Hello Lukkimans and welcome to OLO.

Don’t worry about our old resident rogue Pericles.

As one who has strongly espoused a big increase in our international aid effort, to at least the UN-recommended level of 0.7% of our GDP annually, I agree with you that in times of domestic turmoil, our aid expenditure should be wound right back and the money should be redirected to where it is desperately needed in this country.

Not a freeze on foreign aid, but certainly a big diversion of that expenditure.

Your request has urgently been sent to a couple of the PM's parliamentary staffers Peter.

FWIW, Vexnews on Twitter tweeted a link to this article, under its own title, around four hours ago. See: http://twitter.com/vexnews/status/25447125902954496

I don't know what sort of readership Vexnews really has, but its Twitter profile lists 7920 followers.

Ah phoowey……..lukkihans.

Sheesh that is piss poor when I can't even get the name right!

Rrrghh! ):>(

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<< … once again those who are doing it tough are sidelined by the drama of the cities. >>

I don’t think that is a fair comment Briar, not in this situation. What is happening in Brisbane / Ipswich / Toowoomba / Lockyer Valley is every bit as bad as all the other Queensland flood-hit towns and regions put together, in terms of the number of people affected. And it is the primary current issue, so of course it is getting the most attention.

briar rose, "This is such an important article, once again those who are doing it tough are sidelined by the drama of the cities."

There was no evidence of that. Police numbers for example have been applied strategically to areas of greatest need at the time.

I don't mind politicians getting attention and lobbying for their constituencies, but let there be no shadow of a doubt that the Queensland State government, government agencies and emergency personnel have done a simply superb job and severe challenges are yet to be faced.

Without doubt, Anna Bligh's performance (and I have been one of her critics in the past) has been magnificent and she is being lauded by both sides of politics for it.

It is to the credit of the major political parties in Queensland that they immediately united as one in this for unprecedented co-operation. The smooth, robust management of the response to this dreadful calamity will be used as a case study world-wide and rightly so because as I said earlier it has been and continues to be utterly fantastic. As well as being a very effective and efficient response in the face of terrible catastrophe, the emergency management has been able to respond to continually changing circumstances where nature continually delivered challenges with only the rarest and small breaks of luck for the rescuers.

It has been and is, a very, very long and hard grind and everyone has been stretched to their limits. For the rescuers and managers, they have gone beyond what can be expected of normal people.

Now there could be a cyclone.

80 people dead in the Brazil floods. No hint of that in the Australian media but sport was the first non-flood related news item.