Good afternoon ladies and gentleman, thank you for coming. This afternoon I just wanted to report on a briefing I had this morning from the Emergency Task Group and also to announce some additional items of assistance in response to this appalling human tragedy. I have no additional news in relation to Australian causalities beyond what was reported in the mid-morning news bulletins. I would again warn people to prepare themselves for the casualties being higher than those already indicated. The reality is that there are still a large number of Australians unaccounted for and whilst some of the evidence is that the likely death toll will not reach the proportions of other countries that had large numbers of tourists particularly in Thailand, there is the real possibility that the death toll be higher.
I should report that we currently have 5 Hercules and one Boeing 707 deployed in the affected areas in Indonesia and one of those Hercules aircraft has been made available by the Royal New Zealand Air Force and we thank New Zealand for that contribution. I can announce that an Antonov aircraft will arrive in Indonesia on Monday with 3 Iriquois helicopters. There is a desperate need for uplift capacity and helicopters are badly needed.
There are already a number of medical teams that are operating in the affected areas; there are two on the way to the Maldives and Sri Lanka, one will get off at the Maldives, the other will go on to Sri Lanka to be imbedded with the World Health organisation infectious diseases team. There are two civilian medical teams on route to the affected areas near Aceh and there was a medical assessment team that went in with the original flight to Phuket (or to Thailand) which is carrying out an assessment of the situation there.
I'd like to announce that we will offer a light field hospital which has about 90 beds to the Indonesian Government for use in the affected area and I'm also able to announce that HMAS Kanimbla will sail from Sydney tomorrow. It will take helicopters and engineers to assist in the reconstruction effort and it will of course go via Darwin and will then go on to Indonesia and its many faceted capacities mean that it will be available for any number of tasks and that will be a deployment of course which is likely to last for a period of time. We are examining options to dispatch additional resources as needed, particularly refrigeration devices to store bodies. The grim reality of victim identification is again faced and the first requirement is in fact to arrest the process of decomposition of bodies because until that is done its very difficult for the task of identification to commence.
I want to repeat something that I said on radio this morning and that is that there is a major public health risk in people remaining in the affected areas unless it is absolutely essential to do so. And I would ask all Australians who have no particular reason to remain in Phuket, or indeed in any of the other affected areas to come home as soon as possible because the longer they remain, the greater is the public health risk and there is also the further consideration that the longer they remain, the more likely it is that some kind of checking process will be needed in relation to any carrying of diseases that might be involved when they return to Australia, and the longer they remain in the affected areas the more likely that kind of activity will be necessary. And I would also, not withstanding the fact that many people will think that they can visit the areas that have not been affected by this disaster, I would counsel Australians who are contemplating going to immediately adjoining areas, consider postponing those plans because not only of the risk of disease but that risk of disease is not only present in the areas directly affected, but can also be in the areas that are not directly affected but immediately adjacent. The Chief Commonwealth Medical Officer will be issuing a formal statement regarding these issues later today, that is these issues relating to public health risks.
Mr Hockey's announced arrangements in relation to assistance to families and the carrying of certain expenses by the Commonwealth Government - they're very similar although not identical to the arrangements that were put in place in relation to the Bali tragedy.
Australia has already contributed, as you know, $35 million dollars in aid assistance. We will be adding to that in an appropriate fashion and further announcements will be made about that. I want to conclude these brief remarks by thanking everybody who's worked so very hard from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Defence forces and Centrelink and our consular staff. Their effort I think has been I think quite magnificent, I believe that Australia has responded promptly and decently and effectively to this appalling human tragedy.
We will need to do a lot more in the months ahead and I use the word months advisedly because there will be second wave effects of this tragedy particularly the challenges of public health which are overwhelming for many of the countries and many of the communities involved. Whilst we'll be rendering assistance wherever we can and wherever asked there will naturally, because of the proximity of the country, and also the scale of the loss of life and the public health challenge we'll be having a particular focus on helping the government and the people of Indonesia, where the loss of life has been quite appalling - as it has been in a number of other countries.
I can only repeat that the thoughts and the prayers and the feelings of concern and an endeavour to share the sense of tragedy is felt very keenly through the government. This is a human tragedy of mammoth proportions - the like of which I don't think any of us have seen in peace time before. We as a nation, a human decent nation must do everything we can to help the very unfortunate people of our neighbouring countries.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister a lot of the people who are I guess are staying in the region searching for loved ones....
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes I understand that, my concern is not directed to them, I can understand that. When I say I would like people to come home - unless they have a reason and obviously a reason is to search for a loved one. I fully understand that, but it would appear that there are people who may not be doing that, and who are staying, and it would just... hoping they'll come home.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister are you able to give any information or any assurances to the survivors who've lost people, Australians in these places, about the return or the repatriation of bodies to Australia. Will the Government help? There's been a bit of criticism that people have come home with assurances that the bodies will be brought back very quickly....
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there wouldn't have been any assurances given by Australian authorities. We have sadly been through this process before and it's going to be very difficult. You can't obtain the repatriation of the remains of a person from another country without the approval of that country. It is not within our power to decide when the body of an Australian who died overseas is returned to Australia. That is in the hands of the local authorities and there are established international protocols and I know this is very stressful - it's very difficult and I can understand the agony of people, but unfortunately we are in the hands of the local authorities and the best thing we can do, which is what we are doing, and that is to supplement the victim identification resources of countries such as Thailand. This is something that the Thai Prime Minister mentioned to me when I spoke to him a few nights ago that they needed help, and we have sent several teams - combined Commonwealth and State police teams - but until the process of stabilising the decomposition of bodies is attended to, it becomes very, very difficult to identify and unfortunately the international protocols are such that visual identification is often not sufficient to obtain the release of a body.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister given there are so many people who are still unaccounted for, so many Australians still unaccounted for in the region, is there is any estimate of what the Australian death toll may end up being?
PRIME MINISTER:
No I'm not going to engage in an estimate, no I am not. I'm simply saying that the community should prepare itself for there being a larger number than the 10 confirmed dead.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister your saying that the, you're talking about the disease (in audible) is presumably going to get worse as time goes on. Is it also going to be a problem with food contamination, food born disease?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes well that's one of the reasons why the disease spreads. There are three problems. There's impurity of water, there's contamination of food and there's poor sanitation. They are. I mean I'm a non-medical man, but my understanding is that they are the three principle causes of the carriage of diseases such as typhoid and cholera and other related diseases and measles I understand is a potential problem in some of these countries.
JOURNALIST:
Could you elaborate a bit more if you can on this coalition between the US, Australia, India and Japan and how that plans......
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the purpose of that is to ensure that there is coordination of the relief effort and there are a lot of people, a lot of countries and there are a lot of agencies who are all with the best of intentions wanting to help and it's simply a group of countries (and the identity of them in a sense is understandable) of the United States, Australia and India and Japan who will just coordinate, exchange information, pool their assessments of what is needed. And obviously our contact with the Indonesian Government is more extensive perhaps than the contact the United States Government has with Indonesia. In turn Japan's contact with other countries might be more extensive than ours and the whole idea of course is to bring this together. We're not trying do anything other than to ensure that there's not a duplication of effort because when something like this happens there is no standing international apparatus for dealing with it, and there's no substitute for dealing with it on a country by country basis because the needs of individual countries are going to vary. Some countries are more welcoming of outside help than others and we just need a way of ensuring that we coordinate the effort as effectively as possible.
JOURNALIST:
(in audible) volunteers now we've almost got too many, what do you say to Australians who want to volunteer, feel they have skills to offer?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we have a hotline, we have a registration system established for that and we want to utilise the volunteers. I'm in no position to make a judgement about individual skills. I have to rely on expert advice. I do again ask Australians who want to help to think first and foremost of making a cash contribution because that's something that can be sent to a country to buy locally things that are needed. Much better to make a cash contribution than to send goods or toys or particularly anything that perishes in time because there is a cost involved with transporting it and it perishes. It's much better for people to make cash contributions, but volunteers are certainly requested. One of the advantages of establishing a field hospital is that it is a hub around which medical volunteers of course can operate and be involved.
JOURNALIST:
(in audible) Adam Dunning the peacekeeper killed in the Solomons, any particular tribute that Australia will make to him?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well there's a full military police funeral at 1.30pm this afternoon.
JOURNALIST:
Between the field hospital and the Kanimbla, the Hercules, what numbers of military personnel might we soon have?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well you're looking now at several hundred I think, I haven't done a count. I'll have a count done Greg but it's certainly a very significant number and as always the ADF has responded quite magnificently.
JOURNALIST:
(inaudible) in relation to the tsunami early warning system?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think it is something that will need to be addressed. I think our first responsibility at the moment is to try and help in the wake of the disaster but Mr Downer had something to say about this the other day and I agree with what he said.
JOURNALIST:
Getting back to your earlier comments on the disease risks in South East Asia, I take it that there's also some significant risks to Australia of people coming back if they stay too long ..
PRIME MINISTER:
I just understand on the basis of what the Commonwealth Health Officer said this morning - that there was an issue here, but he'll be saying something about it. Don't rely on anything too specific in relation to public health issues coming from me or indeed from any other person who's not qualified. It's my understanding that the Commonwealth Health Officer will have something to say about this but it stands to reason that if you are in an area where there's been a breakdown of the availability of clean water, edible food, proper sanitation that the risk of you contracting the disease will grow the longer you stay and I obviously understand people who are searching for loved ones, that's why I said at the very beginning, unless you have a need to be there you should consider coming home.
JOURNALIST:
(in audible) of evacuating people in mass numbers out of some of these countries and possibility...
PRIME MINISTER:
No we have not received any approaches There could of course be consideration and there may well be and perhaps should be consideration given by the Governments of those countries to internal evacuation but that is a matter for the countries concerned. I mean we have to keep reminding ourselves that we are dealing with other countries and it's up to the Government of Indonesia to decide how this thing is handled and the Government of India and the Government of Sri Lanka and we have to respect the fact that they are in a better position then we are to decide what should be done. Our role should be a generous, available friend, a generous, available, ready, willing and able friend in a very difficult situation.
JOURNALSIT:
....Aceh. That is an area that was extremely tense over the last year or so. Was it difficult to get access?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well one of the complications of Aceh (in audible) because it's been an area of military conflict the penetration, if I can put it that way, of a non-government organisation and therefore the knowledge of the situation on the ground is a lot less and that is one of the complicating factors.
JOURNALIST:
Do you think this tragedy will bring Australia and Indonesia closer?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Australia and Indonesia are already close and this is a terrible tragedy and our collective heart goes out to the people of Indonesia and we will do everything we can to help Indonesia through this tragic event.
JOURNALIST:
Have you spoken to President Bush and would you anticipate that like Australia, America might add some military assets to the operation?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well look, I don't have any need to speak to President Bush. He obviously takes decisions in relation to the American contribution. My focus is on making sure that Australia's assistance is generous, it's appropriate and it's speedy and it's practical and I believe to date it has been. I think Australia's response is something in which the nation can be proud but we have to do more. We have the resources to do more, we have the assets and most importantly of all, we have a moral obligation to help these people that have been so tragically affected by this event.
Thank you.
[ends]