Received

More flood victims in northern NSW will be able to access extra financial support, with relief measures extended to four additional local council areas.

Residents impacted by the disaster in the Ballina, Byron, Kyogle and Tweed local government areas will be able to access two more weekly disaster payments.

The payments will be $1000 per adult and $400 per child and will be available from March 22.

The support comes a week after additional support payments were given to residents in the Lismore, Clarence Valley and Richmond Valley council areas.

However, there was criticism from residents and local MPs that areas further north that were affected by the floods were not included in the original expansion of payments.

The inclusion of support to the four new local councils comes after assessments were made of the flood areas by the National Recovery and Resilience Agency and Emergency Management Australia.

Emergency Management Minster Bridget McKenzie said support was being rolled out quickly as possible.

"While people in northern NSW aren't able to work, are still clearing out their homes and businesses, the extra two $1000 payments we're rolling out to eligible families and individuals will support our communities as they start to rebuild their lives," she said.

Government Services Minister Linda Reynolds said the payments would help provide additional relief to those who had been impacted by the natural disaster.

"The catastrophic scale and impact of what we're seeing in this region of northern NSW is exactly why this extra support is needed," she said.

So far, more than $862 million in disaster recovery payments have been made to more than one million people in NSW and Queensland.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison earlier on Thursday denied flood support measures were being delayed until he returned from a trip to Perth.

"When you're talking about the investments of hundreds of millions of dollars - and indeed billions now - then people would expect this to go through the proper assessment of the proposals which we did yesterday," Mr Morrison told reporters in Perth.

Earlier on Thursday, Social Services Minister Anne Ruston announced the government would provide an additional $9 million to 83 emergency and food relief services supporting flood victims in northern NSW and Queensland.

The funding will help local services provide food, grocery vouchers, clothes, household items and petrol for people who have been impacted by the floods.

© AAP 2022

The timing of expanding financial assistance to flood victims in northern NSW has come under fire, with Labor saying the measures took too long to come through.

It comes as flood-affected residents in four more local council areas will be able to receive additional financial support from next week.

Two more weekly disaster payments will be made from Monday to residents in the Ballina, Byron, Kyogle and Tweed local government areas.

The payments will be $1000 per adult and $400 per child, and will be available from March 22.

It comes a week after extra flood assistance was given to residents in the Lismore, Clarence Valley and Richmond Valley council areas.

Locals and MPs in flood-affected areas further north had questioned why their support payments had taken longer to be approved.

Labor's disaster management spokesman Murray Watt said the financial support should have been rolled out sooner.

"Why was it that Scott Morrison was in a position nearly a week ago ... to announce additional support for some of those communities ... but people in other areas, particularly in Labor-held seats had to wait?" Senator Watt told Sky News on Thursday.

"It's really unclear why it is that we only ever seem to be able to get ministers to announce disaster assistance when they're actually on the ground with TV cameras on them."

Senator Watt said Queensland residents who had been affected by the floods had also been forgotten by the government for flood support.

"If you're a flood victim who's lost everything they own in Lismore, you're in the exact same situation as a flood victim who loses everything they own in one of the Brisbane suburbs," he said.

"There are homes and businesses in the suburbs and towns of Queensland and other parts of northern NSW who have experienced that damage as well."

The decision to expand the disaster support to four northern NSW councils came following flood assessments carried out by the National Recovery and Resilience Agency and Emergency Management Australia.

Emergency Management Minster Bridget McKenzie said support was being rolled out as quickly as possible.

"While people in northern NSW aren't able to work, are still clearing out their homes and businesses, the extra two $1000 payments we're rolling out to eligible families and individuals will support our communities as they start to rebuild their lives," she said.

Government Services Minister Linda Reynolds said the payments would help provide additional relief to those who had been impacted by the natural disaster.

"The catastrophic scale and impact of what we're seeing in this region of northern NSW is exactly why this extra support is needed," she said.

So far, more than $862 million in disaster recovery payments have been made to more than one million people in NSW and Queensland.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison earlier on Thursday denied flood support measures were being delayed until he returned from a trip to Perth.

"When you're talking about the investments of hundreds of millions of dollars - and indeed billions now - then people would expect this to go through the proper assessment of the proposals which we did yesterday," Mr Morrison told reporters in Perth.

Earlier on Thursday, Social Services Minister Anne Ruston announced the government would provide an additional $9 million to 83 emergency and food relief services supporting flood victims in northern NSW and Queensland.

The funding will help local services provide food, grocery vouchers, clothes, household items and petrol for people who have been impacted by the floods.

© AAP 2022

Tens of thousands of Japanese households remain without power, after a powerful earthquake left at least four dead and more than 100 injured, and severed transport links to the country's northeast.

Companies including a giant chipmaker and Toyota Motor Corp raced to assess the impact of the magnitude 7.4 quake, which struck shortly before midnight on Wednesday.

Supply chain disruptions could put more pressure on already strained global output of smartphones, electronics and cars.

The tremor revived memories of the March 11, 2011 disaster in the same area, and left Shinkansen bullet train service indefinitely suspended, with at least one major highway to the region closed for safety checks.

Parts of building facades tumbled into streets below in some areas, and television footage showed a steep tiled roof crumpled over a parked, crushed car and workers examining cracked highways.

Areas of Tokyo lost power immediately after the quake, though most regained it within three hours.

But some 24,270 households serviced by Tohoku Electric Power Co in northeast Japan remained without electricity on Thursday, although the firm said it expected most will have supply restored later in the day.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said four people had died and that the government would be on high alert for the possibility of further strong tremors over the next two to three days.

At least 107 people were reported injured, several of them seriously, with 4300 households still without water by mid-morning.

Renesas Electronics Corp, the world's biggest maker of automotive microcontroller chips, said it was checking for quake damage at three plants in Japan.

Among them is its advanced Naka plant in Ibaraki prefecture, which closed for three months following the March 2011 quake and for a shorter time after a quake in 2021. It had to halt production last year because of a fire, exacerbating a global chip shortage that is forcing auto companies to curb output.

The quake, initially measured at magnitude 7.3 but later revised up to 7.4 by the Japan Meteorological Agency, hit at 11.36pm on Wednesday just off the coast of Fukushima prefecture at a depth of 60 kilometres.

The 2011 quake and tsunami off Fukushima - commemorated across the country less than a week ago - left some 18,000 dead.

A tsunami warning was issued but cancelled early on Thursday morning. Some areas reported a rise in the sea level but no serious damage was immediately reported.

The 2011 disaster also set off meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. No abnormalities were reported at any nuclear power plants, although authorities had earlier said a fire alarm had been triggered at a turbine building at the crippled plant.

Manufacturers said they were trying to gauge the potential damage to their facilities in the region.

Toyota said it had cancelled the day shift at two factories in northeast Japan after workers evacuated the plants during their evening shift on Wednesday. The automaker said it will decide on the evening shift later.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc's main banking arm said some of its ATMs temporarily stopped operations due to power outages, but that they had all been restored to service.

In an attempt to cover the area affected by the Shinkansen outage, All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines (JAL) said they had added extra flights to northern cities. There were no forecasts of when regular rail service might be restored.

Japan's benchmark Nikkei stock average jumped, with no impact seen from the quake.

© RAW 2022