The effects of legislation and policy in New Zealand and Australia on biosecurity and arthropod biological control research and development

The widespread and intensive application of biological control can create serious gaps between what may be naïve expectation versus reality. An extreme view is that there is a biological control solution for every problem. Similarly, there is the expectation that there are readily available and cheap biosecurity measures that, while having no effect on trade, work flawlessly. Such expectations can lead to two areas of difficulty. The first is that science is seen to have failed when biological control does not work as well as hoped for (and/or there are impacts on non-target species). The second is that people expect a huge amount from their biosecurity. Alongside this there has been the emergence of legislated—for precautionary principle—based expectation of technical certainty. This is particularly problematic when applied to complex ecological questions. Such circumstances have led to something of a disjunct between the expectations of legislators and what is required of the implementing agencies. This in turn has elicited difficulties in terms of what science is able to deliver for a reasonable/acceptable cost. Such cost is often borne by applicant groups, etc. It is aspects of the above situation that have contributed to the politicisation of biological control and biosecurity issues in New Zealand in the last 15 years. This contribution highlights some of the differences between legislation, policy and what science can deliver relating to biological control and biosecurity in New Zealand and Australia, and discusses some of the inconsistencies and impracticalities in their implementation with a focus on arthropod biological control examples.