As it happened: Brisbane on October 31

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has thanked the NSW government for a waterbombing aircraft that helped save the border town of Wallangarra.

Delivering a bushfire update on Tuesday afternoon, Palaszczuk said the “outstanding work” of firefighters from both states had shielded Wallangarra from the worst.

Cars flee flames threatening houses at Wallangarra on the Queensland border.Credit: QFES

“The fire is now going around the town, so the town has been saved,” Palaszczuk said.

More than 1,000 firefighters have been dealing with 80 bushfires across Queensland, the worst being along the border, at Tara (west of Toowoomba), and at Goodwood (west of Bundaberg).

Residents who evacuated Wallangarra were urged to delay their return, while at 5.20pm the residents of nearby Dalveen were advised to leave immediately due to an imminent threat.

That’s where we’ll leave our live updates. We’ll be back with you tomorrow morning. Here are the headlines you might have missed today:

• ‘Heartbreaking’, says PM as more homes are razed by ferocious bushfire
• LNP suggests 15 per cent ambulance ramping target, but no detail yet on how
• Long-running investigation into federal LNP candidate
• Council says Brisbane housing crisis is improving
• Hoo’s out there: Powerful owls hiding among Brisbane suburbs

And elsewhere, these are the stories throughout Australia and beyond today:

• Qantas needs to pay new staff less to stay afloat, says executive
• Resign or I’ll call an EGM: Mathieson threatens Endeavour chairman after Wavish defeat
• Israeli troops continue push into Gaza as more than 3400 children killed
• World scrambles to control ‘the most consequential technology of our time’

And in sport and entertainment

• Australia will not bid to host 2034 World Cup with Saudi Arabia firm favourites
• She’s the second-best female player in the world. But what makes Sam Kerr so good?
• Wallabies’ performance at the World Cup was as low as I’ve seen in my time: Waugh
• Daniel Johns signs lucrative global publishing deal with BMG

Spot fires and dry gusty weather conditions are a bigger challenge for 1000 deployed firefighters than arsonists, Queensland police deputy commissioner Cameron Harsley said on Tuesday afternoon.

With several fires in south-east Queensland thought to have been deliberately lit, and an alleged arsonist charged at Alexandra Hills, police have urged the public to pass on any evidence of wrongdoing.

But Harsley said firefighters were “also working against mother nature,” with lightning strikes sparking some fires and wind gusts making others unpredictable.

“What we are seeing is the fires are actually jumping and sparking,” Harsley said.

“The natural course of fires is more of a concern to me.”

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has thanked the NSW government for a waterbombing aircraft that helped save the border town of Wallangarra.

Delivering a bushfire update on Tuesday afternoon, Palaszczuk said the “outstanding work” of firefighters from both states had shielded Wallangarra from the worst.

Cars flee flames threatening houses at Wallangarra on the Queensland border.Credit: QFES

“The fire is now going around the town, so the town has been saved,” Palaszczuk said.

More than 1,000 firefighters have been dealing with 80 bushfires across Queensland, the worst being along the border, at Tara (west of Toowoomba), and at Goodwood (west of Bundaberg).

Residents who evacuated Wallangarra were urged to delay their return, while at 5.20pm the residents of nearby Dalveen were advised to leave immediately due to an imminent threat.

Queensland emergency services officials were due to give a bushfire update on Tuesday afternoon as the situation worsened along the NSW border.

An emergency alert was issued for the town of Wallangarra, population 600, after helicopters recorded residents fleeing in their cars with flames on their doorstep.

The situation was so dire at one stage authorities warned residents to seek shelter as their lives would be in danger if they tried to leave.

The New England Highway was cut, with residents around Ballandean also urged to stay alert, as firefighters sought to contain the bushfires raging on both sides of the border.

Queensland police are investigating four bushfires that investigators believe were deliberately lit on the Sunshine Coast.

Police are treating two fires at Beerwah on October 21 and October 29, another at Landsborough on October 28, and a fourth at Meridan Plains on October 23 as suspicious.

The Landsborough fire at the weekend caused police to declare an emergency zone later that night.

Police urged anyone with information regarding the fires to come forward.

The investigation comes amid extreme fire danger warnings across Queensland, with firefighters dealing with more 900 fires across the state in the past 10 days.

Residents of Wallangarra had a narrow window to escape town on Tuesday afternoon before a bushfire made driving too dangerous.

The Queensland Fire and Emergency Services advised residents to prepare to leave at 1.25pm on Tuesday. At 2.02pm, the advice changed, with motorists told not to attempt driving north of Wallangarra on the New England Highway, where a “large, dangerous fire” was burning, and instead head south towards Tenterfield if necessary.

By 2.18pm, the fire had reached the town of 400 and the advice changed to “seek shelter immediately”.

Several bushfires continue to burn in northern NSW and southern Queensland.

Turning to state politics, and the LNP opposition have been out today criticising a perceived government delay in publishing hospital and health data for the quarter ending in September.

LNP leader David Crisafulli reiterated his commitment to making such data available in real time, but when asked how, said only he would “make sure the information that is there … is shared with Queenslanders”.

Also attacking the Palaszczuk government on ambulance ramping levels, which are high and getting worse across the country, Crisafulli suggested “success is not when it is anything other than 15 per cent” – the figure when the LNP was last in government.

“But we might even do better than that,” he said when pushed on the suggested figure, which only NSW is even close to. The portion of patients currently transferred from ambulances to hospitals within 30 minutes of arrival in Queensland is about 57 per cent.

Crisafulli said formal targets across this and other government service areas would come, alongside the LNP policies aiming to achieve them, ahead of next October’s election.

Australian of the Year Taryn Brumfitt has used a speech at the National Press Club to say the issue of body image is more pressing than ever.

“Body image issues among young people are the worst they have ever been,” Brumfitt said.

Taryn Brumfitt is addressing the National Press Club of Australia.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“Since the start of the pandemic, rates of body image distress and eating disorders in young people have doubled.”

The body activist shared a tragic story from her own life to highlight the myth that you can judge someone’s health by looking at their body size and shape.

Brumfitt said she lost her brother Jason when he was 27.

“If I put Jason here and then a man in a larger body next to him, and asked 100 people who do you think is healthier out of these two men - they all would have said Jason was healthier, and yet Jason was a heroin addict, he died from his addiction on a park bench in Sydney across from Central Station,” she said.

The Australian Federal Police are still investigating whether a Liberal National Party election candidate lied about living in his electorate, almost 18 months after the allegations were made.

Federal police are investigating allegations Mr Lobo listed this Everton Hills home as his correct residential address but he had not been living at.Credit: Tony Moore

Vivian Lobo was preselected to contest the Brisbane seat of Lilley at the past federal election. He gave the Australian Electoral Commission a residential address in the electorate – an empty house in Everton Hills – but was allegedly still living in Windsor in the Brisbane electorate.

While candidates and MPs can live outside the electorate, it is illegal to provide incorrect details to the AEC.

In a statement, the AFP said its investigation was ongoing and no further comment would be made.

Labor’s Anika Wells was re-elected in Lilley and is now the minister for aged care and sport.