Commodore, ladies and gentlemen. I want to say first of all thank you very much for having me on board HMAS Warramunga, it's an opportunity to personally thank you for the wonderful exercise in which you've just been involved which has been a very important part of protecting Australia's interests and protecting Australia's assets. It wasn't an easy operation, it did involve risk, it involved a great deal of skill both in boarding and being involved in bringing the vessel back here to Fremantle. It attracted, quite deservedly, a lot of very favourable publicity around Australia. Australians feel very strongly that people who want to illegally fish in our waters, who want to pillage our assets should be repelled and where appropriately apprehended and that is exactly what your ship's company did, I've been wanted to see one of these folded up helicopters for quite a long time and I got a very quick fire version of how easy it is to go down that rope, I won't endeavour to imitate it, I'll just take their word for it.
But it is an opportunity for me to directly, as I'm here in Western Australia, to say simply thank you. The country is in your debt, as always, the operation involved great co-operation between the men and women of the Royal Australian Navy, our fishery authorities, our Customs services and in different ways our Federal Police, and I acknowledge the presence of my parliamentary colleague Chris Ellison who's responsible for both Customs and Justice, and it is important in all of these exercises to have co-operation, we can't do it without the Navy, protecting our borders and our assets is a core naval responsibility, we need the involvement of Customs and the involvement of Fisheries and we need the involvement of the police and that is what you've done, it's the face of the responsibilities of a modern Navy that these sorts of things that you mightn't have contemplated a years ago, you've been involved and you are involved in, we are developing an increased Customs capacity to be involved in apprehension operations and over time that may result in a larger involvement by Customs but there'll always be in different ways a role for the men and women of the Royal Australian Navy and I simply say to all of you congratulations on looking after Australia's interests and thank you very much indeed for having me onboard your ship.
Thank you.
[ends]