Climate change spat splits Lismore council in flood aftermath

Motion thanking community should not be ‘political’ and reference to climate change was ‘piss poor’, councillor says

The Lismore council was gripped by in-fighting on Tuesday night over whether it should make references to “climate change” following the flood disaster and an eleventh-hour decision to pause its work on flood mitigation, despite warnings the “optics” of doing so were “not good”.

The disaster-ravaged town is still in the early stages of recovering from an unprecedented 14.37-metre flood, which wiped out thousands of homes and businesses and brought Lismore to its knees.

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SA hospitals under ‘extraordinary strain’; Perrottet asks MP to resign after charges – as it happened

NSW MP Gareth Ward denies historic sexual abuse allegations; South Australian hospital system ‘under extraordinary strain’ new premier says, as at least 23 Covid deaths recorded nationally; Anthony Albanese proposes award in late Victorian senator Kimberley Kitching’s honour. This blog is now closed

Peter Malinauskas has promised to keep his shirt on from now on, after a photo of his muscled torso made quite a stir in the world of Australian politics.

ABC radio host Patricia Karvelas:

During the campaign, you were photographed shirtless in swimming shorts, and it caused a bit of a stir. I have to ask you ... the Australian’s Greg Sheridan said jokingly on [ABC] Insiders that you’re “far too good looking”. Which I thought was quite a statement. What have you made of the reaction to that picture?

Do you have any idea how much grief I’ve copped around the place as a result of that?

Have they told you just to buff to be premier?

They’ve piled it on, let me tell you. I haven’t stopped copping it, and I deserve every bit of it.

We were announcing a big investment at our major aquatics centre here in South Australia and a whole bunch of us jumped in for a swim in our boardies with our kids there. And, yeah, it got a bit more attention than I anticipated, fair to say.

So you’re going to keep your shirt on from now on?

Damn straight!

I think we’re about to see a federal election where a cost of living is a front and centre issue. And I think Australians get the price of petrol, but they can’t control the price of groceries.

The way we address cost of living as a nation is to start having an incomes policy focus on how we improve working in small businesses to improve the productivity of their labour, so they can earn a higher income. And that’s why education, training and skills is so important.

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Australia news live update: mourners farewell Kimberley Kitching; Peter Malinauskas sworn in as SA premier; six Covid deaths recorded

Labor senator Kimberley Kitching’s funeral held in Melbourne; Peter Malinauskas sworn in as new SA premier; Morrison and Palaszczuk announce infrastructure funding package; Lismore flood victims to dump debris at protest; at least six Covid deaths recorded. Follow all the day’s news

For almost four years Suzanna Sheed has started each parliamentary sitting week by moving the same motion.

The independent MP for Shepparton, a rural electorate of almost 50,000 people in northern Victoria, asks for a non-government business program to be reinstated in the state’s lower house.

They’re having a real impact on people right now, so we’ve been conscious of that. But what we do as a government is we don’t have knee-jerk reactions, we think through carefully how we can best provide the sort of support that we believe the federal government can deliver.

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Farmers welcome provision of extra flood relief funding in NSW – as it happened

Inquest into death of Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker to start in September; call for inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women; advice for asthma sufferers during flood clean-up; at least 26 Covid deaths recorded. This blog is now closed

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is on the telly now (hope he’s saving some juicy bits for his speech later). He’s talking about this idea of returning to some sort of pre-Covid fiscal world. He says:

As you know, we recalibrated our budget strategy when the pandemic first hit and we needed to do that to ensure there was sufficient economic support with programs like jobkeeper, the cash flow boosts, the $750 payments to pensioners, carer, and those on income support. That helped stabilise the economy by opening up the purse strings. Now that the recovery is well underway and the unemployment rate is down to a 14-year low of 4%, it is time to move to the next phase of the budget strategy and that means stabilising debt and then reducing debt as a proportion of the overall economy, and ending those crisis-level, emergency economic support programs.

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Australia live news updates: call for inquiry into NSW flood response; at least 22 Covid deaths recorded

AFLW final postponed after Covid outbreak; NSW Labor calls for inquiry into flood response; Ukraine embassy calls for Australian sanctions against two Russian oligarchs; at least 22 Covid deaths recorded. Follow all the day’s news live

From senior economics reporter Ben Butler and foreign affairs and defence correspondent Daniel Hurst:

Ukraine’s embassy in Canberra has joined calls for the Australian government to sanction two Russian oligarchs who have assets here, Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg.

The government of Ukraine is grateful to the government of Australia for its proactive and extensive sanctions policy against Russia, which is the biggest among the Indo-Pacific countries ...

We hope that those Russian oligarchs will be included in the next round of sanctions.

Vekselberg has already been sanctioned by the British and US governments. It’s curious that the Australian government has not yet followed suit given its claims of being in lockstep with the US and UK.

Vekselberg’s interest in Falcon pre-dates Origin’s farm-in agreement agreed in 2015, so Origin was entered into the joint venture with eyes wide open.

We certainly have had very limited capability to conduct experimental fires under extreme conditions. Nobody in their right mind is going to give us the go ahead to light a fire on a Black Saturday-type day ...

This lab means we’ll be able to study particular aspects of fire behaviour under the extreme conditions that are more likely to occur under climate change.

By using the data collected by the pyrotron, our prediction tools become more accurate. And that means better decision making about where firefighters can safely go, what firefighting strategies to use, and also improved emergency warnings for communities.

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Seventh Japanese encephalitis case in NSW; nation records 17 Covid deaths – as it happened

PM highlights China’s ‘chilling silence’ on Russian invasion as Labor says China has ‘responsibility’ to call out Putin’s actions; NSW Health confirms seventh case of Japanese encephalitis; man in court over Sydney boarding house fire; Coalition to spend $243m on four mining projects; a man has died in Broken Hill after driving his ute into flood waters; nation records at least 17 Covid deaths. This blog is now closed

NSW Health has added the results from 10,000 additional positive rapid antigen tests to its official numbers after a data error meant they were left out.

The results were registered between Sunday 13 March and Monday 14 March, with NSW Health warning the numbers will “inflate the cases being reported today for the 24 hours to 4pm yesterday (Tuesday)”.

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Cruise ship ban to end; nation records 24 Covid deaths – as it happened

Search for owner after bodies found in Newtown boarding house fire police believe was ‘maliciously lit’; cruise ship ban to end on April 17; Victorian health minister says Omicron subvariant ‘slowly asserting itself’; nation records at least 24 Covid deaths with 10 in Queensland. This blog is now closed

The government has decided to withdraw a women’s network logo that was widely mocked online for its phallic shape.

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet issued a statement today saying the logo had been removed from its website “pending consultation with staff”:

The women’s network logo retained a ‘W’ icon which staff had been using for a number of years.

The rebrand was completed internally, using existing resources, and designs were consulted on widely. No external providers were engaged for this work.

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Australia news live updates: NRMA says any fuel excise cuts likely to be ‘eaten up’ by soaring prices; two Covid deaths

NRMA says any fuel excise cuts likely to be ‘eaten up’ by soaring prices; Victoria records 5,499 new Covid cases, one death; NSW 9,911 new cases, one death; ACT 599 cases; QLD 3,797 cases as health minister tests positive; NT 198 cases; cruise ship ban could lift soon; NSW health minister ‘not keen’ on reintroducing Covid restrictions. Follow all the day’s news

NSW emergency services minister Steph Cooke has said there will be an independent review of the response to the floods in northern NSW.

Cooke was speaking to 2GB earlier today, and lamented that the government “can always do better next time”.

I think we can always do better next time.

There’s no question of that. That’s why we’re looking to do an independent review of the immediate response and the immediate aftermath in terms of what was deployed and when and what discussions were had.

[Different agencies] worked together extremely well during this difficult environment and I think that trying to cast blame is not actually helpful.

I am sorry to say it but sometimes the media like to put the point of blame back on various people. There will be a review and no doubt there will be learnings again, as there is in every crisis but it is not helpful to have a blame game going on and all through the two-year pandemic, you wouldn’t have heard me say a word about any other state government’s views and not criticising the federal government was very much at the forefront as well.

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Live news update: Australia bans imports of Russian oil, petroleum, gas and coal

Australia follows lead of US and UK with latest Russia sanctions; ‘We want tradies to come to Queensland,’ premier says; helicopter crashes in NSW Snowy Mountains; Japanese encephalitis outbreak grows to 15; nation records at least 30 Covid deaths, seven in New Zealand. Follow all the day’s news live

Labor leader Anthony Albanese is speaking to ABC News breakfast now from Lismore. He has been asked about the death of Labor senator Kimberley Kitching.

It was an enormous shock, James. I was visiting a family in Ballina yesterday, who have lost everything and I got an urgent message and then I took a call and it is something that was just totally unexpected. Kimberley was just 52 years of age. She was just beginning her political career. It was her first term serving in the Senate.

I appointed her to the frontbench and gave her additional responsibilities when I became the leader and Kimberley was someone who lit up a room when she was there. She was so full of life. She was a vivacious character and to lose her so young is just an enormous shock.

Essential workers who were lauded in the pandemic, like those in aged care, child care or supermarkets were already forking out up to three-quarters of their salary on rent. Unless we want a social disaster to follow this natural disaster we need to get serious about giving people on low and modest incomes a decent shot at getting and keeping a house. That means more social and affordable housing is urgently needed.

The problem with temporary housing is the lack of security and the poor quality. If people are in a temporary home but know they will have permanent housing soon, they are safe and warm through winter, and they can keep their job and kids can continue at their school, then they will most likely do well.

But if they are worried about how long they will have a roof over their head, and where they will live in the future, if they feel unsafe, or always have a cold because they can’t warm their home, or if the housing dislocates the family from the community they know, then their mental and physical health will suffer.

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Australia news live updates: Palaszczuk says too late for emergency declaration in Qld; Rio Tinto ditching Russia; 21 Covid deaths

Palaszczuk rejects Morrison’s move to declare national emergency in Queensland, where flood costs are ‘well into the billions’; Rio Tinto will terminate all contracts with Russian businesses; nation records at least 21 Covid deaths amid concerns over Omicron subvariant. Follow all the updates live

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is being questioned about his promises to keep the cost of living down as he chats to ABC News Breakfast:

Well, we have been making policies that have been driving down the cost of living, for example, around electricity prices which are down by 8% in the last two years.

They doubled under our political opponents, but what I was referring to last night is the international events in the Ukraine have seen a spike in oil prices, and that is flowing through with some people paying more than $2 a litre.

This high and increasing burden of skin cancer emphasises the need for continued investment in skin cancer education and prevention.

We know what needs to be done. Now is the time to do it so that one day Australia is no longer considered the skin cancer capital of the world.

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Scott Morrison says defence force ‘not available on a moment’s notice’ to respond to disaster – as it happened

Lismore residents protest Scott Morrison’s visit as PM says disasters mean Australia ‘getting hard to live in’; NSW flood death toll rises to nine after man’s body found in western Sydney; second Japanese encephalitis death recorded as outbreak spreads to South Australia; Indigenous teenager shot by NT police fighting for life; at least 34 Covid-related deaths nationwide. This blog is now closed

The latest figures from WaterNSW will give some comfort to those in the Hawkesbury-Nepean floodplain, where flood levels are approaching 1978 heights in places.

As of 5am Wednesday, the spill rate over the Warragamba Dam wall is 215 gigalitres a day, or about half the peak rate reached yesterday.

The good news is that we have seen the river is falling there. The plan today is that the team will be reviewing what’s happening.

They’re making sure it’s safe to return, and we are hoping during the day we might be able to issue that people can return, with caution … We just need to make sure – we need to check things like electricity, sewerage and the like to make sure it’s safe to return.

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Scott Morrison says defence force ‘not available on a moment’s notice’ to respond to floods disaster

Prime minister visits Lismore as government declared national emergency to release more resources to help

Scott Morrison was met with a fiery reception in flood-devastated Lismore, as he defended the speed of his government’s response to the disaster, saying the ADF is “not available on a moment’s notice”.

Ahead of Morrison’s arrival in Lismore, the federal government declared a national emergency around the floods, giving the Commonwealth greater power to send in defence force assets and skirt around administrative “red tape” to get financial support out quicker.

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Sydney floods: two found dead, roads inundated, homes and suburbs across the city swamped

Streets become rivers amid shocking deluge as Manly Dam spills and Roseville bridge flooded, with evacuation orders covering more than a dozen suburbs

Tens of thousands of Sydney residents have been forced from their homes as floods unleashed carnage across Australia’s largest city and claimed the lives of a mother and son.

Australia’s death toll from the east coast floods rose to 21 on Tuesday as a massive stretch of the New South Wales coast endured dangerous winds and heavy rains, causing landslides and wild surf conditions as the second east coast low in a week moved in.

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Australia news live updates: residents in Sydney’s south-west ordered to evacuate; Queensland flood death toll hits 13

Thousands of people in Sydney’s south and south-west have been told to leave as flood warnings are in place for vast swathes of NSW, as Dominic Perrottet admits ‘better planning’ is required for future flood mitigation. Follow all the day’s news

Federal opposition frontbencher Tanya Plibersek has jumped on the radio right after the premier to talk about Labor’s proposed $77m package to improve consent education at school. (Hopefully with something better than that bizarre milkshake video from last year.)

Well, the national curriculum has just been strengthened in this area to say that all students should learn about respectful relationships while they’re at school ... This is making sure that we change the objective in the curriculum into real change in every classroom in Australia.

... If we can change that when they are young, we can change these shocking statistics across Australia where we see one in five Australian women experiencing sexual assault in her lifetime, one in three experiencing domestic violence.

Premier, can you guarantee people who lost their homes to these floods, that they will be able to rebuild where they are, or will some be forced to move to less flood-prone areas?

Well, Patricia, I’ll work through that because I mean, obviously this was an unpredicted, freak catastrophe. I mean, there’s a 14 and a half metre flood in Lismore!

But ultimately, in these times, we need to have frank assessments of the circumstances.

Again, I don’t mean to be rude, but you say “freak” – is it really a “freak” if we’re being told we’re going to have more of these events more frequently?

Should we be really describing it that way when we know that these events are going to be with us more often?

We’ve never seen a 14 and a half metre flood in Lismore, I’m sure you have that. There’s no doubt that we are seeing more of these events and we need to make sure that as we rebuild, we do so in such a way that ensures that we protect people’s lives and we have communities built in a way where we mitigate flood risk or fire risk.

... So as we get to that rebuilding phase, we’ll certainly look at better planning and more flood mitigation and fire mitigation as we move through.

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Australia news live updates: weather warnings stretch from NSW mid-north coast to Victoria border; ‘rain bomb’ set to cost Queensland billions

Severe weather to affect coastal areas from Coffs Harbour to Bega; Queensland estimates ‘rain bomb’ will cost state more than $4bn; two NSW residents among Japanese encephalitis patients in Victoria; ADF defends NSW flood response; PM speaks on east coast floods, Ukraine crisis; nation records at least 32 Covid deaths with 23 in South Australia. Follow all the day’s news

As expected, AGL Energy has formally rejected the takeover bid by billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes and Canadian asset manager Brookfield, posting an ASX statement this morning.

AGL, the country’s largest electricity generator, received a revised bid late on Friday, offering $8.25 a share, up from an initial unsolicited bid of $7.50 a share.

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Severe weather warning extended to cover much of eastern NSW, with heavy rain and flash flooding forecast

A second east coast low is expected to form overnight, bringing heavy rain and damaging winds

A second east coast low off New South Wales is forecast to form overnight into Tuesday, bringing heavy rain but also stirring stronger winds than a similar system last week.

The Bureau of Meteorology has expanded its warning zone for heavy falls and damaging winds to cover an area from Coffs Harbour almost all the way south to the Victorian border.

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NSW flood cleanup continues as south-east Queensland again lashed by thunderstorms

Severe rainfall that may lead to flash flooding ‘likely’ in Queensland, while Hawkesbury-Nepean river in NSW set to surpass last week’s flood level

South-east Queensland has again been lashed with rainfall and thunderstorms, while areas around Sydney and Newcastle faced the renewed risk of flooding as the cleanup continued.

Destructive winds and giant hail were possible as a “very dangerous storm” near Beaudesert in Queensland moved east on Sunday afternoon. Severe thunderstorms were also detected near Boonah, north-west of Noosa Heads, with severe rainfall that may lead to flash flooding “likely”.

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‘Next level destruction’: NSW residents detail the moments floods devastated their homes

Residents of townships around Lismore and Mullumbimby recall destructive landslides, rising flood waters and raging torrents

The towns of the New South Wales northern rivers are used to floods – they are part of the region’s history and a product of its geography. But this time was different. The speed at which flood waters rose, the sheer volume of water and the scale of the damage caught many by surprise.

Politicians are calling these floods a once-in-a-100, or even a once-in-a-1,000-year event, but in reality these catastrophic weather events are becoming more intense and more frequent.

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Australia news updates live: fresh flood warnings for NSW as more rain due, Qld schools stay shut

Hundreds of thousands of NSW residents are still under evacuation warnings or orders as Hawkesbury-Nepean region remains a major concern; Victoria records 26 Covid deaths, NSW records two. Follow all the day’s news

Resilience NSW commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons has told ABC radio that flooding across the state was worst than predicted:

Unprecedented levels [of flooding] experienced up in northern NSW, flood levels that came in well above what was forecasted … And at the same time we’ve still got serious flooding concerns in Hawkesbury and Nepean ...

We’ve also formed up a significant taskforce, comprising of firefighters … the Australian defence force. So working shoulder to shoulder with business owners, with property owners, homeowners ...

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NSW floods: Sydney and Illawarra dodge east coast low after 500,000 people faced evacuation across state

Newcastle and Hunter region now in firing line and subject to severe weather warnings as clean-up begins further north

Sydney and the Illawarra region of New South Wales have avoided the worst effects of the devastating east coast low that instead eased and shifted west over Newcastle and the Hunter region.

Newcastle remains under a severe weather warning with falls of 60 to 100mm possible over six hours and the associated risk of flash flooding.

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