Um, why has it taken three weeks to tell the public about a, a suspected outbreak of these fire ants?

Uh, well, first of all, it hasn't.

We got notified by the Commonwealth Government on the twenty-fifth of September.

We got in, uh, to this site, which is managed by the feds.

It's part of the port system.

So goods come in from overseas through Port Botany.

They get trained out to this, uh, intermodal site and then shipped around the rest of Australia.

Have you got this under control or not?

Um, why has it taken three weeks to tell the public about a, a suspected outbreak of these fire ants?

Uh, well, first of all, it hasn't.

We got notified by the Commonwealth Government on the twenty-fifth of September.

We got in, uh, to this site, which is managed by the feds.

It's part of the port system.

So goods come in from overseas through Port Botany.

They get trained out to this, uh, intermodal site and then shipped around the rest of Australia.

Have you got this under control or not?

Um, why has it taken three weeks to tell the public about a, a suspected outbreak of these fire ants?

Uh, well, first of all, it hasn't.

We got notified by the Commonwealth Government on the 25th of September.

We got in, uh, to this site, which is managed by the feds.

It's part of the port system, so goods come in from overseas through Port Botany.

They get trained out to this, uh, intermodal site and then shipped around the rest of Australia, so it's managed by the Commonwealth.

They told us on the 25th, and we got in immediately and took these ants out.

Have you got this under control or not?

What's happening?

Yeah, so we're ready to go for the beginning of spring and we will have more drones in the sky.

Record numbers of drones, 73 across 97 beaches, all the way from the north coast to the Victorian border.

And we'll have them up for more hours of the day.

So when people are swimming and surfing, we'll have them up from 6.15am until 5pm.

And that'll increase as we head towards daylight savings and the days are longer.

the drones are going to provide better protection for people when they're swimming and more real-time information for swimmers

we're still debating about shark nets as well right so 51 shark nets will be installed between beaches from newcastle to wollongong there's still growing amount of people that say they don't actually work what are your thoughts

How much concern do you have for the poultry industry in New South Wales at this very early stage?

There's...

Uh, it hasn't spread to the poultry industry, but we're taking it very seriously.

So we've been...

Uh, it is a threat to, uh, the poultry industry, and we've been working with poultry farmers, egg farmers, uh, for the last couple of years, in fact, to make sure that they are as prepared as they can possibly be.

Uh, and they're all working very closely with government.

I really do wanna thank the industry for being proactive about this.

Are there other particular hotspots that you're concentrating on with the knowledge that we have about migratory birds which may be at risk?

If it was that easy, why didn't it happen earlier?

Well, there are CASA restrictions for the use of drones in Coogee Beach.

We do have them flying above the other beaches in the area.

The government's got a partnership with Surf Lifesaving New South Wales and Surfing New South Wales, where we invest in training their people and purchasing drones to use them on our beaches.

There have been CASA restrictions on Coogee Beach because of proximity to Sydney Airport.

This is the competition that we have with our Sydney beaches and our very popular harbour beaches, there's a lot of uses going on in these areas.

Surf Lifesaving did get an exemption to use the drones over the last 24 hours and we'll work with them and CASA to work out a way to make this permanent.

Where do you stand on that?