PM: I'm here at Amberley today, I was actually here yesterday to talk to some of our magnificent Australian Defence Force Officers about the work that's been happening right here from Amberley. You can see behind me one of the huge planes that has been used to move supplies around Queensland, so important at this time to make sure that townships that have been isolated can still get vital supplies and it's here in Amberley too that our helicopters have worked from, engaging in search and rescue tasks, as well as helping people with supplies and medical evacuations when necessary.
And I did want to say publicly, what I said privately when I had the opportunity to talk to people here yesterday, which is a very big thank you for the work that has happened from here. There are really amazing, courageous stories about the work that has happened from here, including rescuing people off roof tops and if I can just share one story - I talked yesterday to a person who had been on one of the helicopters following the worst of the flash flooding from Toowoomba, who has gone in rescued an elderly lady from a house filled with water, got her onto the helicopter in circumstances where there was concern about a live electricity wire. So just goes to show the kind of truly courageous work that has happened from here.
I have also over the last few days, as I've had the opportunity to talk to people in Queensland talk to the Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Houston, and the Minister for Defence, Stephen Smith. And following those discussions I've decided now is the right time to dramatically increase the number of Defence personnel who are working in Queensland to assist with the Queensland floods.
Across Queensland today communities are starting to move to recovery and clean up. That means people are going back home, to their businesses, finding a lot of filth, a lot of muck, a lot of garbage, that they need to work their way through, get cleaned up, so that they can start getting life back to normal.
So to assist in the next phase of the work we are going to dramatically increase the number of Defence Force personnel to 1, 200. Now this is the biggest deployment for a natural disaster since Cyclone Tracy. Now what those Defence Force personnel will be doing in coming weeks is in the following general areas. There of course will be a command structure, the joint task force that has been in operation, will continue to be the command structure and will work closely with the Queensland authorities.
There will be a general stream of cleanup work, so that is Defence Force personnel getting out, helping with the mopping, the hosing, the removal of debris and rubbish that needs to happen so communities can start getting back on their feet and getting back to something like normal.
There will be a continuation of this aviation effort, we will still need to be moving supplies around and there may still be a need for medical evacuations and the like and obviously search activities are continuing.
There will be an engineering effort. The Defence Force has an engineering capacity and those engineers can work alongside Queensland experts to do things like assess the structural integrity of roads, to assist with urgent repairs, to help vehicles and people get moving through again, to assist with things like creating temporary bridges if that's required, to get people moving through.
There will also be some specialist services provided, our Defence Force for example has a number of psychologists who are used to dealing with people who have been involved in very traumatic incidents and those psychologists will be made available to assist in the coming weeks to assist the people of Queensland as they are cleaning up from and recovering from this event.
Now the coming weeks there's going to be a lot to deal with, there's a lot of dirt, a lot of filth, a lot of mess that needs to be cleaned up and these 1, 200 Defence personnel will be there as part of that cleanup effort in the coming weeks. But what of course we know is that the work of recovery is going to take months and months and months beyond that and so I will be here, the Government will be here, and of course we will be working through to assist the people of Queensland in those months and months of reconstruction.
And that effort will be lead by Mick Slater, a very senior Defence Force Officer that we made available to lead those recovery efforts, because of the kind of expertise developed in Defence on those big recovery style tasks.
So there's a lot to go through, we've been through some very difficult days and there's still a lot to go through in the weeks and months that lie ahead. What I can say to the people of Queensland in those weeks and months is that we'll be giving it 100 per cent, we'll be giving it more than 100 per cent to help people through in this period.
I'm very happy to take any questions.
JOURNALIST: How long will the deployment be current, how long will it take, as long as it takes or what?
PM: Look, we're making this deployment available and we view these kind of tasks as lasting at least a number of weeks, and then there will be the recovery effort that Mick Slater will need and there will be times that Defence is assisting with that recovery effort, for example you can imagine the engineering expertise that I've spoken about would still be needed during that period. But the task of cleaning, actually getting the filth out, getting the debris off the streets, getting the rubbish dealt with, that is obviously the work of the coming weeks.
JOURNALIST: Where are they coming from, the Defence personnel?
PM: These Defence personnel will come from Queensland and also as necessary beyond Queensland. We do have Defence personnel here, we obviously have them here at Amberley and we have them in Enoggera, and then Defence personnel will be moved from interstate as necessary. The Minister for Defence Stephen Smith will also be speaking publically later today and will be talking through some of those details.
JOURNALIST: It's certainly going to take a lot of manpower isn't it, from what you've seen, the amount of devastation?
PM: Well yes, from what I've seen the amount of devastation, it's going to take a lot of work and I'm sure many Australians have seen those images of people standing in their homes standing ankle deep, knee deep, even worse in filthy water, filthy mud, surveying the scene trying to work out how they're going to clean-up from here, so making available the biggest deployment of Defence personnel for a natural disaster since Cyclone Tracey is going to be a real help.
JOURNALIST: The Queensland Premier's been quite emotional, especially yesterday about this, how have you been coping?
PM: Look this is a tough, tough time and a tough time for everyone involved, I've heard so many really heart-warming stories, heart-rending stories, people who have just been through so much loss. I've met with people whose homes have been destroyed, who are wondering what they're going to do next, people who are worried about relatives, about neighbours, what's happened to them. It's been a really tough time and people bearing a lot of weight on their shoulders and our thoughts are really with those people who continue to bear the weight of not knowing what's happened with loved ones and that's absolutely got to be the worst because whilst cleaning up your devastated home is a big, big job and you can clean-up, what you can't do is you can't bring someone back if they've really been in danger in this flood period. So people are grieving, I think the nation's grieving with them, and we're all really focussed on the search efforts and answering those questions for people who are still waiting for news.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister you're about to tour some of the worst affected areas, what, I mean your reason for going to see it first-hand?
PM: My reason for going firstly to see the devastation first-hand, because that's going to help us maximise the efforts that we're making to assist with the recovery, the more we can understand about the damage that has happened, the better we can do that. But there's another big reason for going and it's the reason I went to so many evacuation centres yesterday, which is to just be there and reassure people that we're going to be there working alongside them for the long days, the long months ahead as Queensland recovers and I found yesterday going through those evacuation centres, that people did want to have a conversation, they did want to tell me what was happening to them, some of them did want a bit of real reassurance, so it's really a privilege to share some of those quite difficult moments in peoples' lives and to just try and make a bit of a difference to it.
I can also say just by way of update, I've been continuously updating for people the work that Centrelink is doing, they're making emergency payments available for people who are in that really dire situation, had to leave their home, home full of floodwaters, evacuation centre, really need cash to get them through. Centrelink has been working very hard, our hotline took 20, 000 calls yesterday, we're now at a situation where 27, 000 claims have been processed and $35 million made available. So that's just a start, but it is a tribute to the staff of Centrelink that in such difficult circumstances they've been dealing with so many claims and making a difference for so many people across Queensland and I do want to thank them for that.
And I do want to say as I stand here with our Defence Force personnel, thank you for everything you've done so far, it's been truly amazing and thank you for what you are going to do; 1, 200 Defence Force personnel out in Queensland making a difference, I know that they'll do great work and my thanks already go with them for doing that great work.
Thank you.