Anthony Albanese jokes he won’t bring his new white sneakers to visit flood victims because they’ll get too muddy
- South-east Queensland and northern NSW were hammered by floods this week
- Scott Morrison visited on Sunday and Anthony Albanese is going on Tuesday
- Labor leader joked his new white sneakers would get muddy if he wore them
- He debuted the new shoes in a photo shoot with girlfriend Jodie last week
Anthony Albanese has joked he won’t be taking his new white sneakers to visit flood victims in Brisbane.
The Labor leader debuted a fresh new look last week, posing for photos in a fitted shirt, skinny chinos and $129 Country Road gum sole sneakers with girlfriend Jodie Haydon at his Marrickville home.
The images caused a storm online with one Twitter user even comparing him to James Bond actor Daniel Craig.
Anthony Albanese (pictured last week) has joked he won’t be taking his new white sneakers to visit flood victims in Brisbane
In an interview with Brisbane radio B105 on Tuesday morning, Mr Albanese confirmed he owned the sneakers instead of just borrowing them for the shoot.
But he said he would be wearing more appropriate footwear for his visit to flood victims in the city on Tuesday.
‘No. They might end up a bit muddy,’ he joked when told not to wear the sneakers.
All of southeast Queensland is likely to be declared a ‘disaster emergency zone’, with deadly floods still peaking in some areas after parts of the region were hit by the most intense rainfall ever recorded.
Eight people have died and hundreds have been rescued from floodwaters which have damaged at least 19,000 homes and won’t fully recede for days.
There were blue skies over much of the region on Tuesday morning but major flooding is under way on the Brisbane, Logan, Bremer and Mary rivers, and Warrill Creek after the torrential downpours of the past week.
People are seen disposing their flood damaged belongings in the suburb of Albion in Brisbane
A Queensland Fire and Rescue Swift Water Rescue crew move through the flooded streets in Paddington in suburban Brisbane
More than 1.77m of rain fell on Mount Glorious, 1.55m at Pomona on the Sunshine Coast and 1.23m at Upper Springbrook on the Gold Coast in seven days.
Brisbane copped 795mm – the city’s wettest week since records began in 1840 – with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk saying much of the wider region is devastated.
‘We will get to the stage where basically the entire southeast will be declared a disaster emergency zone,’ she told Nine’s Today program on Tuesday.
‘At the moment they are doing council, one-by-one. Don’t forget Ipswich has been badly impacted as well, now Logan is experiencing it, they definitely will.
Hundreds of homes are being inundated in Logan, south of Brisbane, where the Logan River was still yet to peak on Tuesday morning.
More than 15,000 homes in Brisbane and 3600 in Gympie have been damaged by the floods and another 43,860 properties were without power.
Maree Harradine (left) and Jason Pride (right) check Maree’s fathers house in Ipswich, west of Brisbane
A man casts a fishing line into the swollen Brisbane River in Brisbane on February 28
More than 800 schools also remain closed across the southeast and many roads are still cut by floodwaters.
Scott Morrison visited Brisbane on Sunday and Monday and Mr Albanese made his way up on Tuesday.
It comes as Labor is ahead of the Coalition by 10 points according to Monday’s Newspoll and four points according to Essential on a two-party preferred basis.
But the polls leading up to the 2019 election, which also put Labor ahead by up to four points during the campaign, turned out to be wrong – just like at the 2015 UK election and 2016 US election.
An inquiry found they were distorted by falling response rates which led to unrepresentative samples.
People who were more engaged in politics and more highly educated were more likely to answer polls, giving the results a left-leaning bias.
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