As trashed homes, ruined businesses and wrecked lives mount across flood-ravaged eastern Australia, Scott Morrison headed to Lismore on Wednesday to signal a national emergency in Northern NSW after more than a week.

With residents pleading for help, the ADF, anything, there was never going to be a warm welcome for Mr Morrison. The placards were ready and the media was told his arrival was far too late.

"What could he offer anyone right now? It is an absolute joke," one woman told SBS News. "I think it is a little bit too late now," said another.

And so mindful of the glacial reception the Prime Minister got during bushfire affected towns in 2020, with the jeering and the handshakes not returned, media access cynically became restricted.

He met with what we are told were "farmers in the region, householders in south Lismore and a number of small businesses in the region." Only the Prime Minister's official photographer, no journalists. There was a pool camera when he attended the local SES headquarters.

It was left to Mr Morrison to describe the visit at a late press conference in a voice which was part Covid recovery - part recalled emotion.

"To talk to them, to a dairy farmer, who said he had to sit there and watch as his herd suffered, it broke me up," he said.

"And when I speak to businesses, when I speak to neighbours who knew there were elderly people trapped in rooms, this is a tough town. They've responded in an incredible way in compassion to another."

Which is the point the locals are making. They say they have had to do it themselves.

Why no media?

"I have respect for the privacy of those I came to speak for. In these disasters not everybody wants a camera shoved in the face," Mr Morrison said.

Of course, the Prime Minister has done those very public tours before. Straight after his shock election win in 2019 he toured a flood zone in Queensland. And of course, there's the frustrated fury of the Black Summer bushfires in full sepia toned view.

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So there was an attempt to control the out of the control emotions in the flood zone. Or at least remove Mr Morrison from the worst of it.

Among the journalists in Lismore were local media workers who have suffered themselves.

The Prime Minister tried to show he was listening to the "frustration and the anger and the sense of abandonment."

"I feel deeply and empathise absolutely with how people feel," he offered.

And Mr Morrison apologised, saying; "You're never going to be able to provide enough support in these situations and I do understand that and I do respect that and that's why I do apologise that the amount of support that has been provided and continues to be provided I still don't believe will meet the expectations that are just at very high levels and understandably so."

Then he said Australia was becoming a "harder country to live in" but refused to offer more to combat climate change.

This has become a tortuous cycle for the Prime Minister. National emergency after national emergency, flood, vaccines, fires, floods again, it always ends up all about him and the way he responds or doesn't, or whether he will apologise or likely doesn't and then perhaps does, or looks like he is listening and in the end just shifts responsibility.

It is burdensome way of dealing with a disaster when all people want is help.