Professor Paul Griffin

I mean, when you look at these migratory birds, they travel very long distances.

We've had a lot of impact with this virus in neighboring countries and places not far from us.

So really it was a matter of time.

I don't think we necessarily kept it out, but I think what we have done is found it relatively quickly.

We found it when it appears to still be isolated instances of migratory birds.

It hasn't caused any mass mortality events or spread to other locations yet.

So I think we've found it relatively early.

One of the main measures and something that we're ready for and have already enacted is lots of surveillance.

So really understanding the extent where this virus is and then trying to keep it out of more important locations like commercial poultry flocks so that we don't have impacts on food and eggs, for example.

So it's about keeping the wild birds away, making sure you have active surveillance among those poultry flocks and taking appropriate measures to contain it if it does enter those flocks.

That can include having to unfortunately destroy large numbers of birds, which obviously has a devastating impact on that industry.

So surveillance is really the key here.

That's what we are already doing well and are ready to step up in response to what we're seeing now that it is present in our country.

We need to do a lot more work to fully understand that.

That's activity that's underway at the moment.

So it was great that somebody recognised this bird had died and did appropriate testing to make sure we found it, which we did quite quickly.

Now, we'll obviously look at the migratory patterns of that species and where it might have come from and see where it might have been infected and how it made the journey to Australia to be the first detection in our country.

It really depends on what happens from here.

We know that some birds are more able to get it and spread it and that's due to how they fight viruses and some of the activities.

We know that, for example, if it enters the duck populations because they spend a lot of time in water and defecate in that location, it can spread through that medium and so we can see very easy transmission amongst those sorts of animals.