: The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, joins us now. Prime Minister, thanks for being with us.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Fiona. I'll be in Taree later this morning. Just arriving in Cessnock now where I'll meet with the Premier before we travel to the Mid North Coast. But it has been quite a terrible time and the news of a fourth person being confirmed as losing their life is indeed a tragedy for the family and friends and indeed for the local community there as well. In this case, just north of Coffs Harbour.
POOLE: That's right. You know, four fatalities. We still have one person missing in the Nymboida. It is clear to us at this point that those fatalities have been, you know, a few of them from people driving through floodwaters and people trying to find alternative routes to the Pacific Highway with it being closed and trying to find workarounds and then, you know, taking a life-threatening risk on the roads. What would you say to people this morning? You know, it's been an absolutely traumatic 48 hours for many of the residents on the Mid North Coast. And what's your message to them, Prime Minister?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the first is that nothing is worth risking your life for. If it's flooded, forget it - is the message that's been drummed out now for years and people should just not take those risks. They risk their own lives, but they also risk those who come to try to rescue them. There's been multiple rescues, of course, more than 300 flood rescues by the SES. The Australian Defence Force chopper has rescued more than a dozen people. Some of those, of course, can't be avoided overwhelmingly, but people need to not take risks, to follow the advice of the authorities or of the SES. At the worst of times, we are seeing once again the best of the Australian character. The SES do an incredible job. They've responded to well over a thousand incidents now and I just think these are unsung heroes in our community.
POOLE: Prime Minister, it would be amiss of me not to mention the communication fail that has happened for many residents across this region through this event. This is a region that has gone through multiple floods, a region that has gone through bushfires and it is something that this community faces, it seems, every couple of years. And yet for some reason at that time, not only do they lose power but they lose the ability to call each other to communicate, to jump on the internet and find out essential information. Now, black spots throughout the Mid North Coast has been a federal election issue for many, many years. And we heard accusations in this upcoming federal election that fixing mobile black spots was going to Labor seats. Can you confirm to this community today that it will be a priority going forward that you will fix the communication issues on the Mid North Coast?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, I tell you what, we don't make decisions based upon an electoral map. There's no colour-coded maps when it comes to those issues. I assure people of that. Quite clearly, it's unacceptable that communications aren't available and with any incident the assessments are made and whatever funding needs to be made available. But we certainly do not do that, what we have done is make sure that we have specific programs arising out of the 2019-2020 bushfires, really. And that program is being rolled out. You know, we're overcoming a long period of delay. One of the reasons why we passed special legislation to keep the NBN in public hands is because we want to make sure that we're able to deliver on that. But clearly it's not good enough. And we'll look at doing whatever we can to make sure that those issues are resolved in the future.
POOLE: We appreciate that, Prime Minister. Thank you. As far as declarations go, emergency declarations, there are going to be a lot of primary producers, particularly dairy farmers and you know, people that run cattle throughout our region who are in an absolutely miserable situation. We spoke with Croki farmer Craig Emerton, who has been a fifth generation farmer, never seen a flood like this. Watched his superannuation and all of those wonderful cattle that he's bred over the years float down the river. What sort of assistance will there be for our farmers?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, there is already a range of assistance has kicked in already. We've triggered Disaster Recovery Allowance in four local government areas in Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Mid Coast and Dungog. We've triggered disaster assistance across 16 local government areas. There will be, triggered, a specific program kicks in for agriculture as well. And so we are very quickly making those assessments. We're making payments available quickly with Disaster Recovery Allowance will be available from 2pm on Monday that provides for 13 weeks of payments for employees, for people who can't work or for self employed sole traders, etc, to provide them with income assistance on top of the emergency funding that's available through the disaster assistance funding that's done through the Commonwealth and state governments. The way that the support operates, is that the state government writes to us and the Federal Government, we have on each occasion, including most recently, of course, in Northern New South Wales, in Southeast Queensland in March and April, and then of course with the events that occurred in flooding events around Longreach and around Western Queensland as well, the assistance kicked in there. So, we will be providing that support. I'll be meeting with the Premier. I'm currently just pretty close to arriving in Cessnock where I'll meet up with the Premier before we travel to Taree later this morning.
POOLE: When you're there in Taree, you'll see a CBD where the water has now receded, but you'll see the flood levels of where the water rose to in that CBD. You can multiply that to Kempsey, Prime Minister, you can say the same happened to Macksville. You visited Lismore in the past. We just had a conversation with Mathew Jones from the Insurance Council of Australia about the long term impacts of the flooding across the North Coast and he made some interesting points about people needing to move. Let's take a listen.
MATHEW JONES, INSURANCE COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA: Well, one of the things that, you know, we'll be looking at this event after the floodwaters recede, but we do really need to look at how we better protect communities, particularly up and down the east coast of Australia, that face unacceptable flood risk. We need to invest more in mitigation efforts, whether that's levies, retention basins, home raisings or in some cases buybacks to enable people who live in those really flood affected homes to live somewhere else higher and drier. But in some cases where there's no acceptable mitigation, we really need to look at relocating homes.
POOLE: Prime Minister, is this on your agenda, looking at how we can better protect the east coast?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, I think that the gentleman there from the Insurance Council made some very good points and all of those things are issues that have been dealt with and are being dealt with. I've been to homes in Lismore that are the subject of buybacks, a program that we've put in place between the Commonwealth and the State Government. There are areas there that had flooded consistently and that simply couldn't be protected, were going to be regularly impacted. And so we do need to have a very clear look at those issues. Of course, the ideal is for that not to be necessary. We don't want to have homes relocated if areas such as mitigation, flood levies and those issues can be dealt with as well. But in some cases it simply isn't going to be the case. And Lismore and some parts of the North Coast were subject to that program.
POOLE: Prime Minister, when you arrive in Taree today, what is your plan?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, our plan is to visit the SES and to talk to people on the ground about what has occurred. We'll be meeting with some of the headquarters here in Cessnock and then returning to Maitland as well, where we'll make some public comments later on today. But we really want to see firsthand on the ground what is occurring. Kristy McBain is on the ground with us as well, the Emergency Management Minister. We have established a Crisis Coordination Team as part of the National Emergency Management Agency. Its coordination is out of its headquarters in Canberra, but we're trying to make sure that we work across all levels of government, along with agencies like the SES and volunteers, to provide whatever support we can as quickly as possible and make sure that there's seamless coordination across different agencies and the levels of government.
POOLE: Prime Minister, thank you for making the time to come to our region and to witness some of the devastation firsthand. I know that that'll be very reassuring for the residents of the Mid North Coast. Thanks for your time.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much, Fiona.
