Interview with Tom Connell, Sky News

E&OE TRANSCRIPT 
TELEVISION INTERVIEW 
SKY AFTERNOON AGENDA 
MONDAY, 13 JULY 2026  

SUBJECTS: Digital passenger cards; H5 bird flu; weather forecast 

TOM CONNELL, HOST: A short time ago, I spoke with the Agriculture Minister Julie Collins about the changes. 
 
JULIE COLLINS, MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FORESTRY: This passenger card, as you said, will be gone over the next 12 to 18 months, and we’re slowly rolling it out across the country, particularly with Qantas at the moment through an app, and then we’ll be rolling it out with other airlines at other airports right across the country. This is about strengthening Australia’s borders and, importantly, as Minister for Agriculture, strengthening our biosecurity system. We’ve invested around $2 billion in additional biosecurity since we’ve come to office, and this will be really important in terms of making sure that we can be dynamic and respond to emerging biosecurity threats. 
 
CONNELL: This has been a saga across Coalition and Labor. This is the third crack at doing this. What have you learnt that you will not do in this attempt? 
 
COLLINS: Well, that’s why we have been trialing it, and we’ve been trialing it out of specific airports with Qantas through the Qantas app. There’ll also be a web-based form that people will be able to fill in, and we’ll slowly roll it out with the other airlines right across, and we learn every time we add something new to it and we work – we’re learning from that. We want to make sure we get this right to make a smooth passenger experience, but also to make sure that we have our strong borders and our strong biosecurity. 

CONNELL: So flexibility of an app or web based. Are you able to fill it out, too, before you even get on a plane, so you don’t have to sort of land and quickly scramble to do that before you grab your bags? 
 
COLLINS: Yeah, so you won’t be having to sit on the plane and scramble for a pen at the last minute. You can fill it out up to 72 hours before you arrive in Australia. Or you can do it when you arrive. Obviously for those people that are not digitised or don’t have that experience, there’ll be somebody there to help them or they’ll be able to still fill out the paper-based version, but what we want to do is make it as digital as we can and make it as smooth and as easy as possible for people to start enjoying Australia at the earliest opportunity upon their arrival. 
 
CONNELL: Interested in the update on the H5 strain of bird flu. Are there any more native birds with the virus, either detected or suspected? 
 
COLLINS: So, as of the information and my briefing from the chief vet this morning we’re still at 13 birds who have had positive tests for the H5 bird flu in Australia, and that includes the 12 migratory birds and that one native Greater Crested Tern. We are waiting on further scientific analysis of the sequencing of that virus to see if we can learn anything more, but I do want to reiterate that we have no mass mortalities at this time or evidence of it in wildlife. And certainly we have no evidence of it in our poultry or agriculture systems, and the risk to human health remains low. 
 
CONNELL: The first risk is to wildlife, of course, some of the endangered birds, also ducks and swans in particular, have a very low ability to counter this virus naturally. Do we have to just rely on a large part on good luck for that not to spread to them? 
 
COLLINS: Well, obviously the fact that we’ve been able to detect these 13 birds so early shows that Australia’s strong biosecurity system is working. And I do want to again thank the Australian public for reporting dead or sick birds or other mammals. And they have been taking now, I think, around 5,000 phone calls at our national call centre, and we have had every state and territory testing. And obviously the concern here is, you know, has it spread to Australian wildlife or Australian birds. And that’s what that scientific analysis may be able to tell us in coming days that’s being done by the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness at the CSIRO labs. They’re looking very closely at this. But certainly the experience overseas is once this disease arrives it does spread quite quickly, and we have seen it in other countries spread quite quickly. But in Australia we’ve had that early detection, which is certainly helping us, and we’re working very closely, particularly with our poultry and egg producers to make sure that we’re putting everything in place we need to. We’ve had an Agriculture Ministers Meeting. I know that Minister Watt has had a meeting of the Environment Ministers. We’ve got our experts meeting on a regular basis. The chief vets from every state and territory are meeting with our chief vet, and those experts in wildlife and those experts in threatened species. We’ve done a lot of planning for this. We’ve invested over $113 million over the last two years working with industry, working the wildlife experts, making sure that we’re as prepared as we possibly can be to do everything we can do to protect Australian wildlife and Australian industry. 
 
CONNELL: For the wildlife spreading aspect though, you’ve mentioned all the measures. There has to be a decent dose of luck, doesn’t there for it not to pass on into some of our wildlife bird populations? 
 
COLLINS: Well, as you’re probably aware, Australia was the only continent free of this H5 bird flu until these detections in June. As I said, we have got to them early. But what we have seen and what the overseas experience shows is that it can spread very quickly, which is why we’ve invested so much money early in terms of the detections and why we’ve also been working with industry and with the wildlife sector about how do we do more protection. We’ve invested, for instance, in threatened species, in improving biosecurity and a lot of our captive threatened species such as at zoos and other places across the country, to make sure we’re doing everything we can. 
 
CONNELL: Okay. 
 
COLLINS: CSIRO is testing vaccines for birds, particularly threatened species, to see whether that is a viable option. We have invested early here, and we are seeing the fruition of that in terms of our early detections, but also our preparedness. 
 
CONNELL: What about poultry? There have been some voluntary lockdowns in particular in WA of poultry farms, so free range no longer being free range effectively. What would trigger enforced lockdown? Is that something that’s part of a suite of measures of the Federal Government? 
 
COLLINS: So the Chief Vets met federally late last week, and they had a discussion. The emergency response consultative committee, which also has other experts on it from around the country. And they suggested some preventative what’s known as housing orders, which is where free-range chickens can be brought inside, and discussions were undertaken with the ACCC to allow for a period of up to 14 days, given that at this stage we are talking about only 13 birds across the country, and they are all being seabirds. So at the moment this seems to be along the coast, but certainly in those areas where those detections have been made, these are optional housing orders. States and territories will make decisions around whether they want to do compulsory housing orders if we get to that stage in terms of, you know, how entrenched these infections and detections might be in Australia. 
 
CONNELL: All right. So to clarify, the orders – I mean, an optional order isn’t really an order, is it – but it will be up to the states as to whether to make that mandatory, depending on the risk? 

COLLINS: That’s correct. And they’ll listen to the advice of experts, and they’ll have a look at how widespread that is at any point in time. As I said, at the moment it’s optional. It’s mainly only in the areas where those detections have occurred, and we’re talking about at the moment 13 birds across the country that have been detected with the H5 bird flu. 
 
CONNELL: How concerned are you right now of the warnings of the depth of this El Niño from what you know so far? 
 
COLLINS: Well, obviously it is concerning, and I certainly know that farming organisations and farmers around the country are always prepared. You’ve also, of course, had farmers dealing with the impacts of the Middle East. We’ve got farmers dealing with the H5 bird flu, you know, and the possibility of that. So we continue to work with them on a range of issues that farmers deal with each and every day. The thing I’ve found about Australian farming and agriculture is they’re incredibly versatile, they’re incredibly resilient, and they are adapting and making decisions all the time based on a number of factors. And this is another factor that they are taking into account in my discussions with them. 
 
CONNELL: Minister, appreciate your time today. Thank you. 

COLLINS: Thanks.