Australia news live: Albanese in Brisbane as Tropical Cyclone Alfred remains on course to slam into Gold Coast

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Tropical Cyclone Alfred continues to arc back towards the populated south-east Queensland coastline, as predicted by forecasters.
The Bureau of Meteorology's updated tracking and advice on Wednesday morning shows Alfred is expected to maintain its Category 2 intensity for the next two days, before crossing the coast about 1am on Friday morning.
Coastal high tides are expected in the hours following the predicted crossing - most parts of the coastline will experience a high tide between 1.30am and 3.30am on Friday. That sort of timing will worry authorities, who have said repeatedly that a crossing coinciding with a high tide would be particularly damaging for coastal areas.
The bureau's latest track map shows Alfred crossing the coast a little further south than earlier predictions, at the southern end of Brisbane. The likely crossing point remains somewhere between the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast. Warnings are in place from Double Island Point in Queensland to Grafton in New South Wales. Share Martin Farrer
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I'm Martin Farrer with the best overnight stories before Emily Wind is along to take the helm.
Anthony Albanese arrived in Brisbane last night as Tropical Cyclone Alfred bore down on south-east Queensland with 4 million people in its path. Memories of disastrous floods in 2011 and 2022 are being revived as the storm threatens to dump at least 400mm of rain on the region when it hits. Residents of low-lying suburbs in Brisbane are sandbagging their homes and hoping for the best as the cyclone threatens another flood in the city. We will have regular updates throughout the day, beginning with the latest on the forecast storm track from the Bureau of Meteorology in a few minutes.
One of our top stories this morning is a new report showing that Australians are losing more money to gambling each year than the federal government spends on aged care. The sum is almost as much as it spends on the national disability insurance scheme.
It's been a turbulent night on international financial markets after the US went ahead with tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, they all retaliated, and stocks fell in the US to below their pre-November election level. But here in Australia economists think things are heading in the right direction as the national accounts come out later this morning. More coming up. Share

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