Doorstop at Parliament House, Canberra

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 
DOORSTOP   
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA 
TUESDAY, 30 JUNE 2026 

SUBJECTS: H5 Bird Flu

JULIE COLLINS, MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FORESTRY: I'm pleased to be joined by our Chief Veterinary Officer Dr Beth Cookson today to provide you all with an update on the H5 bird flu testing results from the CSIRO labs. We've just received an update from Dr Cookson and I'm advised that the CSIRO testing has confirmed the detection of the H5 bird flu in an additional migratory seabird. This giant petrel was found at Roses Beach near Esperance in Western Australia. This brings the total number of confirmed H5 bird flu detections to five, with all detections in migratory seabirds. Four of these detections were from seabirds found in Western Australia, and one seabird was found in South Australia. As of this afternoon, there remains no new suspected positives from State testing. I also want to confirm that State testing on a sick migratory sea bird in Victoria has today returned a negative result for the H5 bird flu. I want to again reiterate there remains no evidence of any mass mortalities in wildlife. There is no evidence currently of infection in our poultry or agriculture systems, and there remains a low risk to human health. As I've said many times, given the spread of the H5 globally, it's not unexpected that other migratory seabirds may have also arrived at other locations along Australia's coastline. That's why our Government has been preparing for this. We've invested over $113 million to boost our H5 bird flu preparedness as part of our $2 billion investments in additional biosecurity since we've come to office. Our response to bird flu has been both swift and coordinated, and as I've repeated, our national biosecurity response arrangements have been enacted, with States and Territory governments managing the on-ground response. Again, I want to thank Australians for reporting the sick or dead birds over recent weeks, and reiterate again, if you see a sick or a dead bird or other animals, please do not touch them, avoid contact and record what you see and make a report to birdflu.gov.au. I’ll hand over to Dr Cookson to say a few words.  

DR BETH COOKSON, AUSTRALIAN CHIEF VETERINARY OFFICER: Thanks Minister, and thanks everyone for the opportunity to provide an update today. As the Minister has mentioned, we have today confirmed that the fifth of the migratory seabirds that was under investigation has today been confirmed as positive by our Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness. So this means that there have been three others also confirmed in Western Australia and the one from South Australia. We want to be clear that there is no evidence of mass mortality. At this stage there is no infection in poultry or the wider agriculture industry, and the risk to human health remains low. As I've previously stated, the nation has been preparing for this outcome for a long time, and we have the benefit from learning from the international experience. My focus and the focus of my colleagues within the States and Territories is to make sure that we are putting those learnings into practice and that our responses are as appropriate as possible with the evidence that we've got available. This builds on Australia's long standing emergency animal disease frameworks and national coordination mechanisms. Almost 100 negative tests have now been reported across the nation through the enhanced surveillance that's been undertaken since the first reported case. I do want to thank the members of the public for their assistance in reporting sick or dead wildlife. This is a sign of our strong biosecurity system working. If you do come across sick or dead wildlife, we continue to encourage you to avoid contact with them, to record information that is useful in identifying their location, as well as photos or videos that can support triaging and assessment of whether further investigation is needed, and to report to the emergency animal disease hotline. We do have a range of very good public information on birdflu.gov.au and for anyone who is interested in that information I encourage you to go there. We are still in the investigative phase and there will be information that will continue to emerge over the coming days and potentially weeks. I will continue to keep the public informed as any new information is available. 

COLLINS: Happy to take some questions.  
 
JOURNALIST: Maybe for Dr Cookson, if I could start. Given that there's, I mean I think it's fair to say, quite a big geographic spread now of positive cases, could you know, tell us what you think the chances are that the majority or all the birds, infected birds that have arrived in Australia, or is it sort of inevitable that infected birds are landing that we're not finding?  

COOKSON: I think it's a real strength of our biosecurity system that we have detected these individual cases. Of course I, like others, would acknowledge that these birds are active in our southern waters during this period of year, and the climatic conditions do mean that they are occasionally sighted on the southern shoreline. So our activities will continue to assess the situation over the coming weeks and months, including through enhanced surveillance to determine whether there have been any additional cases or spread into resident populations.  

JOURNALIST: There have been complaints in the media from South Australian tourism operators saying that they haven't had enough information to help them detect. What has been the outreach apart from having the website and directing people to that? Has there actually been a proactive effort to educate people on the ground who might be able to help detection?  
 
COOKSON: We’re working very closely with our State and Territory counterparts. Western Australia and South Australian Governments are leading the operational responses on the ground. They have increased their public information and communication, they are proactively holding webinars and other information resources with wildlife carers, with veterinary hospitals, with local governments and others who may be involved in observing animals on the ground. So I would encourage people to stay up to date with information that their State Government's providing as well, and there are plenty of resources out there to assist people who require further information.  
 
JOURNALIST: And just that petrel that was found in Esperance on Roses Bay, that was one of five giant petrels there. We're told that the other ones were negative. Does there need to be re-testing of those birds or are we confident that they weren't suspected cases? Is that just a coincidence that there were five dead birds on the one beach?  
 
COOKSON: The test results, as you indicate, were negative for those birds. I think it's very difficult to speculate as to whether they were or were not infected. What we do know about the impacts of infection with something like bird flu on animals is that it can weaken them and make it so that they are unable to weather storms or other conditions that can bring them to the shore. So we won't be able to definitively rule in or out whether they were infected. I guess I would just reinforce that these are cases in the same sort of location in Esperance or around that Esperance area. There has been a very active response in that area given that it is a site of high sightings, and it doesn't substantially change what we know about the current situation, which is that the detections so far have been in wild migratory seabirds and that there's no evidence of spread to resident populations. That's our absolute priority at the moment.  
 
JOURNALIST: What is the testing process now from here, given like, you know, what sort of backlog are we talking about, or where are the priorities really for the testing going forward from here now that there are additional cases?  

COLLINS: I can start and hand to Dr Cookson if you like. Certainly, the process to date has been because of the migratory birds and because there's five essentially isolated migratory birds that evidence would suggest have arrived in Australia with the disease. We have been working with the States and Territories. They are doing the testing on the ground and the triaging of the reports of dead birds and animals. And then if they get a positive, we then have been sending it to the CSIRO lab for the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness for confirmatory testing. That process will continue until we have some trigger or evidence that we need to step up our response, and I'll hand to Dr Cookson about what that might look like.  
 
COOKSON: Thanks very much for the question. As the reports to the emergency animal disease hotline increase, our State and Territory counterparts are triaging those calls so that they can identify the highest priority for investigation. That would be based on species, so obviously the seabirds that are migratory and being found on our southern coastline at the moment are a high priority. As are resident populations where there's aggregations in large numbers or whether there might be high indicators of a more than baseline death rate, and we certainly don't have any indication of mass mortalities at this stage. So investigations that fill those criteria will be prioritised. They will be tested initially through the State lab, and as the Minister has indicated we will continue to have those confirmed through the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness.  
 
JOURNALIST: Question for maybe the Minister and Dr Cookson, you spoke about learning from international experience. Just wondering, drawing from that particularly Europe and the US, has the Federal Government discussed any measures or controls with the States about regulations or behavioural change for people that have cats, chickens, birds, off leash areas for dogs, particularly around wetlands and beaches? And then separately, has the Federal Government been in discussions with States where duck hunting is permitted about putting a pause or disallowing duck hunting during the heightened risk of H5N1.  

COLLINS: I'll start and then I'll hand to Dr Cookson. Certainly, we have had obviously regular contact with the States through the emergency response committee. We've also had my Secretary meet with the State Secretaries of their Departments in relation to the response. And we continue to get updates from the States and Territories in relation to where they're at. Our Chief Vet is meeting with all of the States' Chief Vets on a regular basis in terms of those updates. What I can say is that our advice has been to do not touch dead or injured birds or animals who are dead, and that advice is for humans but it's also advice for don't let your pets near them, I would say. You wouldn't ordinarily take a dog off a leash in a national park or an area where there's dead wildlife. So, you know, you just use your common sense, and you would adhere to, you know, do not touch the dead birds or dead animals.

JOURNALIST: So is common sense enough? That's my question. Have you discussed with States measures that go beyond common sense, or will this be a sort of laissez faire approach?  

COLLINS: Well we've been very clear that people shouldn't touch the dead birds or dead animals where there's signs that they may have bird flu or have, you know, some sort of illness.  
 
JOURNALIST: Understood, but I'm talking about potential regulations? 
 
COLLINS: I'll hand to Dr Cookson for that.  
 
COOKSON: Thank you. We have been monitoring the overseas situation and the approaches there very closely. We are aware that there are a number of different scenarios that people will be interested in, in getting advice for. I would emphasise that at this stage we have confirmed the cases only in five migratory sea birds along the southern coastline. So the advice for most of Australia is that the situation about risk hasn't changed and that remains very low. Part of our surveillance approach will be to monitor whether that changes and whether the advice to people in different areas needs to adapt over time. But for now we are dealing with the situation that we've got, which is the five wild migratory birds along the southern coastline. When it comes to the advice for those different groups, certainly we have prepared a lot of information for backyard poultry producers. There are some really practical steps that we would recommend regardless of the risk from bird flu in terms of enhanced biosecurity. So that's making sure that pens and aviaries are kept clean. That as far as possible netting or other material keeps wild birds or other rodents and pests out. That people practice appropriate hygiene, so washing hands and the like between interacting with their birds and other birds. For pet owners, again, we would encourage just usual appropriate management of pets in public places to take place. The risk to pets is generally low, but we would still advise that for public places where pets might be interacting with wildlife, either sick or dead, that that is avoided and dogs are kept on leashes and that cats are kept indoors and prevented from interacting with wildlife.  
 
JOURNALIST: Has modelling been conducted about the possibility of spread among resident birds? Is it positive that the numbers are still quite low and they're with migratory birds at the moment?  
 
COOKSON: Australia obviously is in quite a unique situation because we are the last continent for this virus to arrive on. So it is a little bit difficult to predict exactly what we might see. However, there are some good modelling tools out there that can provide us some indicators of where the highest priority sites and locations might be, particularly where there are large numbers of waterfowl aggregating that might be more involved in dispersing the virus. But I do have to emphasise at this stage there has been no indication of disease having spread into those populations, and that continues to be our highest priority, to monitor where the detections are occurring in wild migratory birds and if there's any indication of spread or mass mortality.  

JOURNALIST: Minister, have you been able to convince PNG to remove the remaining restriction on Australian chicken products from WA?  
 
COLLINS: As I said late last week, we've certainly been in discussions with the Papua New Guinea Government in relation to its initial ban on our poultry and chicken products. And certainly we have had them lifted but with some exceptions in relation to some issues with Western Australia. My understanding is we continue to have those discussions. Thanks very much.