Interview with Lucy Braden, ABC Hobart Drive

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW 
ABC HOBART DRIVE
TUESDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2025

Subjects: H5 Bird Flu

LUCY BRAEDEN, HOST: Let's check with in with Julie Collins, the Federal Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Tasmanian, Julie Collins, of course, thanks for your time. Hello.

JULIE COLLINS, MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FORESTRY: Hi, Lucy, and to your listeners this afternoon.

BRAEDEN: So you probably have the latest information on the H5 bird flu which has been detected at Heard Island. What do you know?

COLLINS: It has, I'm sad to say, but the results are positive for the H5N1 on Heard Island, with the samples that were taken and collected, there's been extensive testing done. I think the important thing though is to remember that Australia in terms of a continent remains the only continent free from the H5 strain of bird flu, and it's not unexpected that we found it on Heard Island. It is. and has been found, on sub Antarctic islands a few hundred kilometres away, particularly French ones, and I just remind listeners that this is still several thousand kilometres South West of Perth. And of course we had been preparing, as you indicated, our Government now has invested more than $100 million in preparedness. We've provided funding to states and territories, we've provided funding to Wildlife Health Australia, we've provided local zoos and aquariums and wildlife parks to improve their biosecurity, and the State Governments have around the country purchased more testing equipment, mobile labs and a whole range of equipment. So that if it does come to Australia, we can get on to it quickly and try to contain it as best we can, and we've run several operations with other tiers of government, with industry, and importantly with non government organisations such as conservation groups and wildlife groups as well to get us as ready as we possibly can be.

BRAEDEN: And will there be funding for chicken growers, for egg farmers if and when it hits, because it sounds like it will significantly wipe out some of those farmers and their stock.

COLLINS: Well, obviously we want to do everything we can do to keep it out of our food systems. We've seen Australia successfully eradicate the H7 bird flu virus now twice in the last few years in Australia, because of cooperation between Governments, state and federal, and industry and local people on the ground. So we've shown that we can do this, and we have done it before, and the way that that is funded is through a biosecurity agreement that we have with states and territories through the National Management Group, so there is sort of a levy process, one might say, and governments putting in, at various amounts, depending on the cost of those out breaks. So we do have a system in place already to deal with these biosecurity outbreaks, and in terms of bird flu specifically we have invested now over $100 million, but also since we've come to office now, Lucy, we've invested over $2 billion in additional funding for biosecurity, and we have significantly increased our biosecurity systems and strengthened them.

BRAEDEN: Just finally, I had Professor Kirsty Short on the program earlier, Professor from the University of Queensland, who specialises in these pandemics, viral pandemics and influenza in human and birds, and this is what she had to say regarding the danger to the already endangered Tasmanian Devil.

KIRSTY SHORT: Absolute worst case scenario, what we'd see is a large of poultry die and big losses to the poultry industry, we would see potentially our native birds infected and a loss of native birds, as well as potentially our native carnivores and in particular the Tasmanian Devil, because we know that this virus overseas in the northern hemisphere can infect carnivores who feed on dead and dying birds, and then they get infected and die themselves.

BRAEDEN: She's calling for more funding into research to look at what this virus could do to our carnivores, specifically the Tasmanian Devil, which as I mentioned already endangered. Is that something the Government would consider?

COLLINS: Well, we have a what's called a One Health approach across government, and that's whereby we have all the different government agencies working together. And we have modelled a range of scenarios already in terms of outbreaks. We've also provided funding for instance aquariums, like the Hobart aquarium in Tasmania, the Hobart Zoo and Aquarium, to improve their biosecurity systems, particularly for at risk and native animals, endangered animals and native animals to try and protect those species. We've also purchased a range of possible immunisations for human health, but also testing to see whether there's any way to see that we can do that on some types of birds. So we are looking at a whole range of options, as I said, and have invested in preparedness better than we have for anything before, and we've seen the devastation, as the Professor rightly points out, of what the bird flu can do overseas. But people should rest assured that our Government has invested and we are investing, and we are working with everybody right across the sector, right across governments, right across not for profits, and the institutions across the country to make sure that we have the best possible response, and we're as ready as we can be.

BRAEDEN: Julie Collins, thanks for your time today, appreciate it.

COLLINS: Thanks very much, Lucy.