QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms COLLINS (Franklin—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) (14:39): I want to thank our fabulous member for Canberra. I know that she's a very strong supporter of our native wildlife and improving their habitats and has been a strong supporter for a long time, which is why it was so terrific to be with her this morning at the National Zoo and Aquarium, where we saw some fabulous little penguins and heard about how the zoo is going to start vaccinating the birds there from next week.

They're going to be vaccinating not just the little penguins but also some superb parrots and other native birds—backed, of course, by our $2 million investment when it comes to vaccines. While there remains no H5 detections in the ACT, we do know that vaccinations are an important part of our response and help protect some of our most valuable native wildlife.

Our investment is now supporting the vaccination of almost 10,000 native birds across 162 species. These priority birds have been identified by the states and territories through an agreed national framework established by our government for this vaccine. They do include the little penguins in Victoria, the orange-bellied parrots in Tasmania and South Australia, the Carnaby's black cockatoos and the forest red-tailed black cockatoos in Western Australia, little penguins and regent honeyeaters in New South Wales.

I'm pleased to advise the member for Canberra that to date we've vaccinated more than 1,800 native birds with their first dose of the H5 vaccine. This rollout is understood to be the largest of its kind globally, and Australians should be very proud that we are world-leading when it comes to the H5 vaccines for our native birds. This is the result of years of trials by our CSIRO experts and leading scientists, backed by our governments investments.

We recognise the importance of investing in this unique wildlife and we have been planning for the spread of the H5 arriving in Australia, backed by our $270 million investment. As I've said repeatedly, biosecurity remains our strongest and first line of defence, but we've now had 572 H5 events nationally, and the public has made more than 45,000 calls to our national bird flu hotline.

I also need to update the House in relation to the CSIRO lab result, which has now confirmed that the sealion found in South Australia last weekend has been confirmed as having the H5 bird flu. This was concerning but not unexpected, and we have repeatedly told the Australian public that, sadly, we do expect to see more H5 detections in our wildlife. At this point there remain no detections in our poultry or agriculture system, and the risk to human health remains low.

I thank Australians for their reporting of sick or dead birds. I ask them to please not touch them—avoid them, report them and go to birdflu.gov.au.