AQUAPLAN - Australia's National Strategic Plan for Aquatic Animal Health

AQUAPLAN is Australia’s national strategic plan for aquatic animal health. It sets out national priorities for collaborative actions to strengthen Australia’s aquatic animal health management systems.

These systems are critically important to improve the productivity and profitability of aquatic animal industries (including aquaculture, fisheries and ornamental fish sectors) and to protect our unique aquatic environments from the threat of disease.

1 AQUAPLAN 2022-2027

AQUAPLAN 2022-2027 is Australia’s fourth national strategic plan for aquatic animal health.

Collaboratively developed and implemented by industry and governments, AQUAPLAN 2022-2027 aims to improve Australia’s aquatic animal health system by addressing seven objectives:

1. Border biosecurity and trade
2. Enterprise and regional biosecurity
3. Surveillance
4. Diagnostic capability
5. Emergency preparedness
6. Veterinary medicines
7. Research and Innovation.

Each objective will be pursued through a number of defined activities. In total the plan has 28 activities across its seven objectives. Copies of AQUAPLAN 2022-2027 and its associated implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and communication and engagement plans are available to view and download from the table below.

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The guiding principles of AQUAPLAN

AQUAPLAN provides a shared vision for industry and governments to prioritise investment to strengthen the aquatic animal health system. It is a mechanism for industry and governments to collaborate on issues of shared importance, whilst acknowledging that issues of importance for individual parties can continue to be addressed outside of AQUAPLAN.

In addition to the industry-government collaboration that has been at the core of AQUAPLAN’s success, its development has followed some agreed guiding principles:

• The plan addresses common national priorities
• It focuses on strategic issues that will provide enduring benefit to the management of aquatic animal health nationally
• Its objectives and activities have defined, achievable outcomes.

3 Previous AQUAPLANs and AQUAPLAN Reviews

AQUAPLAN 1998–2003 represented a world first in industry–government collaboration to develop a national strategic approach to aquatic animal health. Its success set the trajectory for development of AQUAPLAN 2005–2010 and AQUAPLAN 2014–2019. Together, these three plans have built and improved almost all aspects of Australia’s highly regarded systems for managing aquatic animal health.

Copies of AQUAPLAN 1998-2003, AQUAPLAN 2005-2010, and AQUAPLAN 2014-2019, and their respective reviews are available to view and download from the table below.

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For more information on AQUAPLAN please contact the AQUAPLAN Executive Office at: aquaplan@agriculture.gov.au.