Prime Minister Scott Morrison has doubled down on his government’s response to the flood crisis in northern NSW during an appearance on the Kyle and Jackie O Show on Tuesday morning.
Kyle Sandilands, host of the KIIS 106.5 show, asked the Prime Minister to respond to claims that he had not done enough to aid communities during the floods.
“The local community will always be responders when there is a natural disaster,” he said.
His defence came after he was asked to repsond to criticism that desperate flood-impacted communities were forced to fend for themselves for days while waiting for greater government and military support.
The Prime Minister appeared to imply that the spirit of mateship drove the victims of natural disasters to perform heroic rescues and scramble together urgent supplies, rather than an inadequate response from authorities.
“I had someone ask me up there, ‘Why do people have to go and rescue their neighbours?’ And I said ‘Because they are Australians, that's what Australians do’,” he said.
The Prime Minister has received consistent media scrutiny since he flew out of Australia during the devastating 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires to holiday in Hawaii with his family.
“For the last three years Kyle, every time we’ve had a natural disaster our political opponents have sought to weaponise it,” Mr Morrison complained to the breakfast radio hosts.
“They’ve tried to use it to have a crack at me on every occasion”.
Lismore Mayor, Steve Krieg spoke to the Today Show on Tuesday to talk about the short-term housing crisis facing flood victims whose homes are either unlovable or beyond repair.
“The response times and things we are getting better with, but obviously these are the lessons that we have to learn, and we should be prepared for, and it is not just Lismore or our region at this time,” Mr Krieg said.
“The army did exactly what they needed to do,” Mr Morrison said in reply to criticism from affected community members that his government delayed the deployment of Australian Defence Force troops.
A review of the emergency flood response has found that military support was knocked back twice by the NSW SES two days before an evacuation order was issued in Lismore, The Daily Telegraph has reported.
The Prime Minister pointed to Brisbane, where the government deployed four times the number of troops that responded during the capital city’s record floods in 2011.
“The flood of Lismore is a one in five hundred year flood, we haven’t seen anything like it since Jimmy Cook turned up in Australia,” Mr Morrison said indicating that the government could not have prepared for the unprecedented conditions.
This comes a day after 37 former emergency services chiefs issued a statement on Monday saying the handling of the floods was reminiscent of the lead up to the disastrous Black Summer bushfires.
“The Government knew what was coming and it did not adequately prepare our communities or first responders,” Former Commissioner of Fire & Rescue NSW, Greg xjmtzywMullins told a press conference in Brisbane.
The group, known as Emergency Leaders for Climate Action reported that emergency service leaders met with the Federal Government in October 2021 to warn of massive flooding this summer.
