The Gauge: Why bird flu detection is a biosecurity success, not failure
By Barry Large July 8 2026 - 7:00pm
Australia is well prepared for a bird flu outbreak. Picture via Agriculture Victoria
Late last month, H5N1 bird flu was confirmed in a brown skua found near Esperance, on Western Australia's south coast.
It was the first detection of this strain on the Australian mainland, and it means the virus has now reached every continent on Earth.
For a country that has spent decades building one of the most respected biosecurity systems in the world, it's a sobering moment.
It's also the wrong moment to start asking whether our biosecurity system has failed.
That question rests on an assumption worth challenging - that biosecurity success is measured by zero detections.
Australia has thousands of kilometres of coastline, migratory birds that cross oceans without checking in anywhere, and a trading economy that depends on goods, people and produce constantly moving across our borders.
No amount of funding or political will can turn this continent into a sealed box.
What we can control is what happens next - how fast a threat is spotted, how quickly the right people are mobilised, and how well the system holds together under pressure.
That's the real measure of a biosecurity system - not whether it's impenetrable, but whether it's ready.
Grain producers understand this better than most, because they live it every season.
Long before bird flu made headlines, growers were already practising the unglamorous, daily habits that preparedness is built on.
This includes cleaning down machinery between paddocks, sourcing certified seed, monitoring crops for anything that looks out of place, restricting unnecessary vehicle and visitor access, and reporting suspect pests rather than assuming someone else will notice.
None of this makes the news and it isn't meant to; we need to rely on these systems ticking along in the background.
Good biosecurity rarely looks dramatic - it looks like routine, repeated often enough that when something genuinely unusual turns up, it gets caught early rather than late.
That routine is backed by real money and intention.
Grain producers contribute roughly 1.02 per cent of net crop sales each year in compulsory levies, funding Plant Health Australia membership, the National Residue Survey, the Grains Research and Development Corporation, and a dedicated emergency response levy.
Some of that pool is deliberately built up in advance and held in reserve, precisely so that if an exotic pest or disease does break through, there's funding ready to move immediately rather than a scramble to find it after the fact.
Growers have also been firm about wanting a clear line of sight on what that money delivers.
This is exactly why Grain Producers Australia (GPA) fought, successfully, against a poorly designed additional biosecurity levy that lacked any real connection between what was collected and what it would achieve.
Growers aren't reluctant to pay for biosecurity. They're insistent that the investment buys preparedness, not just process and that is where GPA's role sits.
As a member of Plant Health Australia since 2004 and a signatory to the Emergency Plant Pest Response Deed, GPA represents grain growers at the national tables where preparedness is actually planned and where response decisions get made in real time.
All the while supported by programs such as the Grains Farm Biosecurity Program, which turns national strategy into practical, on-farm tools.
It means growers aren't just handed a bill after an incursion; they have a seat at the table before and during one, with industry knowledge feeding directly into how the system responds.
None of this work, from committees, the surveillance, the projects or the on-farm vigilance promises zero incursions and this bird flu detection itself is proof of that.
Migratory seabirds don't observe borders, and a virus that has now reached every continent despite years of global monitoring was never going to treat Australia as an exception forever.
The system didn't fail by recording a detection, it did what it was designed to do: identify it quickly, test it, communicate calmly and publicly, and watch closely for spread.
That's the lesson grain growers, and the broader public, should take from this. The goal was never a perfect shield.
It was a system capable of absorbing a shock and adapting, whether that shock is an exotic pest hidden in a grain shipment or a virus carried in on a seabird's wings.
Perfection was never realistically on the table, but preparedness is.
Strong biosecurity isn't measured by an unbroken record of nothing ever getting through.
It's measured by preparedness, by genuine partnership between growers, industry bodies and government, and by the system's demonstrated ability to respond when needed.
Bird flu's arrival is a reminder of that, not a verdict against it.
- By Grain Producers Australia chair and biosecurity committee chair Barry Large
