The isolation and sheer size of Australia no barrier to fast-moving diseases

A few lines which sends a shiver down the spines of anyone who fears the devastating animal diseases knocking on the nation's door.

It was listed as Animal Biosecurity Advice 2022-A08 authorised by Animal Biosecurity assistant secretary Dr Peter Finnin.

Dr Finnin signed off on this small change to import conditions for dogs from approved countries.

No longer do dogs have to test negative for ehrlichiosis before they are sent on their journey down under.

The post entry quarantine facility in Melbourne has seen more than 5000 cats and dogs imported this year.

" ... it is now considered to be established (in Australia)," Dr Finnis writes.

This nasty invader's unwanted arrival, rapid spread and now the admission we can never get rid of it is just one example of the many holes in Australia's biosecurity defences.

Understand the story of ehrlichiosis and you better appreciate why the nation is so jittery about the big livestock diseases waiting to pounce.

Diseases like foot and mouth disease, lumpy skin, African swine fever - most experts are saying it's a matter of when, not if.

And unlike ehrlichiosis which has proven "too hard" to get rid of, we will have draw on all this country's resources to get rid of them or lose key agricultural exports.

Ehrlichiosis was on the long list of the many nasty diseases we have been working to keep out for many years.

Second only to rabies, it was a known killer of dogs and was endemic in countries to our north.

It remains a mystery to this day how it got in - the same as we can only guess how Japanese encephalitis arrived.

Officially, ehrlichiosis was first discovered in May 2020 in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

It wasn't long before cases popped up across the north - Katherine in June, Alice Springs and the first case in South Australia in March 2021.

It has since been found in every state of Australia other than Tasmania which has rushed to bring in border protections to try and keep it out.

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The bacteria Ehrlichia canis doesn't actually infect dogs, it is carried by the brown dog tick which loves the warm weather of northern Australia.

Infected dogs do not directly transmit the disease to other dogs.

Tasmania's focus is keeping that tick out, and its weather is a help.

Thousands of dogs have died across northern Australia, no-one knows how many.

They die a horrible death - typified by bleeding through the eyes and nose.

Despite calls for border road blocks, particularly from the Northern Territory, to check for infections and ticks, nothing was done.

These incursions are left up to the national Consultative Committee on Emergency Animal Disease to respond.

This committee is made up of our best and brightest biosecurity bureaucrats and scientists.

That committee ultimately did not agree to border checks.

In November 2020, and remember the disease was discovered in May, that committee decided "it was not technically feasible to eradicate the disease".

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It had rapidly become established in the NT and northern WA and there were some cases suggesting it had spread into the wild - dingoes, foxes, wild dogs and the like.

Not so much a war against ehrlichiosis as a capitulation.

Instead the focus became a community education campaign for veterinarians and dog owners to look for ticks and apply preventative treatments to stop ticks attaching to their dogs.

As the new change to our import laws suggests, ehrlichiosis occurs across the world, now it is here too.

Better perhaps to focus on rabies, which is also a people killer.

Australia remains one of the few countries in the world which is rabies free.

Australia is trying to be proactive with rabies and regularly sends thousands of doses of rabies vaccine to Indonesia where they are wrestling with it, particularly in Bali.

Diseases, viruses, weeds - there's hundreds of nasties bent on world domination.