Australian floods cost the national economy
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Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard says it's too early to put a figure on the cost of the Queensland floods to the national economy .
The Australian share market showed some signs yesterday of the impact of the extreme weather across the country.
Julia Gillard says Queensland's mining industry has been one of the hardest hit sectors
The Prime Minister has announced a new telephone hotline has been set up to assist families affected by the Queensland floods to access disaster relief payments as quickly as possible.
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The government will pay $1-thousand per adult and 400 dollars per child.
The flood waters have swept through vast areas of northeastern Australia , threatening to inundate thousands more homes across an area described as the size of France and Germany combined.
The military has been assisting deliver food and other supplies to isolated towns aross the state of Queensland .
Up to 200,000 people have been affected by the floods .
In Rockhampton, the Fitzroy River has broken its banks and is threatening to flood up to 4-thousand homes.
In the central Queensland town of Emerald, about 80 percent of the town has been submerged by the worst flooding on record.
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