KOCH:
Mr. Howard good morning to you. Australians are such a generous lot aren't we? We see these disasters, we just want to get in and with some action but often it's not as easy as that. Run through the process, the protocols that you have to go through to determine aid, where it goes - you just can't barge in can you?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, you can't barge in. We already have operating in Indonesia 5 Hercules transports, which incidentally, includes one from New Zealand which is under Australian command and we thank the New Zealand Government for their cooperation. We have two medical teams which are arriving about now. We'll actually be taking on one of the C130s, the United Nations assessment team into Aceh.
We have to get of-course, the permission of the Indonesian Government, but it was readily forthcoming. In-fact the Indonesians have requested our assistance. I've spoken to the Indonesian President and I can assure all Australians that all of the specific requests that we have received from individual governments in the region, including the Indonesian Government, all of those have either been met, or are in the process of being met, and that includes, for example, the dispatch of a medical team to the Maldives and that is occurring today. Another medical team (after the plane dropped the first one in the Maldives) is going onto Colombo and that medical team is going to be imbedded in the World Health Organisation larger team, which is specifically designated to fight the spread of disease which, as noted in your introduction, is the greatest single threat we face.
This is a mammoth, unbelievable, impossible to comprehend disaster; the amount of aid that we've given to date certainly won't be the end of it. We will give more, and a lot more, and we can afford to do so, and as well as quite properly wanting their Government to do things, I would encourage individual Australians to give - to give cash. It is better to give cash than to give toys and goods because the cost of transporting them and so forth and knowing where to send them is difficult. But can I also make the very obvious point that there is just total chaos and when you have a disaster of this magnitude, there's nobody to talk to, there's nobody in authority. It often takes days to establish the most rudimentary system of communication and the desire of everybody is to get in there and to do things straight away. And to the maximum extent possible, we have done that.
I think Australians were the first foreigners on the ground doing something in Indonesia. We obviously, without ignoring other countries, are going to heavily focus our efforts on Indonesia because it's next door to us. The scale of the disaster there is enormous because it was at the epicentre of the earthquake that caused the tidal wave and quite naturally we'll focus very heavily, but without ignoring other countries.
WILKINSON:
Sorry Prime Minister, just on that note, there have been complaints from some of the survivors of the Tsunamis, they're people who have returned to Australia in particular saying that Australia's assistance wasn't there quick enough, there was nobody to talk to, there was nobody assisting them, do you believe that everything that could have been done was done?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes I do. You always get complaints and I understand that the people have been through a terrible experience and their great desire was to get out of the country they were in and to get home to Australia. Although, I have to point out that we've had a couple of flights especially put on to bring people back and the seats haven't been filled. So as best we can ascertain at the present time, the people who want to get out of Thailand for example (where most of the Australians were) have been able to get out.
The commercial flights were operating fairly normally I think from the very beginning. But once again, when something like this strikes, it is impossible to have people on the spot immediately with some kind of registration system set up. It is such a huge disaster and naturally the first focus is on looking for the missing, caring for the injured and trying as best as possible to identify the dead. That is a very big task.
KOCH:
The scale is mind boggling and I think it has just stunned us all and what about the need in the future to house displaced persons here in Australia and a refugee problem, would you be willing to take refugees from some of those affected areas?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think the best thing we can do at the moment is to deal with the immediate challenge and then as need arises, to respond in a compassionate way. I'm not going to sort of give blanket yes or no responses to things like that. Our preoccupation at the moment is to identify victims - to find those people who might still be alive but are unaccounted for and I do have to unfortunately warn that the Australian casualty list is likely to rise. I don't think it will stay at about 8 or 10 and the 12 or so who are..... for whom grave fears are held because their disappearance has been specifically recorded. My fear is that the casualty list will rise further. But I think we have to deal with the immediate situation and the most pressing thing, apart from the identification of victims and looking after those who are injured of course is to prevent the spread of disease, because it's as likely than not, that if that is not dealt with effectively, the loss of life and the spread of disease could be as great, if not greater, than the tidal wave itself.
KOCH:
The aid agencies have been telling us that for the last day or so but it's good to see you're committing...You're saying $35 million dollars now and all the assistance that we've sent will not end there, it will be a lot more. I think we're being regarded around the world as being pretty generous to this point. It's great to see we're going to be even more generous in the future Prime Minister.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we have been and we should be. We can afford to be. And this is a colossal tragedy for countries that don't have a lot.
KOCH:
Prime Minster thank you very much for joining us, we appreciate it.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]