PM: I'm here today in Rockhampton and I'd like to say thank you very much to the Mayor for hosting me and the Premier of Queensland, we're here talking to the local community about the preparations it's making for what is anticipated to be the peak of the flooding in Rockhampton on Sunday.
Just like Bundaberg earlier today, there is a great community spirit here with people working together as they face these devastating floods.
Here today I'd like to take the opportunity of making an announcement about further Federal Government support for those who are affected by flooding. I have determined with the Acting Attorney-General that we will make available to families who have lost their homes or whose homes have sustained major damage, payments under the Australian Government disaster relief payment system. This means families who have lost their homes can be eligible for a payment of $1000 per adult and $400 per child. These payments are made available through Centrelink. We will have a hotline that people can ring in order to access the payments and discuss their eligibility available from 8AM Queensland time tomorrow. The number for that hotline is 180 22 66.
These payments apply to the 41 declared areas in Queensland which have been affected by flooding. The purpose of this payment is to assist people who have lost their homes to ensure that they can have some immediate access to cash for all of the expenditure that they would need as they're in evacuation centres or otherwise dealing with the loss of their home. It's one way that we want to assist families affected by these devastating floods.
Of course each level of government keeps working together to provide further assistance and the Premier of Queensland and I have had the opportunity today to keep discussing the ways we can work together through our natural disaster relief and recovery arrangements to support affected communities. And it's fantastic to see each and every level of government - Federal, State and local - there is a great spirit of cooperation and partnership as we work with local communities who are flood affected.
Very happy to hand over to the Premier for some comments.
PREMIER BLIGH: Thank you Prime Minister, it's great that you could not only come to Queensland but get to two parts of Queensland that are affected and see firsthand what many families and many communities are experiencing here.
I welcome the extra assistance from the Australian Government and I know that there will be many families who will be very grateful; it will make a real difference where they're really hurting.
This is a very big event, it is now affecting 41 of Queensland's local government areas, we have 41 local council areas that are disaster declared, that is more than half of the local governments of Queensland.
That of course is testing our resources and testing our personnel, they're all rising to that challenge but they will need some relief over the coming week. I'm very pleased that the States of both Victoria and New South Wales have offered to provide additional assistance and we will relief teams coming from Victoria and New South Wales early next week. I'm anticipating a team of 30 SES officers from Victoria arriving probably Monday, to begin the clean-up in the south west in towns like Dolby and Chincilla. We'll also see a team of some 20 disaster co-ordinators who will come in from Brisbane and relieve the central co-ordination centre where people have been staffing that centre managing this event since Christmas Day. So these events are marathons, they're not sprints, and we need to make sure that all of the people at the front line are getting relief to manage fatigue so we can make sure we keep getting good decision making. So I thank Victoria and I thank New South Wales, having those extra bodies on the ground will make a difference and we look forward to seeing those relief staff arrive early next week.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible) and flying over Emerald?
PM: Well I had the opportunity to fly over Emerald and it is truly a startling scene from the air when you see how widespread the floodwaters are and how affected Emerald is, how many houses have been affected. The patches that are not covered by floodwaters are a lot less than the area that is covered by floodwaters so it's a very tough time in Emerald, we've been talking about that during the course of my visit and discussions here today. Of course I had intended to go to Emerald today, but given the circumstances the focus needed to remain on immediate relief work that was required today.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: This is a direct form of assistance to help people at that critical time when they've lost their homes, they're out of their homes, they may not have been able to take much with them and consequently they've got an urgent need for purchasing things like clothes and those sorts of items. Through the co-operating arrangements we have through our natural disaster relief and recovery system, we will work with the Queensland Government to make available further assistance that will be in the form of community recovery assistance, it will be in the form of assistance to farmers and other business that have struggled as a result of the flooding and it will also be in the form of further payments to families to assist them in circumstances where people have lost their homes.
Of course as we now, with flooding still in process and here we are in Rockhampton where the peak of the flooding is yet to come, the focus is obviously on responding to the immediate emergency, we will be working together over many, many months to assist these communities as the true scale of the loss becomes apparent when floodwaters recede.
JOURNALIST: (inaudible)
PM: I think the Mayor is best able to help you with that.
MAYOR CARTER: In terms of compulsory evacuations we opened our evacuation centre this morning at 8 o'clock at the Central Queensland University, it's functioning very effectively, we've only had about two registrations early this morning, but as the day progresses, as we work in daylight hours we'll be looking at implementing compulsory evacuation to those people that need that assistance. We've also had a system of voluntary evacuation that's been working for the best part of a week, at this stage it won't be until later today that we know how many people are utilising the facility at the university, we do know that is has the capacity to handle up to 1200 people in large accommodation and if we need to extend that, we can extend that out to about 2000 people.
I'd also like to take the opportunity of thanking the Prime Minister and the Premier for these early announcements. The assistance that's been announced today and previously by the Queensland Government to assist the community in our recovery (inaudible) lives back on schedule again as they move into their homes. The sad thing for our community will be that we're going to have many people out of their homes for at least two weeks as these waters rise. Not only are these waters going to rise, they're going to remain quite high for at least two weeks.
JOURNALIST: On that, the airport's expected to close tomorrow (inaudible) city of this size is it acceptable (inaudible)
PM: Obviously in circumstances where you've got huge floodwaters, this is a big, big flood, the anticipated rise of more than nine metres, we were talking as to whether or not this will be the biggest ever flood in Rockhampton's history, that looks less likely now, but we are still talking about a huge event. So in those circumstances yes there is impact on critical infrastructure and the team is working well, across all levels of government, to ensure that things like food supplies and other essentials can be kept flowing into Rockhampton.
JOURNALIST: Certainly there's been talk about the standard of the Bruce Highway and that's obviously going to be cut. Can you flood-proof the Highway (inaudible)
PM: Something that the local Member here, Kirsten Livermore, has certainly worked on with our Minister Anthony Albanese. What we need to do now is focus on the crisis that is immediately facing communities in Queensland, we will then need to work through a whole host of other issues, but my thoughts now and the work efforts now are on working with local communities to face this immediate crisis and get people through.
Thank you