Anthony Albanese has again accused the Morrison government of politicising the widespread floods that devastated parts of Queensland and NSW earlier this year.
The Opposition Leader on Monday took aim at Scott Morrison’s handling of the disaster after visiting flood victims in Brisbane with his emergency management spokesman Murray Watt.
Labor is hoping to capitalise on community anger driven by the perception in flood-hit parts of southeast Queensland and NSW that the Morrison government was too slow to provide immediate emergency assistance and to roll out financial relief.
“I’ve been to flood-affected communities here in Brisbane on a number of occasions, and it is just quite shocking to see the devastation that was there,” Mr Albanese told reporters from the Queensland capital.
“What we saw from the federal government, whether it be bushfires, floods or the pandemic, is a real pattern of behaviour … on the floods we saw again a political response rather than a human response.”
Mr Albanese brought up the criticism of the federal government’s disaster relief payments, which were distributed to flood victims based on where they lived.
He raised outgoing state Liberal MP Catherine Cusack’s announcement she would resign from NSW Parliament over her anger towards the Prime Minister and his response to the floods.
Flood affected communities in the towns of Ballina, Byron and Tweed – in the Labor-held electorate of Richmond – were initially excluded from $2000 of payments offered to towns in the neighbouring Nationals seat of Page.
The Morrison government later expanded the payments scheme, saying it had been waiting on an oxjmtzywfficial assessment of the excluded towns to sign off on the financial relief.
Senator Watt on Monday claimed flood victims in Queensland had only been offered a third of the financial relief afforded to those in NSW.
“Right now flood victims in NSW are getting three times the payment that the people in this street and Auchenflower and everywhere in Queensland are getting,” he said.
“Why is it wherever Queenslanders need Scott Morrison the most, he always turns his back, whether it’s Covid, whether it’s floods, whether it’s infrastructure or anything else?”
The inner city suburb of Auchenflower sits in the electorate of Ryan and borders the seat of Brisbane, both of which are held by Liberal MPs with respective margins of 6 per cent and 4.9 per cent.
At the same press conference Mr Albanese was asked to weigh in on reports former education minister Alan Tudge allegedly pressured his former staffer not to disclose their affair.
Mr Albanese said he “struggled to get my head around” the “saga” and the government needed to answer lingering questions around Mr Tudge’s position in cabinet and a reported $500,000 settlement to Rachelle Miller.
Asked about Labor’s position in Western Australia, Mr Albanese said he made no apologies for having said his party was hopeful of a positive result there.
“And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is the Prime Minister called Western Australians cave dwellers and rejected their government's efforts to keep them safe,” Mr Albanese said.
“And, secondly, that when Scott Morrison had a choice between Mark McGowan – he likes to talk about choice. Well, here's the choice that Scott Morrison had. He had a choice between Mark McGowan and Clive Palmer.”
Mr Albanese said Mr Morrison “chose” Mr Palmer when the commonwealth provided funding towards one of the mining magnate’s legal battles against the WA government during the Covid-19 pandemic.
