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CSIRO exotic pathogen lab gets $220m upgrade
Paul Brescia
The CSIRO is upgrading and renaming its Australian Animal Health Laboratory to the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness as part of a $220m funding boost.
The change acknowledges a shift in biosecurity risks, learned through recent pandemics: diseases do not discriminate between animals and humans. The response has to take into account animals, humans, and the environments they share.
Zoonotic diseases, which pass from animals to humans, now account for almost 75 per cent of human infectious diseases, according to CSIRO. COVID-19, the disease resulting from the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, is zoonotic disease.
Working with novel zoonotic viruses requires unique biocontainment facilities. The CSIRO facility is the only one of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere able to work with the highly dangerous and exotic pathogens. It created the world’s first effective flu treatments, a vaccine for the Hendra Virus, and identified bats as a natural reservoir of SARS-like coronaviruses.
The facility was first built 35-years ago, with a planned 100-year life span. The first phase of the upgrades, funded through the $220m, will be completed in 2027. The redesign will reflect new methods in the field, and future-proof it for new research.
Complicating the rebuild, the facility is built as a secure, sealed box-within-a-box with inverse pressure. All of the secure area is held at a lower air pressure than the outside world, to keep any airborne infectious agents inside the laboratory. Within the secure box are a series of smaller secure boxes, each with a drop in air pressure. Air pressure is controlled so that air will always flow in toward the highest containment zone thus preventing any leakage out.
To upgrade and modify the facility, while it remains in operation as a highly-contained biolaboratory is a huge engineering challenge.
Professor Trevor Drew OBE, director, ACDP, says, “The CSIRO COVID-19 work is an example of the criticality of a facility like ACDP.
“In providing a pipeline for rapid validation of a vaccine against this novel virus, we are carefully balancing operating at speed in response to a global public health emergency, we bridge the gap between academia and industry, in delivering the impactful and innovative science, for which CSIRO is renowned.”
Dr Larry Marshall, chief executive, CSIRO, says,"AAHL was originally created to protect Australia from animal diseases like foot and mouth, swine fever, and invasive species."
"But the emergence of Hendra virus in Australia demonstrated that diseases do not differentiate between animals and humans, so neither will we, as we step up our preparedness and response to both in a more holistic way.
"The centre will continue to build on the expertise delivered through AAHL's extensive biosecure laboratories combined with CSIRO's expertise across science disciplines to predict, prevent and manage disease, and turn the breakthroughs of Australia's medical research community into real world solutions for our greatest challenges, like pandemics."
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In 2016 I published a blog article titled Moonshots for Australia: 7 For Now. It’s one of many I have posted on business and innovation in Australia. In that book, I highlighted a number of Industries of the Future among a number of proposed Moonshots. I self-published a book, Innovation in Australia – Creating prosperity for future generations, in 2019, with a follow-up COVID edition in 2020. There is no doubt COVID is causing massive disruption. Prior to COVID, there was little conversation about National Sovereignty or supply chains. Even now, these topics are fading, and we remain preoccupied with productivity and jobs! My motivation for this writing has been the absence of a coherent narrative for Australia’s business future. Over the past six years, little has changed. The Australian ‘psyche’ regarding our political and business systems is programmed to avoid taking a long-term perspective. The short-term nature of Government (3 to 4-year terms), the short-term horizon of the business system (driven by shareholder value), the media culture (infotainment and ‘gotcha’ games), the general Australian population’s cynical perspective and a preoccupation with a lifestyle all create a malaise of strategic thinking and conversation. Ultimately, it leads to a leadership vacuum at all levels. In recent years we have seen the leadership of some of our significant institutions failing to live up to the most basic standards, with Royal Commissions, Inquiries and investigations consuming excessive time and resources. · Catholic Church and other religious bodies · Trade Unions · Banks (and businesses generally, take casinos, for example) · the Australian Defence Force · the Australian cricket teams · our elected representatives and the staff of Parliament House As they say, “A fish rots from the head!” At best, the leadership behaviour in those institutions could be described as unethical and, at worst….just bankrupt! In the last decade, politicians have led us through a game of “leadership by musical chairs” – although, for now, it has stabilised. However, there is still an absence of a coherent narrative about business and wealth creation. It is a challenge. One attempt to provide such a narrative has been the Intergenerational Reports produced by our federal Government every few years since 2002. The shortcomings of the latest Intergenerational Report Each Intergenerational Report examines the long-term sustainability of current government policies and how demographic, technological, and other structural trends may affect the economy and the budget over the next 40 years. The fifth and most recent Intergenerational Report released in 2021 (preceded by Reports in 2002, 2007, 2010 and 2015) provides a narrative about Australia’s future – in essence, it is an extension of the status quo. The Report also highlights three key insights: 1. First, our population is growing slower and ageing faster than expected. 2. The Australian economy will continue to grow, but slower than previously thought. 3. While Australia’s debt is sustainable and low by international standards, the ageing of our population will pressure revenue and expenditure. However, its release came and went with a whimper. The recent Summit on (what was it, Jobs and Skills and productivity?) also seems to have made the difference of a ‘snowflake’ in hell in terms of identifying our long-term challenges and growth industries. Let’s look back to see how we got here and what we can learn. Australia over the last 40 years During Australia’s last period of significant economic reform (the late 1980s and early 1990s), there was a positive attempt at building an inclusive national narrative between Government and business. Multiple documents were published, including: · Australia Reconstructed (1987) – ACTU · Enterprise Bargaining a Better Way of Working (1989) – Business Council of Australia · Innovation in Australia (1991) – Boston Consulting Group · Australia 2010: Creating the Future Australia (1993) – Business Council of Australia · and others. There were workshops, consultations with industry leaders, and conferences across industries to pursue a national microeconomic reform agenda. Remember these concepts? · global competitiveness · benchmarking · best practice · award restructuring and enterprising bargaining · training, management education and multiskilling. This agenda was at the heart of the business conversation. During that time, the Government encouraged high levels of engagement with stakeholders. As a result, I worked with a small group of training professionals to contribute to the debate. Our contribution included events and publications over several years, including What Dawkins, Kelty and Howard All Agree On – Human Resources Strategies for Our Nation (published by the Australian Institute of Training and Development). Unfortunately, these long-term strategic discussions are nowhere near as prevalent among Government and industry today. The 1980s and 1990s were a time of radical change in Australia. It included: · floating the $A · deregulation · award restructuring · lowering/abolishing tariffs · Corporatisation and Commercialisation Ross Garnaut posits that the reforms enabled Australia to lead the developed world in productivity growth – given that it had spent most of the 20th century at the bottom of the developed country league table. However, in his work, The Great Reset, Garnaut says that over the next 20 years, our growth was attributable to the China mining boom, and from there, we settled into “The DOG days” – Australia moved to the back of a slow-moving pack! One unintended consequence of opening our economy to the world is the emasculation of the Australian manufacturing base. The manic pursuit of increased efficiency, lower costs, and shareholder value meant much of the labour-intensive work was outsourced. Manufacturing is now less than 6% of our GDP , less than half of what it was 30 years ago!
