ALAN JONES:
The Prime Minister is on the line. Prime Minister, good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning, Alan.
ALAN JONES:
Good to talk to you. You have in the last 48 hours I understand spoken to both the British Prime Minister and Vladimir Putin.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes Alan. I’ve had quite a range of conversations with quite a range of international leaders over the last 48 hours, including David Cameron and just a few hours ago with President Putin of Russia.
My priority right now, Alan, is to do the right thing by the Australians who died and to do the right thing by the families of the Australians who died.
My priority is to do everything we can to ensure that those bodies are treated with respect and dignity, that they are taken from the disaster site respectfully to a place where they can be properly examined, properly dealt with and then respectfully and with dignity repatriated. That’s my first priority.
My second priority is to ensure that the crash site is secured so that a full investigation can be done and we can find out as much as is humanly possible about what brought on this dreadful, dreadful unspeakable event.
Then of course we have to punish the guilty. We have to do our best to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
Now, I did speak to President Putin a few hours ago. I don’t want to go into the detail of the conversation, but I have to say, Alan, he said all the right things. Now he has to be as good as his word and I will be speaking regularly to the Russian President to do my best to hold him to his word.
ALAN JONES:
You’ve also spoken to David Cameron who I understand discussed “possible action” with you and the Netherland’s Prime Minister. What is the first action internationally that you would seek?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we’ve got a Security Council resolution that Australia is sponsoring. Julie Bishop, as you know Alan, has gone to Washington and is on her way to New York to lead our case – to prosecute our case.
The Security Council resolution that we are hoping to get supported is a very strong resolution and it demands that investigators be given full and unfettered access to the site, to the debris, to the black boxes, to individuals who may be able to shed light on what happened, and that this be done without any interference and that’s very important that that resolution be carried and…
ALAN JONES:
Prime Minister when Australians hear that they also hear that Julie Bishop – this is no criticism of her, she’s an outstanding Foreign Minister – is lobbying in New York. Why would you have to lobby civilised leaders to have such a resolution passed?
PRIME MINISTER:
That’s a fair question and let’s hope that it’s carried unanimously by acclamation – let’s hope that’s what happens. We all know that politics can intrude in these things. The other thing we’re doing obviously, Alan, is talking to our friends and allies, including people like Dutch Prime Minister Rutte, British Prime Minister Cameron, and I will have further conversations with other friends and allies today about what we can practically do to secure and police this site. What we can practically do, Alan, what we can practically do to secure and police this site and what we can practically do to ensure that these bodies are taken to a safe place for proper investigation for treatment with respect and dignity and then repatriation. That’s what we want to look at, what we can practically do to secure and police these things.
ALAN JONES:
Well just taking that language because this is now the biggest crime scene in the world and you want to secure and police the site. There is already talk from Ukraine intelligence and you’re seeking rightly to protect the dignity of the dead, but reports say that Moscow backed rebels have removed some of the corpses, taken their possessions and are seeking to destroy evidence – that’s already happened. These could be the bodies of Australians.
PRIME MINISTER:
You’re right, Alan, and I think Australians watched the footage from the site over the last 48 hours or so with increasing anger because of the fact that this site was being trashed. Even the latest footage, it’s more like a garden clean-up than a forensic investigation. This is just completely unacceptable. Now, the aircraft was downed in highly contested territory, it’s been downed in territory which is controlled to the extent that there is any control in these places by the Russia backed rebels and this is why people have a lot to answer for. That’s why my task in coming days will be to ensure that President Putin is as good as his word.
ALAN JONES:
But how can Putin guarantee you the dignity and the security of Australians who are dead. We’re told today that the remains of 196 of these victims have been loaded into refrigerated rail wagons but no one knows where these wagons are going.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that’s right because they are in Russian backed rebel held territory and this is why we need to have these detailed discussions with our friends and partners about what we can do practically to secure and police the site and to secure and police the retrieval of the bodies.
ALAN JONES:
But have they beaten you to it – have they beaten you to it? I mean the US State Department have said in the last 12 hours that bodies and aircraft parts have been removed and potential evidence tampered with. You obviously have spoken to President Obama?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, and I obviously accept the analysis of the State Department. I don’t pretend for a second that a lot of bad things haven’t happened over the last few days. I mean plainly we shouldn’t have had this weapon fired, we shouldn’t have had all sorts of things, and since the time the plane was downed the wreckage has been picked over, it’s been trashed, it’s been trampled, God knows what’s happened there because we’ve seen the footage. We’ve seen the footage and what we haven’t seen I suspect is at least as bad as what we have seen. So I absolutely take your point, Alan, but we can’t undo the past – the important thing is to try to do as well as we can in the future and these are the discussion which I’m having with our friends, our partners, our allies because we need to secure and police these sites and we need to secure and police retrieval of the bodies and we need to ensure that they are treated with as much respect and dignity as they deserve – at least henceforth.
ALAN JONES:
You said that Putin when you spoke to him and I know you can’t reveal the details of those conversations, but that Putin said all the right things. But even as I speak to you as we are getting it from all sources around the world, Russia continues to deny any involvement in the downing of the plane. Now I can’t imagine you’d have a conversation with Putin without sort of saying now listen when are you going to fess up here and when are you going to condemn this as the rest of the world is condemning it, when are you going to find out who the perpetrators are? Too bad if he’s the perpetrator.
PRIME MINISTER:
Yeah, well look Alan, he did say all the right things – he said all the right things and now we need him to be as good as his word. Now, I’m not going to have this conversation and say well that’s nice, President Putin said everything will work out fine and just accept that. I’m now going to try to ensure that as far as Australia humanly can, we insist upon these things happening and…
ALAN JONES:
So do you believe as you’re speaking to me now following these conversations that a representative designated by you or representatives representing the dead Australians will have immediate access to the crash site and that the crime scene will be, is being, preserved.
PRIME MINISTER:
I want all that to happen and I am talking about the means that are necessary to ensure that that happens, Alan. You know, we’re not sitting here wishing it, we are doing our best to secure it, we are doing our best to bring this about. We’ve obviously got a team of officials, including police in Kiev. They are waiting to go to the site and we are doing what we can, Alan, to make that safe and secure so that these things can happen…
ALAN JONES:
So none of the people…
PRIME MINISTER:
…practical steps to secure and police the site. That’s what we’re working towards.
ALAN JONES:
But you haven’t had a report, am I right in saying this, from your people who are seeking to get to the site to secure the site to treat with respect and dignity the bodies of Australians? No one can yet report to you what response they’ve had when they arrived at the site.
PRIME MINISTER:
No, that’s right Alan. I mean the only reports we have thus far from the site and this is a report from European monitors, not from our people, our people are as yet in Kiev. But the only reports we have from the site, from the European monitors is that the site is still substantially under the control of the Russian back rebels and investigators are being hampered very significantly hampered.
ALAN JONES:
That’s right.
PRIME MINISTER:
The last footage, Alan, that I’ve seen which I presume is the most up to date footage that’s available is that the site is being treated more like a garden clean-up than a forensic investigation and this is completely unacceptable. There has been some improvement; it does seem that Ukrainian government officials are now being allowed some access to the site. But there is still a hell of a long way to go before anyone could be satisfied with the way that site is currently being treated, let alone the way it was previously treated.
ALAN JONES:
Just finally, if this was – to simplify it – people listening to you saying in a school ground you would go out and you’d say listen your hands are all over this brutality, what has been done to these people, get in here and face the music. When is someone going to say this to Putin? His hands are all over this. The world knows that. Is the world frightened of lining the bloke up?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think we’re all absolutely conscious of the importance of getting our people back. We are absolutely conscious of the importance of getting our people back and that’s why we’ve now got a couple of dozen people in Kiev. We’ve got people deploying to The Hague and I am in constant discussion with our friends, partners and allies about what more we can do – what more we can do to secure and police the site. We’ve got military aircraft on standby because we need to be able to do our part – play our part – to ensure that we get justice for the dead and closure for the living.
ALAN JONES:
Thank you for talking to us and if need be we’ll talk again.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you, Alan.
ALAN JONES:
I’m grateful for your time. The Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.
[ends]