Pests, pathogens and pandemics: Australia's biosecurity needs an overhaul, CSIRO warns

Covid-19 crisis offers unique opportunity to make transformational changes'

Australia's biosecurity needs a major overhaul within a decade to protect people, environments and industries from a wave of invasive pests, pathogens and future pandemics, a CSIRO report has found.

Interceptions of materials that were a biosecurity risk - such as insects, soils and plants - rose by 50% between 2012 and 2017, the report says, and new invasive weeds are establishing themselves every few weeks.