Cyclone Alfred LIVE updates: Heavy wind, rain intensifies near Brisbane, south-east Queensland as storm’s landfall pushed back to midday Saturday; more than 35,000 NSW homes, businesses without power

More than 100 Australian Defence Force personnel have been deployed to South East Queensland and northern NSW.

Speaking from the National Situation Room in Canberra, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had approved a request to deploy 120 personnel to affected areas.

The Commonwealth has also supplied generators for those most in need of power and said 375,000 sandbags had been delivered.

“We have generators in the national stockpile and can send them when we receive a request from either of the state governments and when it is safe to do so,” Albanese said this morning.

“However, I stress this won’t be enough to solve the issues of potentially tens of thousands of homes without power. And that’s why it is so important to be prepared at your home.

“I have approved the request for 120 ADF personnel to depart immediately for New South Wales, they’ll start work today supporting the local SES door knocking as well as conducting welfare checks on … vulnerable members of the community.

“The chief medical officer has activated the Department Of Health And Aged Care’s national incident centre for Tropical Cyclone Alfred. The national incident centre is activated when there’s a significant event or an emerging threat.”

Asked if climate change was to blame for Tropical Cyclone Alfred, Albanese said natural disasters had always impacted Australia.

“What we know, the science tells us that there would be more extreme weather events, they would be more frequent and they would be more intense. I think anyone who looks at the science knows that that is what is occurring,” he said.

“So you can’t say this event is just because of climate change. What you can say is that climate change is having an impact on our weather patterns. The world’s hottest years have been increasingly from year to year.”