Doorstop at Parliament House, Canberra

E&OE TRANSCRIPT   
DOORSTOP   
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA  
MONDAY, 3 AUGUST 2026   
  
SUBJECTS: H5 bird flu  

JULIE COLLINS, MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FORESTRY: So this is obviously about the H5 bird flu. And as of this morning I can now confirm we have 74 confirmed cases of the H5 bird flu in Australia – 10 in Western Australia, 54 in South Australia, 2 in New South Wales, 7 in Victoria and 1 in Queensland. I can also say that CSIRO laboratory testing has now confirmed that the H5 bird flu samples that were taken from a larger group of sick and dead birds at Borden Rocks off Cape Jaffa in South Australia have come back positive. Whilst this is the first case – confirmed case of a mass mortality, and obviously a very concerning development, it is not unexpected and is certainly what we have seen overseas with this type of incursion of the H5. Sadly, we do know that once the H5 bird flu is spreading in wildlife and the natural environment it is not possible to avoid significant losses, which is what we’re starting to see now. There will be ongoing surveillance which will continue to determine whether the H5 bird flu is established more broadly in Australian wildlife, and we’ll continue to inform the public where the H5 bird flu has been detected. Australians should expect to see more spread and larger numbers now of wildlife being affected. That’s why on Friday Minister Watt and I hosted the environment and the agriculture ministers in a meeting. The ministers together reaffirmed our commitment to continued collaboration, and that we would do everything we could do to help protect Australian wildlife wherever possible, as well as protect our agricultural industries, our local communities and, importantly, our national economy. States and territories will continue to undertake activities on the ground and manage the impact of the H5 bird flu, including obviously in South Australia. This work is now backed up by more than $24 million in funding from the Australian and state and territory governments, which is in addition to our government’s $113 million that has supported the preparedness and response capabilities. I do want to reiterate at this time there is no evidence of any detection in our poultry or agriculture systems and that the risk to human health remains low. I also want to take the opportunity to thank Australians again for the work that they’ve done in being the frontline of our biosecurity system over the last few weeks in reporting dead or sick birds and remind people to avoid contact of dead and sick birds or animals and record what you see and go to birdflu.gov.au to report it. I’ll now hand over to Minister Watt to talk a bit more about wildlife.

MURRAY WATT, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Thanks, Minister Collins. And thanks for your terrific leadership of the response to this, along with, of course, our officials, who you’ll hear from shortly. As Minister Collins has stated, we now do have confirmation of the first mass mortality in native wildlife in Australia. That is, of course, very sad news, but it’s not unexpected, and it very much reflects the international experience when it comes to H5 bird flu. There’s no doubting, as we’ve been indicating for some time, that H5 bird flu does represent a serious threat to Australia’s native species, and I want to level with people – this is the beginning of what is likely to be a long, difficult journey in terms of the impacts on wildlife, but it is one that we are well prepared for.  The overseas experience has shown that we can’t stop the spread of H5 bird flu among birds or among mammals. The reality is you can’t stop native and wild birds flying around, and you can’t stop wild animals moving around. And that will mean more mass mortality events like the one we have now seen. What we can do and what we have been doing is build up the resilience of the populations of our native birds and mammals. That’s what we’ve been doing over the last two to three years, investing in those populations to make sure that they are as strong as possible for impact of H5 bird flu when it inevitably arrived here in Australia. Like Julie, I want to thank the states and territories who’ve been very active partners to date. They’ve responded very swiftly to the detections that have been found and they’re leading the response activities on the ground. As Julie has mentioned, we had a very productive meeting of agriculture, environment state and territory ministers with ourselves on Friday, and I think that’s important to keep up that communication to make sure that we’re all on the same page, which we absolutely are. As Julie has indicated, we’ve now activated the national management plan for H5 bird flu, and that has triggered the release of another $24 million shared between the states, territories and Commonwealth, and that, of course, builds on the $113 million that the Albanese Government has already invested to make sure that we are as prepared as possible. Finally, can I just remind and reinforce that overall message to the public – avoid contact with birds and mammals that appear to be infected. Record what you see and report that. That’s the best way that we can work together to respond to what is a very serious event. Thanks very much, and we’re all available for questions.

JOURNALIST: Minister Collins, are you concerned that this detection near the Monarto Zoo in South Australia could be a harbinger for the spread to the poultry industry? There’s a lot of farms in that region.

COLLINS: Well, obviously we are concerned about the impact that this will have right across the country, which is why we’ve invested so much in preparedness. And we will, as we’ve been upfront, expect to see now increased numbers of infections. But certainly we have invested particularly with zoos and aquariums right across the country in improving – including funding some infrastructure and some of their systems to improve their biosecurity, particularly to protect threatened species. I don’t know if our Chief Vet or Fiona would like to add a bit more?

DR FIONA FRASER, THREATENED SPECIES COMMISSIONER: Certainly, Minister, yeah. Part of our preparedness response for Australia’s birds and mammals has been to invest in facilities which breed threatened species – threatened birds and threatened mammals – for conservation purposes. So there’s about 5 million in investment all around the country protecting around 31 different threatened species. That includes the Monarto facility, which has received biosecurity upgrades to keep them – keep wild birds away from those facilities but also to keep water sources fresh and clean so they can’t get infected. And that facility includes species such as the greater bilby and several other species – I’ll just look those up in a moment – but the greater stick-nest rat, numbat and others at that facility which are being protected through those funds. Thank you.

JOURNALIST: Minister Collins, we’re coming up to the migratory bird season. How concerning is that? Could we expect a tsunami of cases during that season?

COLLINS: We would certainly expect to see an increased number of infections during that period, absolutely. We do know that when birds come nest together that we will see an increased number of infections because it is a highly contagious disease. Again, I don’t know if either Fiona or our Chief Vet would like to add to that.

FRASER: Over the coming months we will expect to see many, many millions of migratory bird species arrive in Australia. Many of them are not nesting birds, but many of them, such as our shearwaters, are. So these birds congregate in large numbers. Many of them are in places like along – not that far from Monarto, such as the Coorong area in South Australia, which are critically important habitats for these birds. They don’t breed there; they’re called staging grounds, so they spend their time feeding and fattening up so that they can take that enormous journey back to the Northern Hemisphere. So we expect many of those birds will be arriving soon – it’s like clockwork every year – for some of those species. And where they congregate in numbers mixed with other bird species in Australia which may already be infected, there is absolutely increased risk of transmission and further mortality events.

JOURNALIST: Now that the disease is here, is there any hope of eradicating it, or is it basically it’s endemic, it’s here to stay?

COLLINS: So our experts provided advice and accepted that it was not able to be eradicated when it comes to Australian wildlife. And I reiterate that we have no evidence of it being in our poultry or agricultural systems at this stage. They are two separate things in terms of wildlife versus our agriculture system.

JOURNALIST: So [indistinct] is this escalation in numbers right now, what bird species are involved?

COLLINS: So my understanding is that they are the greater crested tern and there’s also some silver gulls. I’m not sure about whether there’s any other species that have been reported at this time. Obviously we’re doing our very best to be as transparent and as upfront with the Australian public at every step of the way at the earliest opportunity, which will sometimes mean we don’t have quite the level of detail that you might seek. I don’t know if our Chief Vet has any more in terms of the types of birds

DR BETH COOKSON, AUSTRALIAN CHIEF VETERINARY OFFICER: The mass mortality event that has been reported has involved the greater crested terns. What I would say is that our efforts as we’ve enhanced surveillance across the board since the first detections on the 20th of June have included the testing of a lot of different species. So that testing is ongoing. And so far we have confirmed in the Australian resident birds the silver gull and the crested terns. But, as I said, we have been testing through our state and territory jurisdictions leading the responses a lot of different types of birds. That will continue and we could predict that as we see more infection and more spread that we may see other species affected as well. But at this point we haven’t seen that.

JOURNALIST: Will you publish a full list of at-risk species, and is confirmation of cases in seagulls worrying given their proliferation and the risk of spread?

WATT: Sorry, just to the first part, Tom, yes, we will be publishing a list of species most at risk. We expect to do that imminently. That has involved a bit of work, obviously, to work that through, but that will be published imminently. Sorry, the second part?

JOURNALIST: Seagulls, they’re everywhere. Is that particularly worrying?

WATT: I mean, I’ll pass to one of the actual experts in a moment, but, I mean, the way to think about this, I think, is that to my knowledge every bird species is at risk here. So, yes, seagulls are a risk. They are obviously widespread around the country. And, you know, I think what’s changed in the last couple of days is not an explosion in the numbers overall but, first of all, we saw that transmission locally a few days ago. What we’ve now got is a mass mortality event. It is likely we are going to see more. And that’s why, I guess, we are out here explaining that to the public and talking through what we can all do about that. But if anyone wants to add anything on seagulls, yes.

JOURNALIST: Ministers, is it inevitable then that it will spread into the agricultural and the poultry sectors?

COLLINS: Well certainly we’ve been learning from the experiences overseas. We have invested and worked really closely with our agriculture, particularly our poultry sector in terms of improved and increasing biosecurity to do everything we can do to keep it out of our agriculture system. But you do tend to see spillover impacts across the globe when it comes to the H5.  Australia, of course, has been very successful with the two H7 incursions in the past few years in eradicating those. So certainly we’ve learnt a lot from that, and we have improved our biosecurity systems when it comes to our poultry and our meat – chicken meat producing. I don’t know if Dr Cookson would like to add anything to that.

COOKSON: As the Minister has explained, a key focus of our preparedness for the last couple of years has been to work with the poultry production sector so that they are well prepared in terms of the types of enhanced biosecurity that will help to prevent spillover from wild birds into poultry production systems. But as the Minister has explained, during what we’ve seen happen globally, as we do get increasing infections, that risk obviously changes and increases. There is very active engagement with the poultry production sector at the moment to make sure that they’re very well informed of the risk. And part of the ongoing surveillance and monitoring approach will be so that we are well able to determine where new cases are and be able to provide that advice as the risk changes.

JOURNALIST: Minister, how is the outbreak tracking compared to – obviously you’ve been preparing for this for a while. Is it spreading faster than you anticipated?

COLLINS: Well, in lots of overseas countries certainly their first H5 infections, some of them the first time they noticed was when it got into the agriculture system or when they had mass mortalities. So Australia has certainly learnt and we’ve detected it much earlier, which has given local industry and local wildlife people an ability to say, “Okay, it is coming here now. Let’s be as prepared as we can, let’s boost that biosecurity.” And certainly we have been working with industry and with sectors over many times. We’ve practiced these scenarios. So we’re as prepared as we can be.

JOURNALIST: Is it unfolding as expected in terms of numbers that you’re seeing this far into the outbreak?

COLLINS: Well, I’m not an expert in that. I don’t know if one of our experts who are here with us wants to talk about overseas experience versus Australia. Beth?

COOKSON: I would say yes, this is what we expect. In fact, I think, you know, we did have the number of individual migratory seabirds over the course of the first four or so weeks. It probably took a little bit longer than we would have expected to see some of that localised spread occurring. And now that we’ve got that localised spread, this is following a fairly predictable curve in terms of the number of infections, particularly during a period of year as we might start to see birds start to congregate more. We know that when birds and other animals congregate that’s where we get more risk of circulation of the virus and onward spread.

JOURNALIST: Minister Collins, what’s the government’s plan to deal with vast mass mortalities? Do we have personnel to pick up dead birds? Obviously there have been concerns that states and territories don’t have the funds or people to manage this crisis.

COLLINS: Well, obviously we have been working with the states and territories in terms of their response on the ground. Obviously states and territories are the first line of defence on the ground. We continue to do that and work very, very closely with them. We have well-established protocols in terms of funding arrangements for biosecurity incursions here in Australia. We do have one established for the H5 bird flu, so we have been working with states and territories for just these types of scenarios.

JOURNALIST: But what’s the specific plan for managing –

COLLINS: Well, it will be based on evidence and advice about what is the best thing to do in terms of some of the, you know, dead animals and dead birds that may be on shore or wherever they may be located. And certainly we’ll take the experts’ advice. Sometimes the advice is to bury it or to remove it. Sometimes it’s best to leave it where it is. So we’ll be taking the expert advice and working with states and territories and local government on what that looks like. I don’t know –

JOURNALIST: Ministers –

COLLINS: Sorry, I just don’t know whether Dr Cookson wanted to add anything to that?

JOURNALIST: Ministers, you mentioned that meeting on Friday of the environment and ag ministers and the continued collaboration. How regular will that be? And in that discussion you mentioned the national economy. Have you got a dollar figure on the impact if this does get out and there is mass mortality in all states?

COLLINS: Well, as I said, we’ve obviously already invested over $113 million in preparedness and responses to make sure that we could activate them, particularly working with states and territories. We have well-established frameworks in terms of funding incursions for biosecurity incursions that are already in place in terms of the H5 bird flu and other types of biosecurity incursions into Australia. They’re on a cost-sharing basis. And obviously it will depend on what this spread looks like and, you know, whether or not it does get into agriculture systems, its impact on wildlife. And we continue to work with the states and territories and the industry and with our experts as it unfolds right across the country.

JOURNALIST: But what is the worst-case scenario? Have you got a dollar figure on that?

COLLINS: Well, we’ve seen from overseas that it does vary hugely depending on the incursion and whether or not it gets into the agriculture systems and whether or not they’re able to eradicate it from them. So to give you an example, our H7 incursions cost the government working with industry around $110 million.

JOURNALIST: Minister, [indistinct] bird flu inland, what’s the risk of spreading in the outback where there’s breeding underway after floods earlier this year?

COLLINS: That is an expert’s question to answer. Fiona.

FRASER: There is a risk, of course, that now this is moving in local wildlife and some of these wildlife, including seagulls, as you would be aware, are very widespread across all Australian states and territories. They are found mostly along the coast but can also move to inland areas. But we do expect that this disease will now spread to other species which can also travel long distances. So there is a risk that this disease can move to inland areas, including important wetlands across Australia. So that is a key part of that. We cannot prevent that happening, as we’ve made very clear. And we cannot stop mortality events at those wetland areas. But we can do that work to build resilience. And so that is – those key wetlands across Australia have been prioritised for resilience work so that we can have healthier populations of those native species in those areas. That includes activities such as habitat enhancement, water management but also the removal of invasive predators, in particular. That includes animals such as pigs, foxes and feral cats to best manage these pressures that these birds species face at the moment.

JOURNALIST: If I can ask the experts as well, looking to the future of this, it sounds like it can’t be eradicated in wildlife. It might be able to be managed in poultry farming. Long term, is this something we live with? How long will that take? What is actually the future of this?

COOKSON: Certainly the experience that we have seen overseas is that this is a disease that they have been dealing with for a long period of time – in many cases since about 2022 when this strain started to spread more rapidly around the globe. What we can’t predict is exactly what it will look like within the Australian context. We do have unique fauna. We have got unique geography, and so whilst we can do the best that we can with learning from the overseas experience – and that’s exactly what we’ve done in terms of our preparedness – our focus will be on now monitoring where that spread is occurring and mitigating the impacts as best we can. The response that we are working to at the moment is looking to make sure that as far as possible we’re identifying those sites and populations where risks can be reduced. And we’ll continue to do that into the foreseeable future. We’re also very well engaged through our local jurisdictions, state and territory governments, who are engaging with local governments, they’re engaging with the local community to make sure that in those locations they’re well prepared to live with the bird flu and to adapt to this situation.

JOURNALIST: Is there any advice for people around feeding of birds?

COOKSON: I mean, at the moment, we would be encouraging the public to sort of not encourage situations where there might be greater aggregations of wild birds. That’s certainly one context where the disease could spread further. But I would remind the Australian public that at the moment we do have localised spread within one region within South Australia, and certainly as the response efforts go on our attention will turn to being able to identify where the disease has spread to so that there can be appropriate precautions put in place in those specific locations.

That might also see – mean that there’s a change in the way that we’re triaging and testing the number of birds that are being reported. As we find out that it’s in a new location we will not necessarily continue to test in that location; our efforts will be focused on identifying when it’s moved to new areas.

COLLINS: The other thing I would say is that birdflu.gov.au has a lot of advice for people on it in terms of local responses and things that people can do.

JOURNALIST: How many reports have we had to the dedicated hotline, and have you been satisfied with the level of engagement by the community?

COLLINS: Yes, I’ll just get an updated number. When I checked on Friday it was over 11,000. Over 11,000, and there’d been hundreds of tests undertaken – I think just over a thousand tests when I got the last advice.

JOURNALIST: You spoke before about housing arrangements for poultry farms. There’s quite strict laws in a lot of jurisdictions around the labelling and sale of eggs. Does that – do those housing orders affect, you know, what is a free range egg, what is a barn laid egg, that sort of thing? And do you have any advice for people who have backyard chickens?

COLLINS: So, I’ll ask Dr Cookson to add to that, but certainly in terms of the housing orders, we have been working with the ACCC, and it is states and territories that will determine – so this is when people are asked to bring their laying hens inside. So the housing order decisions are based on evidence and advice and the states and territory will make those often on the basis of local locations where there is a high level of infections. And we work with the ACCC in terms of how long that can be and in timing of it in terms of the labelling.

JOURNALIST: Minister Collins –

COLLINS: Sorry, did you want to add anything, Dr Cookson?

COOKSON: Yeah, the advice that we’ve got for backyard chicken owners is to enhance biosecurity. It’s messaging that we have been providing sort of as we’ve seen H5 bird flu arrive in Australia. There’s some really good information available on birdflu.gov.au about what that might look like. Essentially it’s about minimising contact between wild birds and backyard chickens, stopping that mingling, including contamination potentially of food and water sources and also making sure that there’s good hygiene when, you know, handling birds, washing hands in between and the like and preventing – having some quarantine periods before introducing new chickens into the flock.

JOURNALIST: Just on the hit that this could have to the national economy, are you satisfied that the current funding package of about $130 million plus is sufficient given the previous H7 incursion, the cost of that? And also the Invasive Species Council is calling for a 200 million resilience package. Will you consider funding that?

COLLINS: Well, as I said, we continue to work with states and territories on the response and what is required. So we’ve unlocked money and funding immediately. As soon as we had the confirmation that there was local transmission that unlocked the funding in terms of the agreement that we have with the states and territories. These are long established protocols and ways that we fund biosecurity incursions in Australia, and this is the same funding arrangement.

JOURNALIST: So more funding could be on the cards if the spread continues?

COLLINS: We’ll continue to work with our colleagues, obviously, and with states and territories in relation to what is required. I don’t know if Minister Watt wanted to add anything.

WATT: Yeah, we will have to go. I mean, as Minister Collins has said, we have continued to unlock further funding as this has progressed with the most recent announcement being last week around that $24 million. But in my side of the portfolio when it comes to wildlife, even in the last week we’ve also allocated further money for the eradication of feral cats on Kangaroo Island. That is – was done for a number of reasons, but including for bird flu prevention – or not so much prevention but resilience. So, you know, we’ve shown a willingness to keep working with states and territories. We’ll always take the expert advice as we move forward. Okay, thanks all.