectious Diseases and Professor at Australian National University Medical School. [back]
Peter Daszak Consortium for Conservation Medicine
Dr Peter Daszak is Executive Director of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine in New York - the first inter-institutional partnership to link human and veterinary medicine, ecology and conservation. His recent collaborative research includes discovery of a disease causing global amphibian declines and extinctions, of bats as the wildlife reservoir of SARS-like coronaviruses, the causes of the emergence of Nipah virus in Malaysia, and the first predictive maps of global emerging disease hotspots. He serves as Treasurer and member of the Executive Committee of DIVERSITAS, honorary co-director of the CCM-ECNU Joint Institute of Wildlife Zoonoses in Shanghai, China, and as member of the Institute of Medicine Committee on global surveillance. He is a founding co-editor of the journal EcoHealth, and treasurer of the International Association of Ecology and Health. He is a member of the International Standing Advisory Committee of the Australian Biosecurity CRC, and has collaborated with CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory and Queensland Department of Primary Industries on the emergence of Hendra virus, Nipah virus and SARS. [back]
John Edwards Murdoch University /Australian Biosecurity CRC
Professor John Edwards is Dean of the School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at Murdoch University and is a former Chief Veterinary Officer for Western Australia. He worked for the World Organisation for Animal Health as Regional Coordinator for the OIE Southeast Asia Foot-and-Mouth Disease Campaign from 2001-2004 and was in Southeast Asia during global emergencies for SARS and H5N1 Avian Influenza. Since then he has led growth in research on biosecurity and veterinary public health in Southeast Asia and has recruited a strong team of Southeast Asian postgraduate students to work on projects involving FMD, Avian Influenza, Bluetongue and Surra. He is also Chair of the Australian Biosecurity CRC’s new Biosecurity Risk Intelligence Scanning Committee. [back]
Lyn Gilbert Centre for Infectious Diseases & Microbiology, Westmead Hospital
Professor Lyn Gilbert is an infectious diseases physician and clinical microbiologist and Director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases & Microbiology (CIDM), ICPMR, Westmead Hospital, one of the largest diagnostic and public health microbiology laboratories in Australia. CIDM is a member of the Public Health Laboratory Network and the US Center for Disease Control’s Laboratory Response Network and includes the NSW Emerging Infections and Biohazard Response Unit (EIBRU). The EIBRU is housed in a new high security PC4 laboratory and is responsible for (among other things) investigation of suspicious substances and possible bioterrorism incidents, in conjunction with the NSW Police Forensic Unit. [back]
Ron Glanville Biosecurity Queensland
Dr Ron Glanville has had 30 years of experience in leading and implementing biosecurity programs in Queensland.  In his current position of Chief Biosecurity Officer and Chief Veterinary Officer within Biosecurity Queensland, Ron is responsible for leading and managing biosecurity policy and operations for the State across a range of sectors. Major achievements through his career include key roles finalisation of brucellosis and tuberculosis eradication in Queensland; management of a number of animal disease emergency responses; guiding change in the way endemic diseases are managed in Queensland; implementing a number of national disease surveillance and prevention programs; and overseeing significant regulatory reform. In recent times, Ron has guided implementation of the National Livestock Identification System in Queensland, and led the eradication of equine influenza for the state. [back]
Julie Hall World Health Organisation
Dr Julie Hall MBE qualified as a medical doctor in 1991 from St Thomas’s Medical School, London. She worked as a medical practitioner before undertaking specialist training in public health medicine in Australia and the United Kingdom. In 2003 Dr Hall was seconded by the Department of Health, UK to the World Health Organization in Geneva as a crisis and operational communications coordinator during the global response to the SARS crisis.  Dr Hall was posted to China in late 2003 to lead the WHO Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response Team in Beijing. Dr Hall was subsequently appointed as the UN Pandemic and Avian Influenza Coordinator for China in 2005. Dr Hall was awarded an MBE in June 2007 for her contribution to global public health. For the past 18 months, Dr Hall has worked as the Principal Medical Advisor for the Office of Health Protection in Australia. She returned to WHO in August 2008 as Deputy Regional Advisor for Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response based in the regional office in Manila. [back]
Martyn Jeggo CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory
Dr Jeggo is a veterinarian with specialist qualifications in tropical veterinary science and a PhD in virology. After qualifying and spending a short period in general veterinary practice, he worked in the Yemen Arab Republic as Director of the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratories, before returning to the UK to work at the Institute of Animal Health, Pirbright Laboratories. In 1996 Dr Jeggo joined the UN visiting more than 150 national veterinary laboratories in Africa, America and Asia and working on a range of tropical diseases including Foot-and-Mouth Disease, rinderpest and contagious bovine pleuro-pneumonia. In 2002 he became head of the CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong, Victoria. [back]
Moira McKinnon Australian Biosecurity CRC
Moira McKinnon is a public health physician who has worked in northern Australia and in northern Canada developing public health programs and surveillance systems. Moira worked for five years as the main advisor in communicable diseases for the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. In that role she chaired the National Arbovirus and Malaria Advisory Committee. Moira now provides public health input into the Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre, Australian Capital Territory Health and is currently working on Emerging Infectious Disease projects in South-East Asia. [back]
Nigel Perkins AusVet /Australian Biosecurity CRC
Nigel is a veterinary epidemiologist with experience in investigations of animal health and disease in livestock, aquatic species, and wildlife. Nigel has worked in Australia, USA and New Zealand and has been involved in a number of projects in Asia associated with biosecurity capacity building and disease outbreak investigations. He is the author of numerous scientific articles, a multi-award winning teacher and has extensive experience in postgraduate training in epidemiology. Nigel is a director of AusVet Animal Health Services, surveillance program coordinator for the Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre and program manager for the Horse R&D Program within the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. [back]
Stephen Prowse Australian Biosecurity CRC for Emerging Infectious Disease
Dr Stephen Prowse is the CEO of the Australian Biosecurity Cooperative Research Centre for Emerging Infectious Disease.  The objective of the centre is to build capabilities to monitor, assess, predict and respond to emerging infectious disease threats which impact on national and regional biosecurity. Dr Prowse has a background in infectious disease research and management in both Australia and overseas.  Prior to his current appointment he was the Manager for Strategy and Evaluation, CSIRO Livestock Industries, where he had responsibility for leading the development and implementation of the processes for the generation the scientific strategy in CSIRO Livestock Industries and for the evaluation of the Programs and projects. In 2001, Dr Prowse was Acting Director of the Australian Animal Health Laboratory, Australia's primary emergency animal disease diagnosis laboratory. [back]
Karrie Rose Australian Registry of Wildlife Health/Taronga Conservation Society Australia
Karrie became interested in working with wildlife while conducting field research and population studies with Ferruginous Hawks and Burrowing Owls during university summer breaks. Further summer employment within the wildlife rehabilitation and pathology programs at Calgary Zoo cemented her commitment to the study of wildlife health. Shortly after graduating with the faculty gold medal from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, in Saskatoon, Karrie pursued a 3 year residency at the Metropolitan Toronto Zoo. This residency was completed in conjunction with a Doctor of Veterinary Science Degree in Zoo and Wild Animal Medicine and Pathology at the Ontario Veterinary College. Completion of this degree lead to 16 months employment in New Zealand as the manager of a charitable wildlife rehabilitation organisation that was contracted by the Maritime Safety Authority of New Zealand. Karrie moved to Sydney in 1998 to undertake a position of Veterinary Pathologist for the Zoological Parks Board of NSW. Following in the auspicious footsteps of Dr Bill Harley, she now provides a diagnostic pathology service for Taronga and Western Plains Zoos, as well as overseeing the Australian Registry of Wildlife Health. Karrie was on the steering group towards the establishment of the Australian Wildlife Health Network, has written many published papers on wildlife, wildlife disease and wildlife pathology, and has published the highly regarded Wildlife Investigation Manual. [back]