Albanese announces furlough scheme for flood-hit workers
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Flood victims in western Queensland unable to work due to the deluge will be eligible for a three-month disaster allowance after the commonwealth activated the special payment scheme.
As the federal election enters its second week, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will visit parts of the vast outback flood zone on Saturday to announce further support.
The commonwealth will activate its disaster recovery allowance, which provides payment for up to 13 weeks for workers and sole traders who lose income as a direct result of the emergency.
The prime minister said:
The vision coming out of western Queensland is truly shocking and distressing.
My thoughts are with everyone affected by this flooding – my message to Queenslanders is we are here for you.
My government has been working with the Queensland government to activate assistance and provide support.
At the worst of times, we see the best of the Australian character.
Applications for the allowance will open at 2pm on 8 April.
Key events
It may be Saturday, but Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton aren’t letting a weekend stopping them from hitting the campaign trail.
The PM is heading to western Queensland to visit parts of the region battered by recent flooding.
Meanwhile, Dutton is in Darwin, marking his first visit to the Northern Territory since the campaign kicked off, where both seats are currently held by Labor.
He’s expected to detail the Coalition’s announcement that it would force the sale of the Port of Darwin if elected, with a press conference to come soon.
Albanese took the wind out of his sails yesterday after calling in to local Darwin radio to make a similar announcement.
There was an early belief that Donald Trump’s surprise return to the White House would foreshadow a path to a coalition election victory in Australia based on a surge in support for right-wing politics, AAP reports.
But fast forward several months and local reaction to Trump’s divisive policies has upended those predictions ahead of the 3 May poll.
As the US president slapped 10% tariffs on all Australian exports, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have flexed their campaign muscle on how they would deal with an unpredictable American leader.
While some within the coalition initially welcomed the Republicans’ victory in the presidential election, associate professor at United States Studies Centre David Smith says the opposition is now trying to avoid any association with Trump.
There were some figures who believed the coalition could benefit from emulating Trump in some ways … but since he’s become president, he’s turned off a lot of Australians both in style and substance and the coalition now appears to go in the opposite direction.
Australian National University international law expert Donald Rothwell says Albanese has largely tried to avoid providing a running commentary on Trump’s movements but the tariff situation has made it unavoidable on the campaign trail.
The tariffs will immediately create a contest between the government and the coalition as to who will respond the toughest and which response will be the most effective.
Dry weather finally for Queensland’s south-west
Queensland’s south-west is finally facing dry weather, giving authorities a clearer picture of the extent of the damage from flood waters. Dean Narramore, a senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), spoke to ABC News Breakfast this morning.
He said flooding was occurring on “pretty much all our rivers” through the state’s south-west, central and northern waterways.
That major flooding may continue for weeks, as we just saw a year or two worth of rainfall moving down the rivers there.
We can see a pattern shift as we move through the coming week or two, as we see that shower and thunderstorm activity contract to far northern Australia … the rest of the country looking dry, which is great news for the flood-affected areas in Queensland but not those experiencing the drought conditions in South Australia and Victoria.
Both parties back taking Port of Darwin out of Chinese hands
Emily Wind
The Labor government is on the hunt for a buyer for the Port of Darwin despite the Chinese-owned company which holds the lease insisting it is not for sale.
Anthony Albanese revealed the plan after calling in to local Darwin radio yesterday afternoon in a deliberate attempt to get ahead of a similar announcement the Coalition has reportedly scheduled for today.
Landbridge Group took control of the port in 2015 after the Northern Territory government signed a $506m agreement while in financial duress. The deal gave Landbridge 100% operational control of the port.
In 2023 before a trip to Beijing, Albanese ruled out cancelling the company’s lease.
But speaking with ABC Darwin yesterday, the prime minister indicated he wanted commercial negotiations to take place, and was “prepared to go down the road of taxpayer direct involvement” if needed.
He confirmed that two options were on the table – for the port to be privately owned by an Australian company, or return to being a government asset. The key, he said, was that it “be in Australian hands”:
We are trying to see if there is a private buyer, particularly through superannuation funds.
The [Country Liberal party] should have never flogged it off.
Albanese said the government would have “more to say” before the federal election on 3 May, but he argued Landbridge had “not had the investment into the port that’s required to bring it up to scratch”.
“We don’t think that it is being utilised enough for Darwin,” he said.
Darwin has an enormous potential to be a growth area of increasing our exports through the Port of Darwin, and that is part of the context that we’re dealing with here.
Albanese said a majority of ports around Australia, like airports, were owned by superannuation funds, “which means that they’re owned by the Australian people and help to make contribution to their savings”.
Full story here:
Do Australians want their leader to cuddle up or muscle up to Trump?
Another issue for Peter Dutton is his alignment with Donald Trump’s rightwing populism on matters such as immigration, defence and cutting so-called government waste.
That was looking quite good for Dutton when the new US president took office and cut a commanding figure.
But since then Trump’s tariffs have sparked fears of a global recession and threaten to cause a lot of damage to the Australian economy.
Josh Butler reports on how Dutton, who is slipping in the polls, might deal with this problem and steer a course away from the Trump toxicity.
What we learned in week one on the campaign trail
As flagged in the introduction, our reporters Dan Jervis-Bardy and Josh Butler have been out on the stump all week with Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton.
They have put their heads together and given an assessment of how the two campaigns have handled the first week, concluding that the Labor man has probably had the best of it fired up by his surprise tax-cutting budget and a strong message on beefing up Medicare.
Albanese has looked confident, they say, and has been speaking to a message he believes voters like:
Albanese and senior Labor strategists didn’t panic as the Coalition inched ahead in the opinion polls midway through 2024. They were confident the contest would tighten and turn in their favour when voters were confronted with the “choice” of a Dutton or an Albanese government.
By contrast, they say Dutton has not responded brilliantly to being questioned all the time about policies and has seemingly lost ground:
He is under pressure, though, and facing a ticking clock on questions he refuses to answer – there’s only so much longer he can promise that the gas modelling will come “soon”, that he will announce his public service cuts “at an appropriate time”. He’s getting questions on this nearly daily, and even joking that the “anticipation” of journalists will soon wear off.
But, as they write, there’s a long way to go:
Albanese won the week. Even Dutton may admit that. But it’s just one week.
“I’m not getting ahead of myself,” Albanese said. “Elections are hard to win, and there are four weeks left in this campaign.”
The true size of Australia’s devastating floods
We also have a big read on the floods that have devastated western Queensland and which are now spreading to north-western NSW.
The Bureau of Meteorology said yesterday that the flooding had “severely impacted” more catchments spanning about 1m sq km – bigger than NSW and even bigger than Texas – since heavy rain downpours began drenching south-west and central Queensland on 23 March.
Read the full article here:
Albanese announces furlough scheme for flood-hit workers
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Flood victims in western Queensland unable to work due to the deluge will be eligible for a three-month disaster allowance after the commonwealth activated the special payment scheme.
As the federal election enters its second week, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will visit parts of the vast outback flood zone on Saturday to announce further support.
The commonwealth will activate its disaster recovery allowance, which provides payment for up to 13 weeks for workers and sole traders who lose income as a direct result of the emergency.
The prime minister said:
The vision coming out of western Queensland is truly shocking and distressing.
My thoughts are with everyone affected by this flooding – my message to Queenslanders is we are here for you.
My government has been working with the Queensland government to activate assistance and provide support.
At the worst of times, we see the best of the Australian character.
Applications for the allowance will open at 2pm on 8 April.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and my colleague Caitlin Cassidy will take over.
People in western Queensland who have lost work because of the floods will be able to apply for a three-month disaster allowance after the commonwealth activated the special payment scheme. Applications will be open from Tuesday, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announced this morning, as he said his government was “working with the Queensland government to activate assistance and provide support”. More coming up.
With the election campaign into ninth day today, we look back at the first week of the race. Starting with a surprise visit to Peter Dutton’s Dickson electorate, our reporters travelling with the two teams think Labor leader Albanese has shown a real confidence in his message to voters that has left his opponent looking more wooden and predictable. More coming up.
A big talking point today will be news that Labor and the Coalition have flagged plans to end a 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company. Albanese dialled into a Darwin radio station yesterday afternoon to announce plans to find a new owner for the city’s port as Coalition members were en route to the Northern Territory for an election announcement on Saturday. Dutton also backs the idea. More coming up.
Dutton’s enthusiasm for Donald Trump’s rightwing populism is being tested now that the US president has cast doubt over Australia’s military alliance with America and after he has seemingly taken a wrecking ball to the world economy. With US and European markets once again under the cosh overnight, we have been looking at how the Coalition leader can distance himself from the man in the White House. More coming up.
