Doorstop at Parliament House, Canberra

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
PARLIAMENT HOUSE
MONDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER 2024

SUBJECTS: Exercise Volare, Environmental laws, Reproductive leave, Aged care reforms, 30 years of affirmative action

JULIE COLLINS, MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FORESTRY: Thanks, everyone. I will make a short statement followed by Minister Plibersek and Minister McAllister, and then we’re going to hand over to the experts who are with us today – Brant Smith from Biosecurity Australia, who’s a coordinator and expert in this area; Paul Kelly, who I’m sure many of you know, our Chief Medical Officer; and Fiona Fraser from Threatened Species.

What we’re talking about today, of course, is Exercise Volare, which is about making sure that Australia is ready for the H5N1 bird flu strain. This strain is not yet in Australia - we’re the only continent that doesn’t yet have it. And, of course, we have a very strong biosecurity system. But what we can’t stop is migrating birds coming to this country. What we’re doing today and what we’ve been doing in the past is making sure that we’re ready for an outbreak. What we want to do is to protect, of course, human health but, importantly, wildlife health and, of course, livestock and agriculture industry. We need to make sure that where the risks are, particularly in wildlife and in the agriculture sector, that we are ready and we are prepared. The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry has been working with other government agencies such as the National Emergency Management Agency, the Department of the Environment, Department of Premier and Cabinet and, of course, the Department of Health to make sure that we as a government and we as a country are ready. We’re taking learnings from other incursions and other disease to make sure that we get this right. We’ve already invested now $7 million to make sure that we are prepared, and this of course is in addition to the more than $1 billion that our government has invested in our biosecurity system.

We need to make sure that we war game this, that we get it right, and that if the H5N1 bird flu comes to Australia that we are ready. This is a particular strain. We have seen other strains of bird flu come to Australia. I have been reassured by Paul Kelly that this is not considered dangerous for human health but, of course, if we get an outbreak it can be very dangerous for wildlife and livestock in agriculture, as I have said. We need to make sure we do everything we can. That’s what this exercise is all about. I’m now happy to hand over to Minister Plibersek to talk specifically about the Department of the Environment and the wildlife area. Tanya.

TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Thanks, very much, Minister Collins. We know for certain that this strain of avian flu is likely to impact Australia in the not-too-distant future. We’ve been fortunate to avoid it up till now because the consequences around the world have been quite catastrophic for wildlife, most particularly for birds but also for mammal species, particularly sea-based mammal species like sea lions. We’ve seen mass mortality in some bird populations overseas. The impacts on nature have been very severe. We are preparing here in Australia by taking species-specific and site-specific planning very seriously. We’re particularly worried about species that are already in very low numbers, threatened species. So, of course we are particularly thinking about – Division for the House of Representatives? All right. Excuse us. We’re going to leave Jenny and some experts with you.

JENNY MCALLISTER, MINISTER FOR EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: Thanks very much, Julie and Tanya. Well, in this, as in all other matters, Australians need to know that we are prepared for any contingency. It’s why on coming to government we established the National Emergency Management Agency, and that organisation’s responsibility is to work with different agencies across government and with different governments to prepare ourselves for crises, whether they’re natural hazards or biosecurity hazards like avian flu. In the exercise that’s underway today, NEMA is drawing on its extensive experience in crisis appreciation, in crisis preparedness - providing support to the Department of Agriculture to organise the exercise and help the different participants work through the consequences and the potential consequences of an incursion. Exercises like this stress-test our preparedness. They help us understand what we will need to do to communicate should the incursion take place, and they also help us understand the downstream consequences of an incursion of avian flu. It’s a really important process in planning and preparedness, and we are well served by a national agency that’s experienced across a range of hazards. Now, I’ll turn now to some of our experts to provide you with some further information about what our expectations are and the work that’s underway today.

BRANT SMITH, AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL ANIMAL DISEASE PREPAREDNESS COORDINATOR: Good afternoon - Dr Brant Smith, I’m the National Animal Disease Preparedness Coordinator from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. I’m happy to take questions, but I just want to make one quick statement. We’ve been working on preparedness for many years. We’ve had the national avian influenza wild bird survey in place since 2005. We’ve been taking a number of samples, testing for the disease over quite a long period, and most recently we’re stress testing that even further with some exercises. Exercise Volare is to fly, and this is a means by which government, states and territories, community and industry can come together and test our system and make sure we’re in the best possible place for preparedness and response. Thank you.

PAUL KELLY, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: Thank you. Professor Paul Kelly, the Chief Medical Officer. So we’ve been very much involved from the beginning in this issue that’s been led from my colleagues in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, and that’s because it’s very important to take a one health approach to this issue. Whilst at the moment it’s mainly an issue for wildlife and potentially for domestic herds - poultry, for example - and we’ve seen in the US dairy cattle also being affected, in over 100 outbreaks in the US. We’ve seen very little in the way of human disease. There have been 14 cases in the US, for example, this year in relation to H5N1, this particular strain of H5N1 influenza, and they have all been mild - mainly conjunctivitis and mild respiratory disease. So, whilst we are very alert to this, and very alert to the potential for human infection, we are not alarmed at this stage because of this experience in other countries. But we’re part of this exercise today. It’s very important that we consider those human health aspects – physical health, but also mental health in terms of the effect of seeing potentially large numbers of wildlife or domestic herds being affected.

FIONA FRASER, THREATENED SPECIES COMMISSIONER: Fiona Fraser, the Australian Government’s Threatened Species Commissioner. We are considering very carefully those species which might be pushed closer to extinction when this particular strain of avian influenza arrives in the country. We’re looking at bespoke measures that could really assess those species to survive and recover following an outbreak. They include measures such as preventing the spread at particular sites, measures such as looking after particular captive bred populations that are important for recovery in the wild, vaccination in some particular circumstances, but, of course, also mitigating the impacts of other threats to those threatened species in the wild, such as invasive predators, habitat connectivity and measures like that. We’re working very closely with experts, with our state agency colleagues to identify those species and those sites which are going to be most susceptible where we can take effective action.

MCALLISTER: What I might do is invite questions for our experts. I’m aware that there may well be other questions that you wish to ask, so perhaps we can invite questions for experts first.

JOURNALIST: Can you describe the potential impact of this disease, influenza? What species of wildlife are most at risk, and what could it look like?

FRASER: Thank you. So, we have seen the experience of other countries over the world. Oceania the only part of the world where this disease hasn’t reached yet. There’s more than 500 wild animals which have been impacted – birds and mammals – overseas. So, we expect many Australian birds and mammals could be susceptible to this disease. The death rates – and I’ve actually forgotten the numbers because they’re so high – there’s many tens of thousands of wild animals which have died as a result of this disease overseas. Water birds are particularly susceptible, because they sort of congregate in large numbers, so they’re at risk, the risk of spread is quite high, but also marine mammals such as seals and sea lions, which also congregate in high numbers is a risk of spread.

SMITH: I might just add - so from the US, which has had quite a large outbreak of this disease for some time, approximately a hundred million poultry have died over recent years. So, it is a significant disease and it’s something that we obviously are really carefully watching. It has impacted wildlife, but it also has impacts on production systems. So we need to make sure we look at both as part of our one health approach.

JOURNALIST: Can you tell us about the exercise? What’s involved in this exercise that you’re war gaming?

SMITH: So, the exercise was split into three parts. One was looking at our Commonwealth responsibilities in the first exercise. The second was working then with the states and territories and how our roles and responsibilities around preparedness are tested. And then the third part of the exercise today is including broader stakeholder groups, industry, community groups, environmental groups to really test the system and to test our preparedness and response capabilities. We are testing it in a wildlife situation as an outbreak of disease and in working through what that would look like and how we’d respond quickly to manage the disease, should it come.

JOURNALIST: And I know you say we can’t stop birds flying here and bringing the disease, but what do you say to people who might wonder what they can do in a preventative sense? Is there anything that can be done by ordinary people to minimise the risk or prevent this spreading?

SMITH: Yeah, so the risk entry points for us are through migratory species. So the East Asian Australasian flyway from the north is our most likely pathway. Our advice for people is to obviously look out for signs of disease or mortality in birds. We have an emergency animal disease hotline that people can call to get advice. It’s a 24/7 number. But the key is to make sure that they don’t go and touch birds and that they report them and then we can respond quickly and manage that once we’re notified.

JOURNALIST: And is there anything that characterises this disease differently to other diseases that might be affecting birds? Do they drop out of the sky? Are there going to be obvious signs that it’s this disease?

SMITH: Yeah, so the signs of disease in this are quite varied, but typically respiratory signs, sudden death. So, we have seen large mortality events where large numbers of wildlife have died quite quickly. So, if anyone is concerned, best to call. Rather be a false alarm and ring than not. So that’s why we have our emergency animal disease hotline in place.

JOURNALIST: We’ve had a few outbreaks of avian flu in the last few months. How and why is this strain going to be different?

SMITH: Yeah, so the strains that we’ve seen most recently have been – we have low pathogenic strains and high pathogenic strains - that’s just the ability to cause disease. So low pathogenic strains are throughout Australia and the world and in wild birds. What happened most recently is wild birds mixed with chickens. It then transmitted the disease to chickens and then they mutated it into a high pathogenic strain, causing the outbreaks. We’ve managed to eradicate all previous eight outbreaks, and we’re in the process of doing so now. In this case, H5N1 HPAI strain is different – it spreads by migratory birds, and it causes very high mortality rates, and it is now moving into non-bird species, as Dr Fraser has said, through mammals like sea lions and now we’ve seen them in dairy cattle in the US. So, it has changed. It has increased its ability to form disease, and that’s why we are paying particular attention to it.

JOURNALIST: Professor Kelly, can you explain to people who may not understand why – how you can be so confident that it isn’t going to be harmful to humans? What’s the distinction there that says this isn’t going to be another SARS or something like that?

KELLY: So, this is an influenza A type of influenza, of which we see hundreds of thousands of cases a year in humans. As has been mentioned, it is different. We have seen H5N1 strains before, but this one in particular, the way that it’s been able to mutate to actually multiple different species, including multiple mammal species, is a reason for concern. Having said that, it has been circulating in every other continent in the world other than Australia over the last few years and has not so far shown any serious cases in humans, and it has not so far been shown to be transmitted between humans. And they, as people will recall from previous press conferences around Covid and so forth, they’re the two big things that we look for. It doesn’t cause severe disease, it’s not easily transmissible between humans, but that’s not to say that it might not change, and that’s why we’re part of this exercise – to make sure we are prepared. And in the background, we’ve been doing a lot of work in the interim, CDC, to make sure we are prepared in terms of vaccine availability, looking at our anti-viral stocks, looking at working with states and territories in terms of laboratory preparedness and surveillance. And so all of those things have occurred over the last few months, and we’ll be putting that into the exercise today.

JOURNALIST: So, Professor, if there was to be a case detected in humans in Australia, you’re confident that there wouldn’t be any fatality?

KELLY: So, we actually did see a case of a slightly different strain of H5N1 earlier this year. There was a two-year-old child that returned from India where it does circulate, this other type of H5N1; there’s many different types. She was quite sick, and we picked that up through our normal laboratory mechanisms. Most people that have influenza do not get down to the great detail of this particular strain of influenza in terms of their investigation, but we are on alert for that, and particularly since that case and this exercise that we’re doing to make sure that for unusual cases we will be looking more closely.

JOURNALIST: Can I ask a question to Dr Fraser on a very slightly different topic? The government is in the process of trying to pass laws to create a new environment protection agency and, longer term, to strengthen environmental laws. From a threatened species extinctions perspective, how important is it that that happens and hopefully passes?

FRASER: Yeah, so the future of our threatened species very much depends on having appropriate regulatory protections in place, but it also depends on mitigating other threats that are existing there in the landscape, and certainly, this strain of avian influenza will provide an additional threat to those species. So, both strong regulation, but also proactive recovery actions for species which are on the brink of extinction are equally as important. Thanks.

JOURNALIST: The Health Services Union is calling on the Federal Government to install 10 days reproductive leave. Is that something you would look at?

MCALLISTER: Look, I’ll leave remarks around health policy to colleagues in the health portfolio. It’s actually not an area I’m engaged in as Minister for Emergency Management.

JOURNALIST: On a personal level, would you like to see people get reproductive leave?

MCALLISTER: Look, I think that we are always interested in ways that we can support people to access appropriate health care. But I’ll leave comments around specific health policies to the relevant minister.

JOURNALIST: You’re in the Senate, Senator. How are things going with the aged care legislation? Where is that up to?

MCALLISTER: I think there is broad awareness that reform is required. We are looking for an aged care system that can meet the needs of as many people as possible and provide as many services as possible in a sustainable way. That does require negotiation. You’ll know that my colleague Minister Wells has been working across the Parliament, speaking in particular with the Opposition. We are, of course, hopeful at finding an agreement and an agreed approach to move forward that can provide stable arrangements for the sector.

JOURNALIST: So not sealed yet?

MCALLISTER: Look, I’ll leave comments about negotiations to Minister Wells. She’s obviously deeply involved in those things, but I think there is a recognition that this is an important area of policy reform, and it would benefit from bipartisan support.

JOURNALIST: Thirty years this month since the affirmative action law with the ALP, and you’ve got more than 50 per cent of women in your caucus. How do you reflect on that achievement 30 years ago, and what still needs to change, do you think, going forward?

MCALLISTER: I joined the Labor Party shortly before that rule was enacted, and at the time I joined there were just a handful of women in senior leadership positions in the Labor Party and parliament. Since that time, we’ve grown to more than 50 per cent of the Caucus here federally, and it’s such a pleasure to see colleagues here and in the state parliaments, representing Labor. Having women at the table brings a range of things to a parliament, including the capacity to represent more fully the breadth of interests and ideas that are present in the Australian community and I’m really proud of what colleagues have been able to do. That wasn’t an easy reform. Change is always difficult, but we have been supported over many years by men and women to increase the number of women representing Labor in our national parliament and in state parliaments, and I’m incredibly proud of that.