CHRIS MINNS, PREMIER OF NEW SOUTH WALES: Thanks, everybody, for being here. It's important that you're here this afternoon. Very appreciative to have the Prime Minister alongside Commissioner Wassing, Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib, local MPs, federal MPs, to talk about the devastation over the last three days. A couple of things I'd like to say. Firstly, the weather that has brought such devastation and enormous anxiety to the local community is moving south, which is good news. However, we need to report that there are still 39 emergency warnings still in place. Many of them are evacuation orders and we're asking people to look at the app rather than the sky to make a determination about whether it's safe to go home or to use your local roads. It's still incredibly important that the community listen to emergency service workers, to local police, to the SES, to anyone who's an official who has the latest information. They may be aware of a set of circumstances that aren't immediately apparent and that's how we're going to keep people alive during this difficult period. It's also important to note that there's been, terribly, four fatalities so far and the community will rightly be devastated by that. It's also – I have to report that the SES and emergency services, including the VRA, PolAir, New South Wales Police, affected 678 flood rescues, including 177 flood rescues in the last 24 hours. An amazing, heroic logistical effort where in very difficult circumstances, many volunteers put themselves in harm's way to rescue a complete stranger. And over the coming days and weeks, we will hear scores of stories of locals being plucked out of impossible, desperate situations. So, of course we mourn the people that have passed. But I do think it's important to say without the SES, without the volunteers, we would have had hundreds of deaths. And we're in deep, deep gratitude to those people who volunteered their time or work for emergency services, Fire and Rescue, New South Wales Police, the RFS and the other emergency services. I also need to report that the conditions in Taree are very tough. And we've heard word from local MPs, local businesses, that they've had a torrid three days, incredibly difficult circumstances. We know it's going to take a long time to get that community back up on its feet. We thank them for their forbearance. We know it's been an incredibly difficult period – an incredibly difficult period – and I want them to know that the rest of New South Wales is behind them and hoping that they get through this as short a period of time as possible. The town has been cut off, we understand, as of half an hour ago, local roads are still cut off to Taree. Obviously it's being serviced by emergency service choppers, emergency service personnel. I want to announce with the Prime Minister that assistance will begin to flow soon. And today I can announce, in conjunction with the Commonwealth Government, that Personal Hardship Assistance grants of $180 per individual or $900 per family will be available as soon as possible. It's not today, but I wanted to announce that that funding is on the way for communities that are subject to an evacuation order. Again, jointly funded by the state and the Commonwealth Government. $1 million community recovery grants for local councils, $1 million for each of the local councils that are affected by emergency orders will flow soon. I thank the Commonwealth for that. I want to make clear that I know, particularly for businesses and the local economy, it's going to take more than these hardship grants to get these towns back on their feet. But I wanted to get the ball rolling and the clear message to both myself and the Prime Minister is that these projects and these grants were essential and needed to be announced as soon as possible. We'll have further details hopefully tomorrow morning about how to access it, but they're available for essential things like food, clothing, emergency accommodation and the like. We're going to pass over to the Prime Minister now, but want to thank everybody for their resilience during a very difficult period. These natural disasters are terrible, but they do bring out the best in the Australian character. And we're very grateful for the incidents of heroism, courage and forbearance that we've seen over the last three days. Prime Minister.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Well, thanks very much, Premier. And I'm here with my new Minister, Minister McBain, for Emergency Management, the local federal Member, Meryl Swanson, as well as members of Chris Minns’ team. We did try to get to Taree this morning. That was not possible due to the circumstance, which I'm sure people understand. But our thoughts are with communities that are cut off at this point in time. And we're here to basically say very clearly and explicitly: you are not alone. The Federal Government, State Government, local government, as well as the whole of the people of New South Wales and indeed the people of Australia are with you at this time. Tragically, we're seeing more extreme weather events. They're occurring more frequently and they're more intense. This flood area that goes all the way from the North Coast of New South Wales right down, really, to the Victorian border, but particularly with intensity from the Kempsey area down to the bottom of the Central Coast, is having a real impact on people and communities. And can I give a shout out to the SES and the wonderful volunteers. These people are heroes. They are helping their neighbours, they're helping their community, but they're also helping people from other parts of New South Wales. We had the privilege of saying thank you to the volunteers at the Maitland SES headquarters just a while ago and there I met people from my local hood. Someone from Leichhardt was there helping out. There was of course a random Souths person, as there is everywhere with a South Sydney tattoo there as well. People who are just giving up their own time, risking their own safety in order to help others. And that provides a need to really emphasise that people need to follow the warnings which are placed in the various sites, including the Hazards Near Me app. The warnings that are given from SES or police and emergency services. Please listen to that advice and follow it. Because, tragically, we have seen four people lose their lives, three of which are associated with driving through floodwaters. If it's flooded, forget it. We keep saying it. You can't tell what is underneath the water as you make these assessments. And it is just not worth people taking risks at this point in time. This is a dangerous circumstance and even when the rain stops falling from the sky, sometimes the waters keep rising for a period of time. And that is the case in the Mid North Coast at this point in time. The Premier has announced, of course, some of the support that is there. Can I say that on top of the 16 local government areas in which we have announced disaster assistance, I can announce that we're extending this to three additional local government areas: Armidale, Muswellbrook and Walcha. That support will be made available as soon as possible. In addition to that, the Disaster Recovery Allowance that we have indicated in four local government areas – Kempsey, Port Macquarie, Mid Coast and Dungog – that provides for up to 13 weeks’ pay for people who are employees unable to work or people who are sole traders, self employed, too. That will be made available from 2pm on Monday, this coming Monday as well. Tragically, we are getting very experienced at dealing with these challenges and the National Emergency Management Agency has activated a Crisis Coordination Team. That's operating out of Canberra, but it has people on the ground here and has people on the ground in the local communities as well. Services Australia will provide for on-ground assistance as soon as practicable as well to make sure that payments can be steadily made for those people who need it. And in terms of disaster recovery as well, that will commence as soon as possible. And I've spoken with the Defence Minister this morning, Richard Marles. We have already made an ADF chopper available that has rescued more than a dozen people over the past days, but we will make other Defence Force personnel available for assistance should it be requested and they remain always ready to help their fellow Australians. Can I say that in tribute to, once again, to the volunteers. I'll conclude with this before I hand over to the Commissioner – that at the worst of times we see the best of the Australian character. And just a shout out to all those who are providing incredible support and assistance. We know this is an incredibly tough time and the heart of Australians goes out to those people who are going through this difficult period. But the rest of Australia stands with you as well and will provide whatever support is necessary. This is an issue – I've spoken to the new incoming Member for Lyne this morning. She was unable also to get to Taree – and Alison, I've spoken to and she certainly wanted to make sure that she passed on the appreciation. Times like this, the three levels of government work together, but we work together as well with the SES, with our police and emergency management, with our civil society as well, which is really pitching in to get through this difficult period. I'll hand to the Commissioner and then we're happy to take some questions.
MIKE WASSING, NEW SOUTH WALES SES COMMISSIONER: Thank you, Prime Minister. Can I start also by acknowledging all the communities and all of the emergency services and especially our volunteers, here in National Volunteer Week, that at the end of a very big, very busy severe weather season, but here we are still at it. I also do want to acknowledge the tragic deaths, of course, of the four fatalities. We do also have one further person that is still missing and there's active searches underway with New South Wales Police and other emergency services associated with that situation. We do have a weather and an impact circumstance from northeast New South Wales right down to Eden on the New South Wales border. Our focus remains because of the impacts and the continued impacts in coming days from the Kempsey right through to here in Maitland in terms of our areas of operation. I do want to point out that we have had severe rainfall overnight in some of the Sydney metropolitan areas. That has led to a number of areas of flash flooding and we are expecting potentially minor flooding in the Hawkesbury and the Colo River systems as well. But I'm very comfortable with the resource in there, very comfortable with the response operations in the metropolitan area and other parts of the state. In terms of the Mid North Coast and up into northeast, we still do have active flood rescues still coming into the system and we're dealing with those on a case by case. We have seen that tempo drop off and that's a good thing. We've seen the weather moderate somewhat in terms of what we've been having over the last few days. That's a good thing. But we are still seeing, as we've already heard, we're still seeing some of that –even as late as the rainfall from overnight, which was still intense in many locations – we're still seeing that rainfall come back through the river system. So, where locals will normally be used to floodwaters receding very quickly in some cases, that is not the case. There is still, in many cases, we're still watching for potential increases, slight increases in some river systems. So, again, I implore people to keep focused in terms of messaging in all forms. We continue to do door knocking where we can. In addition to these sorts of messaging as well as for emergency warnings, the Hazards Near Me app is your single source of truth. We do have 160 warnings, 39 of those emergency warnings. We're talking again in terms of emergency warnings. Relocate, evacuate if you can do so safely and move to higher ground. So, again that gives you an indication of the numbers of people we're talking about that are potentially isolated. 50,000 people in the order of the isolations. Recognising the tempo that we're starting to see that slowly decreasing the rescue operations that is allowing our resupply focus to turn to those people that have been very patient and I appreciate the community's patience where you have been isolated, that we're actually able to focus more on our resupply. That ranges from individual household resupply to significant bulk resupply into townships of reasonable size that, and that's again, an end to end aspect from the Commonwealth right through to local application of those resupplies. So, you'll see that starting to flow through not just today but in coming days as well. In terms of support and resources, again I'm very comfortable with our resourcing spread right across. I am very conscious of the likelihood and the predictions of high winds into the weekend and into next week. We're watching that very closely associated with that we've already got interstate resources from Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. But we have got a request, we've got additional resources, 100 resources coming in to help relieve some of our very tired locals. And that will supplement some of our personnel also to give them a bit of a break. They've been at this a long time. It’s been a difficult challenge. It's one thing to get them into the state. We've yet to get them into the isolated communities where they need to operate. And we've got again aircraft and arrangements to do that. And we're also bringing in interstate personnel to support our incident management and storm operators. Conscious that we have super saturated ground with high winds. We're likely to see some storm damage associated with that weather event yet to come. And in terms of the operations, what you can see is a very dynamic and a very broad aspect, from active flood rescues through to resupply. We're still consolidating and working on a range of different levees. These are all things that are part of our focus. We've currently got crews out strengthening the levee at Louth Park. Part of the – obviously lots of water around. These are parts of our normal business that we do on a regular basis, but it gives you an indication of the breadth of all the emergency services and all the support agencies. Acknowledging that we still have people in evacuation centres, the focus is there rightfully on all of the communities and we ask you to remain safe and remain patient with our current operation depot. Thank you.
PREMIER MINNS: Thanks, Commissioner. We're all happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, when it comes to insurance, a lot of people can't actually get insurance. Is that something that needs to be looked at?
PRIME MINISTER: The whole issue of insurance is something I was asked earlier today about and it represents a real challenge because we have been in contact with the Insurance Council and we continue to engage with them. We need to acknowledge that whilst Australia has always had extreme weather events, science told us that those events would be more frequent and would be more intense and that is placing pressure on the system. It is a challenge that we need to deal with and be conscious of, and we certainly are. And that's why we're engaged directly not just with the Insurance Council, the peak, but also individual insurance companies.
JOURNALIST: Mr. Prime Minister, the lady who died in floodwaters at Dorrigo. Police have said they advised her to turn around. Her family are very distressed. They say the police officer had told her that he knew a safe way and guided her to a road. Now the family's just very concerned. She's been painted as reckless. However, they're saying she was also guided there by police. Do you want to make any comments on that?
PRIME MINISTER: I don't think it would be appropriate for me to comment on an individual circumstance, except to say this. My heart goes out to the family and loved ones of this woman. There are four tragedies. That's four families who are affected, four communities who are affected and we want to make sure that people stay safe by following arrangements. But I don't think it's appropriate for a political leader to comment on an individual case.
JOURNALIST: This may be for the Premier, but is the Government looking at the home buyback scheme similar to that at Lismore in 2022, with, you know, looking at the Mid North Coast, particularly maybe in Taree?
PREMIER MINNS: Look, I can't rule anything out, but the recovery effort can really only be guided once the flood waters begin to recede and we can get a full measure of the damage in the community. And this is – I mean, these natural disasters are terrible, but floods in particular are shocking because the aftermath lasts a lot longer than the rainfall fell. And that's what we've seen in Lismore and the Northern Rivers. Once the storm moves on, you've got houses that are devastated, communities that have been overrun, and the damage just takes a long time to clear. So, I need to see it with my own eyes. We've got our agencies on the ground. What I will say is the grim reality is we've got good agencies that have experience doing this because we're seeing more natural disasters. And the Reconstruction Authority in Mal Lanyon will be well placed to look at this very closely, as will the Minister responsible, Janelle Saffin, who, as everyone would know, has gone through it herself as the Member for Lismore.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much.