‘Refrain from returning': New warning as flood risk remains
'The Premier has announced, of course, some of the support that is there,' Mr Albanese said.
'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 to that will be made available from 2 pm on Monday. This coming Monday.'
'Please listen to the advice and follow it,' Mr Albanese said.
'Because tragically, we have seen four people lose their lives, three of which are associated with driving through flood waters.
'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.
'That is the case in the mid-north coast.'
'The Federal Government, State Government, Local Government, as well as the whole of the people of NSW and indeed the people of Australia, are with you at this time,' Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
'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 NSW, 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.
'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 NSW.
'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.'
'I want to announce with the Prime Minister that assistance will begin to flow soon,' NSW Premier Chris Minns said alongside Anthony Albanese.
'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.
'Thank the Commonwealth for that.'
'It's also important to note that there have terribly been four fatalities so far, and the community will rightly be devastated by that,' Mr Minns said.
'I have to report the SES and emergency services, including the VRE, Polair NSW Police, completed 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.
'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.'
NSW Premier Chris Minns and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are giving an update on the NSW floods.
'The weather that has brought such devastation and an enormous anxiety to the local community is moving south, which is good news,' Mr Minns said on Friday.
'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 local roads.
'It's still incredibly important that the community listens 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.
'That's how we're going to keep people alive during this difficult period.'
The formal distribution of preferences in the Sydney seat of Bradfield has sliced independent Nicolette Boele's lead over Liberal contender Gisele Kapterian down to just five votes.
As the distributions are carried out, minor discrepancies are often found, which have cut Ms Boele's lead from 29 votes earlier this morning, now down to five.
If this distribution process results in a margin of less than 100 votes, there will automatically be a recount, which could take another few weeks.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns have arrived at the SES centre in Maitland.
They will provide an update on the NSW floods and response at 12.45pm AEST.
'We do have blue sky in some of these locations where we've got evacuation warnings in place,' Superintendent Dallas Burnes told 7NEWS.
'Can I ask the community in those locations to refrain from returning.
'We don't know if it's safe on those roads. We don't know if the power is safe. We don't know if the sewer systems are safe yet.
'We will take out those emergency warnings when it's safe to do so.
'We're also concerned about some further river rises that might be possible because of rainfall up in the higher catchment areas, which is still to come downstream.
'So you maybe standing in beautiful sunshine at the moment, but the river may still rise up further than what it is at the moment, probably not to the heights that they've experienced in the last 48 hours, but it still may pop back up again.
'Please be cautious.'
Senior manager of state operations for the NSW SES, Superintendent Dallas Burnes says operations in flood-affected areas are 'intensive' and ongoing.
'So, still a very intensive operation going on in the Mid North coast. 170 flood rescues across the state in the last 24 hours, 150 of them in our northern zone, seven in metro zone, dealing with the flash flooding and people driving into flood waters and getting stuck in our metropolitan areas,' he told 7NEWS.
'So in the northern zone, the focus today is really going to be on resupply for those 50,000 people who are currently isolated, a large amount of them in Taree, obviously, until the M1 gets cleared and we get access into that town there, normal supply chains are down.
'So varying types of resupply depending on if it's an individual house that's isolated, a village or a town, those resupplies can be happening by aviation boats, cars, large trucks, a lot of planning going into it, and we'll be doing that for the next 48 hours in some of those locations, possibly out through to Sunday.
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