Australia news live: flooding worsens in northern Victoria, Albanese announces infrastructure boost | Australia news

Anthony Albanese to tour Victoria’s flood-affected regions

Josh Butler

Scale of Victoria’s flood recovery efforts will be ‘significant’: King

Conversation turning now to the floods and the damage to infrastructure. The damage bill hasn’t come in yet but King says it is possible to get a sense from some of the pictures coming in about the damage to roads.

The good thing is now the government – you’ve seen it in Queensland and New South Wales – is actually building back better.

King says she expects Victoria will have a “significant ask” when it comes to the recovery effort from the floods.

She closes on saying “our hearts go out to people in Shepparton and Echuca”.

Who would have thought Maribyrnong and Kensington underwater? Terrible.

King on Coalition’s overpriced car parks and discretionary grants

Asked for examples of these extraordinary rorts, King cites overpriced car parks and the $2bn Regional Acceleration Fund:

That one in particular was a strange one, frankly. I think Bridget McKenzie put forward – again she sort of ran around the country during the election campaign announcing all sorts of bits and pieces.

Certainly we will be keeping some elements of that, that sit with the agenda of the new government around training people, making sure we have good university funding, a large proportion of it we won’t.

On the Building Better Regions fund, the applications have closed in December and wasn’t assessed before government left. King says she “hasn’t made a decision about that yet”.

There will be a regional grants program of some sort. It will not be the sort of terrible, skewed program that we’ve seen in the past.

King criticises Coalition’s ‘fanfare’ announcing projects with little follow through

King’s using the interview to take a few digs at her predecessor while discussing sports rorts and the former Coalition’s government’s habit of making splashy announcements but not necessarily following through.

The previous government announced a lot, with a lot of fanfare, but when you look at the capacity constraints and amount of money available.

King said that many of the projects that were announced will need to be reviewed to ensure realistic delivery times and proper funding.

There will be cuts particularly in terms of those things we just saw, extraordinary rorts in terms of commuter car parks.

Federal government ‘in conversation’ with NSW about Warragamba dam wall

King is asked about how the infrastructure spend is being divvied up with New South Wales clearly getting less than Labor-lead states. King says the decisions were based on the projects that had been submitted to the federal government ahead of the budget.

We will work with the New South Wales government as we lead into the May budget.

Asked about the New South Wales Liberal government’s promise to raise the Warragamba dam wall and the lack of money for that. King says the federal government is “in conversation” with the NSW state government.

Of course we will look at it. At this stage we don’t have enough information from the New South Wales government on which to make a decision.

There is back and forth between Infrastructure Australia and the New South Wales department and I haven’t seen any of that yet.

We are open to the New South Wales government to talk about what their priorities are would be.

That would be a decision leading into the May budget and certainly not a decision I will make via media conference frankly.

King is asked about scathing reports the suburban rail loop has received from the auditor general and other criticism.

She says Infrastructure Australia is currently undertaking a “review” of the project.

This is for the early works of this project. We haven’t made any further commitments. We will talk to the Victorians around that as we go forward. They have an election they are facing and this will be a contested project, I’m sure, but something we have confidence in.

Labor is ‘committed’ to Victoria’s suburban rail loop project: King

Catherine King is speaking now and says this will be a “bread and butter” budget as the government looks to “reconcile the budget going forward”.

King is asked why Labor is setting aside funding for the suburban rail loop proposed in Victoria and not waiting for the outcome of the state election to see whether the proposal will be dropped.

We are honouring our election project. This project will be transformational for Victoria. We saw the prime minister was over in Perth with Metro Net which is a similar project.

We are looking at activating the suburbs and trying to actually build new hubs around those train stations and build new train stations, and that is really what this is about for Melbourne … a project we are really committed to. We certainly know that the Victorian state Labor government is committed to it. I certainly hope the Liberals are as well.

Guardian Australia editor Lenore Taylor is on the ABC Insiders panel this morning and has wasted no time pointing out the tension at the heart of Labor’s October budget.

I think the rhetoric now seems to have shifted to Jim Chalmers wanting to have an ‘adult conversation’. That really interests me. If he wants to have an adult conversation about the gap we want to pay in social services and the revenue we raise between October and next May’s budget … I think it is a laudable aim.

I think it is what we do need to do, but it is a hard thing to do, I think particularly since we haven’t done so well on adult conversations on these things.

Minister for infrastructure, transport and regional development Catherine King will be appearing on ABC Insiders on Sunday morning where she is expected to discuss the infrastructure spend.

Albanese wants $9.6bn infrastructure spend to be ‘lasting legacy’

Even as skies have temporarily cleared across Victoria, flood warnings remain active across the state.

It is especially worth stressing the reminder not to drive in flood waters and to be extremely careful if you’re on the road after things have calmed down.

SES makes 450 rescues in flood-hit Victorian communities

Good morning