Bird flu detected at central Victorian egg farm
Calla Wahlquist
Bird flu has been detected at an egg farm near Meredith in central Victoria, authorities say. However they are yet to determine if it the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain.
That type of bird flu has been detected on every continent on earth except Australia, including Antarctica.
In a statement, Agriculture Victoria says it is investigating a number of poultry deaths at the Meredith farm and that “preliminary tests have confirmed the presence of the avian influenza virus”.
Samples have been delivered to the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness at Geelong for further tests which will determine the type and nature of the disease. The property has been placed into quarantine and Agriculture Victoria staff are on-the-ground to support the business and investigate further.
Advertisements
Victoria’s chief veterinary officer, Dr Graeme Cooke, says Agriculture Victoria is “responding with staff on the ground [and] supporting the business with further laboratory investigations as necessary”.
Cooke urged poultry farmers, backyard flock owners and other bird owners to report “any cases of unexplained bird deaths” to the 24-hour Emergency animal disease hotline on 1800 675 888, or to their local vet.
Key events
Benita Kolovos
Bev McArthur changes her tact – she asks why the government didn’t consider redeveloping Parkville in the first place, instead of announcing a new Arden precinct.
Mary-Anne Thomas responds:
A couple of things have happened as we have progressed delivery of this project – the first of those is that when the Arden project was first announced in 2022, we were restricted in the number of stories that we were able to build on the Parkville site to 15. But as work continued on the delivery of this project, there were changes that were made to the flight path from the Royal Children’s Hospital … That flight path has been changed and as a consequence of that, we’re now able to build up to 22 stories.
Thomas says the Arden site will now be used for 1,000 new homes.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian health minister defends scrapping plans at Arden
Victorian budget estimates have now turned to health infrastructure, which minister Mary-Anne Thomas is also responsible for.
She’s being asked by Liberal MP Bev McArthur why plans for a medical precinct in North Melbourne were scrapped due to “electromagnetic interference” from the new Arden train station, given the government “already knew years ago that the EMI from the tunnel project posed significant issues at the Peter Mac[Callum] Cancer Centre”.
Thomas doesn’t answer the question – instead she says the government is going to expand the Royal Melbourne and Royal Women’s hospitals at their existing sites at Parkville instead, and has allocated $2.3bn to this work. She says:
I need to reject the premise of your question. There has been no scrapping of projects. Indeed our government remains committed to the first stage of the Royal Women’s Hospital which will now happen on the Parkville site... This will be the largest build ever in Australia’s history and we’ll deliver an additional 400 beds and enable 2,500 more babies to be born at the Royal Women’s Hospital.
Amnesty International Australia calls on government to support ICC application for arrest warrants
Amnesty International Australia has called on the Australian government to support the ICC’s application for arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, labelling the move a “landmark moment for international justice.”
In a statement, Amnesty said the decision to seek arrest warrants “is an historic step toward accountability following decades of impunity” and that Australia has a general obligation to “fully cooperate” with the ICC’s investigations and prosecutions as a party to the Rome Statute (the international treaty that established the ICC).
Mohamed Duar, Amnesty International Australia’s spokesperson for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said:
In the pursuit of justice for victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and to uphold the court’s independence and impartiality, the Albanese government should affirm its support of the court’s investigation into the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the application of arrest warrants…
International law has been established over decades to ensure the safety, dignity and protection of all human lives. While international law has been flouted with impunity by the Israeli government and Hamas, Australia and the international community must support efforts to ensure the adherence to international law is urgently restored.
All states must respect the legitimacy, impartiality and independence of the ICC. The Australian government must do everything in its power to see an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to ensure that desperately needed humanitarian aid is delivered to the people of Gaza in order to prevent further mass death of civilians.
Earlier today, health minister Mark Butler said the ICC “is independent and will go through its usual procedures … we don’t seek to interfere in that”. You can read more here.
Andrew Messenger
Gold Coast university hospital had to downgrade maternity services due to lack of anaesthetic staff, parliament hears
The Gold Coast university hospital was forced to downgrade maternity services for complex births due to lack of anaesthetic staff, Queensland parliament has heard.
Shadow health minister Ros Bates said in question time it had been downgraded four times in January and February.
Health minister Shannon Fentiman said no patients had been affected by the downgrade of the hospital from level 6 to level 5 “for periods shorter than 24 hours”.
Fentiman said clinicians had decided to “slightly reduce the service” due to a lack of staff.
There was a shortage of medical practitioners and credentials with anaesthetics and scope of practice for very complicated neonatal complex births.
The downgrades happened on January 11 and 12 and 18 and 19, and then again from January 20 to 24, she said.
A number of birthing clinics have closed or been put on bypass in regional Queensland in recent years. The maternity clinic in Weipa is set to reopen this week.
Home affairs minister on Singapore Airlines flight SQ 321: ‘we will do everything we can to help’
The home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, says her thoughts were with those affected by the in-air incident on Singapore Airlines flight SQ 321, AAP reports.
She told Sunrise earlier this morning:
This is a terrible experience that these people have gone through.
The Australian government will provide consular assistance wherever we can, wherever it’s needed to those people.
I know the embassy in Bangkok and the high commission in Singapore are actively trying to contact those Australians at the moment … we will do everything we can to help.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian health minister takes question on abortion access
Circling back to Victorian health minister Mary-Anne Thomas’ appearance at budget estimates:
Thomas is now being asked by Greens MP Aiv Puglielli about a report by the ABC today which raises concerns women are being blocked from accessing abortion services by conscientious objectors, who are then failing to refer them to alternative providers.
The health minister says this is a “key concern” of hers and it’s why the government is planning to open 20 new women’s health clinics, which will offer both surgical and medical abortions.
She said Sexual Health Victoria had also recently established a telehealth medical abortion service. Of the telehealth program, Thomas said:
That is improving access particularly for regional and rural women. So I want the committee to be in no doubt about our government’s commitment to expanding access to abortion care right across Victoria, no matter where girls and women live. And as a regional Victorian myself, I’m well aware of some of the challenges that can be experienced in rural and regional Victoria.
You will also be interested to know that my department has – at my direction, I might say – worked with Peninsula and Eastern and Western health services in order to increase access to surgical termination and create additional capacity for the Royal Women’s hospital.
Victorian EPA responding to reports of fuel leak in Melboune
The Environment Protection Authority of Victoria says it is responding to reports of fuel leaking into the bay from a drain under a pier near Head Street in Elwood.
Please avoid contact with the water while we investigate.
Robbie Katter calls for new state in north Queensland
Andrew Messenger
Queensland state parliament is set to debate “taking the necessary steps” to form a separate state.
Robbie Katter sponsored the motion this morning. It’s expected to be debated this afternoon.
I move a motion that this house supports taking the necessary steps to form a separate state of north Queensland, in accordance with section 124 of the commonwealth constitution.
Independence has long been a pet policy of the Katters.
Benita Kolovos
Victorian health minister grilled on amalgamation plans at budget estimates
Victoria’s health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas, is appearing before the public accounts and estimates committee’s budget estimates hearings this morning for a mammoth 4.5 hour session.
While there’s been plenty of dixers from the Labor MPs on the committee, Coalition members have been grilling the minister on plans to amalgamate some of the state’s 76 health services.
Thomas tells the committee that while she’s received a report from an expert advisory committee, led by former Labor MP and health executive Bob Cameron, her department is still considering its recommendations.
During questioning by Nationals MP, Danny O’Brien, she accused the opposition of “running a pre-emptive scare campaign” on a process “designed to inquire into four of the key challenges that our health service system is facing”.
The four challenges, she said, were the aging population, the workforce challenge, cost of healthcare rising post-pandemic and new models of care.
She said Victoria has far more individual health services than other states and they aren’t communicating effectively with each other. Thomas said there were “resources across our smallest country hospitals” that were particularly “underutilised”:
I have been to rural and remote hospitals, where I know where there are very few patients [than] down the road in a bigger regional hospital, [where] there are patients that should be closer to home. The object of this work is to ensure that people are receiving care as close to home as possible … No decisions have been made. The department is assessing that report and will deliver advice to me and at that time, government will make decisions about the next steps, which will undoubtedly include consultation.
Tamsin Rose
Greenwich and Latham arrive at federal court in Sydney
New South Wales politicians Alex Greenwich and Mark Latham have arrived at the federal court for the start of a defamation trial.
As we flagged just earlier, Independent MP Greenwich brought the action against the former One Nation NSW leader following an explicit tweet sent more than a year ago.
The trial is expected to run for a week.
More from AAP on the Greenwich v Latham defamation trial
High-profile barrister Matthew Collins KC, who is representing Alex Greenwich, said his client was seeking aggravated damages over the abuse allegedly resulting from the tweet.
[Mark] Latham, our ultimate case is, responded in a wholly disproportionate and irrelevant and disgraceful manner.
Several of Greenwich’s political allies, as well as his husband, will be among witnesses called to give evidence about his character and state of mind following the tweet.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young and speaker of the NSW legislative assembly, Greg Piper, are expected to be among them.
The trial is expected to run until Tuesday.
Court showdown begins in Latham ‘homophobic abuse’ defamation case
A bitter feud between Mark Latham and fellow NSW MP Alex Greenwich that initially played out on social media will head to court for a defamation showdown, AAP reports.
Five days of hearings, set to begin in the federal court today, will test claims by Greenwich that the former federal Labor leader’s tweet describing explicit sexual acts between men fuelled a “torrent” of homophobic and other abuse against him.
Latham’s tweet came in response to an earlier post by Greenwich calling him a “disgusting human being”.
The lawsuit targets both Latham’s tweet and statements made during an interview with the Daily Telegraph in which the then One Nation state leader discussed Greenwich giving speeches about sexuality to students in schools.
Latham has denied that he defamed the independent MP for the state seat of Sydney and is defending the lawsuit.
His barrister Barry Dean previously argued Latham’s tweet was a reasonable response to the initial attack and the comments were the conservative MP’s honest opinion at the time.
He also said there had been no serious harm done to Greenwich and “when you look at the reputation of Mr Greenwich, that has not been affected in a material way.”
Latham is also running various qualified privilege defences and a defence that his comments were made in the public interest.
Bird flu detected at central Victorian egg farm
Calla Wahlquist
Bird flu has been detected at an egg farm near Meredith in central Victoria, authorities say. However they are yet to determine if it the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain.
That type of bird flu has been detected on every continent on earth except Australia, including Antarctica.
In a statement, Agriculture Victoria says it is investigating a number of poultry deaths at the Meredith farm and that “preliminary tests have confirmed the presence of the avian influenza virus”.
Samples have been delivered to the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness at Geelong for further tests which will determine the type and nature of the disease. The property has been placed into quarantine and Agriculture Victoria staff are on-the-ground to support the business and investigate further.
Victoria’s chief veterinary officer, Dr Graeme Cooke, says Agriculture Victoria is “responding with staff on the ground [and] supporting the business with further laboratory investigations as necessary”.
Cooke urged poultry farmers, backyard flock owners and other bird owners to report “any cases of unexplained bird deaths” to the 24-hour Emergency animal disease hotline on 1800 675 888, or to their local vet.
Government welcomes ‘positive engagement’ with Israel over aid worker death
The Australian government has welcomed “positive engagements” with Israel over an investigation into the killing of an aid worker, AAP reports.
Retired air chief marshal Mark Binskin travelled to Israel in early May after being appointed as Australia’s special advisor on Tel Aviv’s investigation into the death of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six World Central Kitchen colleagues.
An Israeli airstrike killed the aid workers in early April in what the Israel Defence Force called a misidentification in the fog of war.
A foreign affairs department spokesperson told AAP in a statement:
The Australian government welcomes Israel’s positive engagement with ACM Binskin to date. The government has made clear to Israel its expectation of a full, thorough and transparent investigation, and demanded full accountability.
Binskin will provide his report to the foreign minister “in due course”.
Butler comments on ICC seeking arrest warrants
Mark Butler was also asked about comments from the shadow foreign minister, Simon Birmingham, earlier this morning, accusing the PM of “wilful inconsistency” at a press conference yesterday. You can read more about this earlier in the blog here.
Butler denied there had been any inconsistency and said:
The Australian government has essentially voiced a longstanding position that that court (the ICC) is independent and will go through its usual procedures
I think one of the concerning things out of this report has been the sense that there is some equivalence between Hamas and Israel and I think we all – certainly I reject that, the government rejects that… [Hamas has] been recognised as a terrorist organisation in Australia for some time.
But the point that the PM has made, and I know the foreign minister has made, is that the ICC is part of the global architecture that Australia, as a middle power, has always supported. And so decisions by the ICC to do one thing or another are a decision for them, we don’t seek to interfere in that.
Butler was also asked if Australia should boycott any arrest warrants, as requested by Israel, but did not answer the question directly.
I’m the health minister … the foreign minister and the prime minister talk on these issues.
Health minister speaks about ban of replica Ozempic
The health minister, Mark Butler, spoke to ABC RN earlier about the government’s crackdown on replicas of Ozempic and other weight loss drugs. You can read more on this below:
Speaking about the decision, Butler said a “carve-out” called compounding allows doctors and pharmacists to decide a patient needed something that wasn’t commercially available, and as a one-off this was made.
But what we’ve seen over the last several months is a whole lot of business models develop that are using this carve-out, effectively abusing this exception, to put in place large scale-manufacturing operations.
And we have no oversight about what these medicines contain … there’s no ability to gather adverse event reporting, so there’s no sort of line of sight regulators have about what’s happening.
This is something that the American authority, [the] FDA [Food and Drug Administration], has also expressed concern about so over the last several months, we’ve been working with authorities to gauge their views about what we should do and the clearest advice to me, from the TGA [Therapeutic Goods Administration], was that we should remove this exemption.
Asked why the ban is taking effect from October, rather than immediately, Butler said he views it as a transition period not for industry but for patients.
