Australia fires: Scott Morrison booed after saying milk being poured down hills is a ‘tragedy’

Disaster ‘will continue to go on until we can get some decent rain’, says premier

Australia’s prime minister has been booed after he said said the “tragedy” of the country’s raging wildfires was dairy farmers having to throw away milk.

Scott Morrison told a press conference the crisis, which has killed 17 people and destroyed 1,400 homes, was likely to last for months.

“It will continue to go on until we can get some decent rain that can deal with some of the fires that have been burning for many, many months,” he said on Thursday.

He also said dairies in New South Wales had lost power and were being forced to waste milk: “In particular, down in Cobargo and places like that, where dairies have been milking and they simply have to pour the milk down the hill because of the lack of power to these areas at this time.

“That’s the tragedy of what’s occurring as a result of these disasters.”

Mr Morrison was later forced to leave a meeting with bushfire victims in Cobargo on Thursday, after they began shouting at him and booing. Two people, a father and son, died in the area on Monday night.

The prime minister grabbed the hand of a woman who said she would only shake his hand if he gave more funding to the Rural Fire Service. “So many people here have lost their homes,” she said.

“This is not fair. We are totally forgotten down here. Every single time this area gets a flood or a fire we get nothing,” one resident yelled.

“If we lived in Sydney or on the North Coast we would be flooded with donations and emergency relief.”

As Mr Morrison was driven out of the town, residents shouted: “Scumbag!”

Thousands of tourists fled the country’s eastern coast on Thursday ahead of worsening fire conditions.

State transport minister Andrew Constance said it was the “largest mass relocation of people out of the region that we’ve ever seen”. On Wednesday he broke down on live television over the impact of the fires.

A seven-day state of emergency was declared by the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, to grant the state’s Rural Fire Service commissioner more control and power.

The state of emergency, which begins on Friday, is the third for New South Wales in the past two months.

“We don’t take these decisions lightly but we also want to make sure we’re taking every single precaution to be prepared for what could be a horrible day on Saturday,” Ms Berejiklian said.

In Victoria, where 83 homes have been destroyed this week, the military was helping thousands of people who fled to the shore as fires threatened their homes in the coastal town of Mallacoota.

Around 500 people were going to be evacuated from the town by a navy ship, HMAS Choules.

Meanwhile, health warnings were issued in Canberra, the capital, after it was blanketed in thick smoke which reached around 20 times hazardous levels.

The smoke also drifted to New Zealand, where it turned the sky orange across the South Island.

The crisis has also wreaked environmental havoc, wiping out nearly 500 million animals, including 8,000 koalas, since September.

Additional reporting by agencies