02:23
I’ve been looking at the shortages at grocery shortages across Queensland and New South Wales this morning.
The floods have cut off highways and hit supermarket supply chains across the region. Woolworths and Coles have both shut down a number of supermarkets directly affected by the floods and implemented purchase limits elsewhere, leaving those in the disaster zone struggling to get the basics. But the impact is being felt far further than the flood zones.
Up in Mt Isa, more than 20 hours drive from Brisbane, supermarkets are struggling to get stock. Trucks that were expected from the south-east have, understandably, not arrived. There’s little certainty of when new stock might come.
Joe Da Silva, who owns the Foodworks in Mt Isa, said he is running low on “pretty much everything”. His customers don’t have the option of driving to the next town, he said.
Fresh produce is particularly low, he said, and the nearby Coles and Woolworths are having similar problems.
I’m empty, very much, and I keep saying ‘we don’t have it, so we can’t sell it’. If nothing comes, I have nothing to sell.
Down in Central Queensland, the situation is largely the same. The Longreach Fruit Barn has been forced to shut its doors due to low stock, creating a flow-on effect for other local businesses, who use it as their source of fresh produce. They have been promised new stock on Friday. Fruit Barn’s owner Sam Tweedale said his customers have been understanding.
Given that the region has been in drought for a long time, they just understand that these weather events are what they are and there’s no point really complaining about it. You can’t change it, I guess, at the end of the day.
02:15
The normally sleepy town of Chinderah, on the banks of the Tweed River, is bustling today as volunteers armed with gumboots and generators descend to help locals clean out their flooded homes.
Large piles of furniture sit in the spots usually reserved for wheelie bins out the front of people’s houses after even locals who have lived here 50 years were caught by surprise at how far the floodwaters reached on Monday night.
The river height got to 2.95 metres, exceeding previous floods in 2017 and 1954.
Some of the worst-hit are the region’s caravan parks, which are home to numerous permanent, often elderly, residents.
The clean-up is likely to go on for days as the region remains without power and some houses are still waiting for water to recede.
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01:45
Federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg is speaking now in Canberra, where he opens with a statement about Australia’s economy with comments about the situation in Ukraine.
We are all invested in this fight, because what is at stake is far more than the sovereignty of one nation. What is at stake is the future of the liberal, international, rules-based order.
Frydenberg says both the floods and the situation in Europe will impact Australia’s economy.
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01:38
Ballina mayor calls for ‘desperate help’
Ballina’s mayor Sharon Cadwallader says the shire is calling on the Australian Defence Forces for help, as phone and internet services are failing, and the SES is struggling to stay in contact with people in need of rescue.
“We are having major communications issues, how can people call in for help if they can’t get through,” she said.
“We need desperate help, we need helicopters, we need everything thrown at Ballina at the moment,” she said.
Cadwallader said she couldn’t say how many people needed help, but West Ballina was impacted by the flood water on 9am high tide and surrounding rural areas were inundated.
The SES has predicted that 6,000 properties in the Ballina will be impacted by flood water.
“The water is starting to go back a bit, but it will certainly turn around and come back the other way.
Ballina island has been evacuated, not everyone because there are pockets of Ballina that are high enough.
“We just don’t know what the water is going to do either when it does it does come back. There is still a lot more coming down from the Bungawalbin Basin and the Wilsons River into the Richmond River, it is still coming full force towards us.”
She said power and communications outages were also making it difficult for the SES to fuel their rescue vessels.
Cadwallader said the situation was so desperate they had called on Surf Lifesaving to assist.
“They are helping, doing an amazing job. It’s all hands-on deck here.”
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01:25
Asked what the government was doing to mitigate damage from flooding, Toole then launches into an extraordinary attack on those who have opposed efforts to raise the height of Warragamba Dam. Full statement here:
Today is an important message for those that want to stand in the way of building dams or raising dam walls. This actually impacts on people’s lives. It impacts on protecting people’s property. I say to those people get out of the way. Stop coming up with excuses and not allowing these dams to be built or raised where they need to be. Stop using the excuse of a moth. A moth is not a precedent to say that is better or more important than human lives. I say that protecting property and human lives should be the number one priority, not protecting some moth. Look at those images. Look at those images of people in the north of the state standing on roofs, losing everything, losing their homes, their property. We don’t want to see that happening and that’s why we should be building more dams and raising dam walls.
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01:16
SES speaking now:
The SES area of operations is between the Queensland border and Victoria border.
SES are responding to multiple flood rescues in Ballina and warning communities down through the coast to be aware of the situation, prepare and heed evacuation warnings.
I remind people that you may not be inundated in your houses, but your routes of evacuation may be cut off, and may be cut off very quickly. Just because you cannot see the water doesn’t mean that we aren’t asking you to leave those premises …
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