Chief Veterinary Officer for the NT Dr Rob Williams says a major biosecurity exercise starting today will involve a secret scenario to ensure preparedness for emergency animal diseases like lumpy skin disease

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now a bit of a change of hase, and we
know that a major biosecurity exercise is going to start
in the Northern Territory today. It's aiming to ramp up
preparedness for emergency animal diseases. Exercise rain Tree is going
to be taking place over three days at a mock
infected property near the New South near the Northern Territory

(00:21):
should say in wa border. Now joining me on the
line to tell us a little bit more is Chief
Ventory Officer for the Northern Territory, Doctor Rob Williams. Good
morning to.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
You, Rob, Good morning to you Keith.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Thanks so much for your time this morning. Now, Rob,
what diseases will this exercise focus on?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yes, So the main objective of the exercise is to
try and test our systems amongst communications between the different jurisdictions,
so Western Australia, Northern Territory in Queensland. And the disease
that we've used in this scenario is called lumpy skin disease,
which unfortunately Australia is still free of lumpy skin disease,

(01:03):
but we're using it as our mock scenario.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Now, tell me what kind of like what sort of
scenario is going to unfold and how will it all work.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yeah, that's a very good question. So part of the
exercise is that we don't know what's happening. We get
an external consultant to throw in what we call inject
into the exercise. So there's a lot of unknown but
the starting point is that we have detected lumpy skin
disease on a property and it's in the Northern Territory
and we're starting our planning for that, and that's the

(01:40):
starting point. And then what happens during the exercise, Well,
that's it's like a secret, Yeah, one of the secret
sort of surprise party.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, no, I reckon that's a good idea because it
truly puts like it truly puts us to the test
then to make sure that if something like this does
happen that you know what to do and how to respond.
Rob tell us who's involved and what capabilities are kind
of going to be put to the test.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, So most of the testing is around our communications.
So the people involved are the governments from Western Australia,
Northern Territory, Queensland, and also we have federal government involvement
in terms of they've actually provided the funding for this
program that we're using to do the exercise, but also

(02:35):
we have our industry alongside us, so we're trying to
test our communications between governments and then also between industry
and government as well. So industry play a crucial part
in any disease response and we rely heavily on them,
particularly on the ground, to assist us with disease control.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
And how vital is it really this preparedness for the
Northern Territory's livestock industy.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Straight it's very vital for us because we have a
more than a billion dollar cattle industry that we're trying
to protect. And one of the key things is we're
very fortunate in Australia. We're diseased free. We don't have
foot mouth disease, we don't have lumpy skin disease, we're
free of all these major diseases. Unfortunately, we don't have
many outbreaks, so we don't get to test our systems

(03:21):
in the real world. So one way to compensate for that,
to make sure that we are as prepared as we
possibly can be is sort to run an exercise, a simulation.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
How's everyone feeling like? Is it sort of exciting or
are people a bit nervous. How are they feeling.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, there's a mixture of responses, but I think most
people get the adrenaline kick in, Like one of the
good things about exercises if it is a little bit
of acting, but if you do put yourself in the
actual scenario and you know, you try to imagine as
much as possible this is happening, you do get that
bit of an adrenaline Russia. It's one of those things
where emergencies do bring out the best in people, but

(03:58):
they also have to be very careful that we don't
burn out. Unfortunately, in the case of an exercise, it's
only occurring over to an half days, so it's not
like a real world event where unfortunately and you might
go on for weeks or months where you would have
to rotate staff out. And we are thinking about those
sorts of things because it does take a lot of
people to mount an emergency response.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Well, good stuff. It sounds like it's going to be
a busy time, so I appreciate you taking the time
to have a chat with us this morning. Chief Venory
Officer for the Northern Territory, Doctor Rob Williams.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Thanks very much, appreciate your time.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Thank you Thanks for having a chat with us.