Truck Washes: Shared Biosecurity Infrastructure We Can No Longer Delay
By Travis Tobin
Foot and Mouth Disease remains one of the most serious biosecurity threats facing Australia’s livestock industry. Australia is free of FMD, but the disease remains present in our region and contaminated vehicles and equipment are recognised potential pathways for its spread.
Preparedness is not just about border controls and emergency response plans. It also means having practical infrastructure in place to reduce biosecurity risk every day.
That is why South Australia needs strategically located vehicle and machinery wash-down facilities.
In 2024, Livestock SA and PIRSA commissioned ACIL Allen, with GHD, to assess the state’s biosecurity truck wash capability. The work identified gaps in the existing network and three priority areas for new facilities: Port Augusta, the Fleurieu Peninsula/Kangaroo Island region and the Murray-Mallee.
But this should not be viewed as livestock infrastructure alone.
Mining, renewable energy, civil construction, road maintenance, tourism and government agencies all move vehicles and machinery across South Australia’s regions. Soil, mud, seeds and organic material can travel with them. Buffel grass is a clear example, with transport corridors, vehicles and earthmoving machinery recognised as important pathways for its spread.
That makes vehicle hygiene a shared responsibility and wash-down facilities shared infrastructure.
South Australia’s new Biosecurity Act 2025 reinforces that principle. When it commences, the Act will introduce a General Biosecurity Duty requiring people to take reasonably practicable measures to prevent, eliminate, minimise, control or manage biosecurity risks they know, or reasonably ought to know, about. Importantly, the Act is not limited to agriculture. Its definition of a biosecurity ‘carrier’ is broad enough to include vehicles and machinery capable of carrying biosecurity matter.
With the supporting regulations currently being developed, now is the right time to ensure the infrastructure needed to meet those responsibilities keeps pace with the obligations being created.
As the ‘Crossroads of Australia’, Port Augusta is the obvious place to start.
Livestock trucks use these corridors, but so do mining vehicles, exploration crews, renewable energy contractors, road construction and maintenance equipment, freight operators and tourists heading into and out of the north and the west of the state and beyond.
It also sits at a critical interface between areas where buffel grass is widespread and regions where governments, landscape boards and communities are investing heavily to prevent further spread.
A well-designed Port Augusta facility should therefore be considered as multi-industry biosecurity infrastructure, capable of supporting livestock transport while also providing appropriate wash-down capacity for other heavy vehicles and machinery.
That broader approach strengthens both the biosecurity outcome and the investment case. Government should lead delivery and provide the majority of funding, potentially through a federal-state partnership with industry co-investment. The cost should not fall disproportionately on livestock producers when the risks, responsibilities and benefits extend across industries and the wider community.
Government is asking everyone to accept greater responsibility for biosecurity. It must also invest in the infrastructure that makes responsible behaviour practical.
The business case has been done. The legislative direction is clear. Now is the time to turn shared responsibility into investment.