PRIME MINISTER:
Earlier today the Security Council unanimously supported Australia’s resolution on MH17. This is a tribute to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop who called it for Australia and she called it for the world. I just want to give credit to my colleague who has done a magnificent job. I also want to give credit to the officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade led by our Ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, who have shown enormous dedication, professionalism and commitment particularly over the last few days.
This has been a difficult and trying time for our country. It's been a difficult and trying time for the world but they have risen magnificently to this occasion as has our Foreign Minister.
I also want to thank our partners, particularly Holland and the Dutch Foreign Minister, who have provided us with great support and comradeship. We are united in grief and now we are united in our determination to ensure that the bodies are returned, the site is secured, the investigation goes forward and justice is done.
I also want to pay particular tribute and give thanks to Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia. I've had quite a lot to do with Prime Minister Najib over the last few months. I respect him as a colleague and as a friend and he deserves our gratitude for the way the leader of his military mission to the Ukraine made his way to Donetsk through very difficult and dangerous country, spoke to the self-styled Prime Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic and secured an agreement from that individual for the release of the train with the bodies and the black boxes.
So, there has been some progress in the last 24 hours. The resolution that the Security Council has unanimously passed demands that the victims' bodies be returned and treated properly. It calls for an independent international investigation and it seeks safe, secure and unrestricted access to the site for investigators.
Anyone who has been watching the latest footage would appreciate that there is still a long, long way to go. After the crime, comes the cover-up. What we have seen is evidence tampering on an industrial scale and obviously that has to stop. I will stay in close contact with other leaders in coming days to ensure that the Security Council's intent and the international community's will is fully and swiftly implemented.
I can also advise that yesterday Air Chief Marshal Houston met with President Poroshenko of Ukraine who has offered his full cooperation to us and to the Dutch in the operation to recover the bodies and return them to the Netherlands.
Operation Bring Them Home will be coordinated from the Ukraine by Air Chief Marshal Houston. Operation Bring Them Home includes consular officials in Ukraine and the Netherlands, Australian Federal Police officers including disaster victim identification experts and forensic experts – both on the ground in Ukraine and in Holland – air safety investigators and there is a C-17 military transport aircraft that will arrive in the Netherlands later today and which will be involved in returning the bodies from Ukraine to Holland.
Our understanding from the Ukrainian Government is that the train carrying some 280 bodies is travelling towards the Ukrainian Government-held town of Kharkiv. It's expected to arrive some time after 8.30am tomorrow – Australian time – but there are many uncertainties in this because the of the security situation in the Eastern Ukraine. Once the train arrives in Kharkiv, the bodies will need to be prepared for transfer. Our officials along with the Dutch will be closely involved in this process, we want it to be conducted as swiftly and as professionally as possible. The bodies will then go by air to the Netherlands.
Australian and Dutch forensic and disaster victim identification experts are standing by to receive the bodies in Holland. Again, I need to caution that this is necessarily a painstaking and methodical process that will take some weeks. As frustrating as this is, we do have to get it right. It would be terrible to compound families' grief by risking the misidentification of their loved ones. But I do want to stress that Department of Foreign Affairs officials are in daily contact with the victims' families. I have spoken to a number of family members in the last 24 hours. I'll be making further calls today and in coming days.
Obviously, this tragedy has united Australia in grief and in support for all the families. As I'm sure you now know, the condolence book was opened in this parliament an hour or so ago and the community can certainly show its respect for those we have lost and for their families by signing the condolence book.
There will be an electronic condolence book available on the prime ministerial website. The states, as I understand it, are making arrangements for their condolence books and condolence books will be available at Australian diplomatic missions around the world.
Can I again stress our objectives; to retrieve the bodies, to secure the site, to conduct the investigation and to obtain justice. As I've said, from the beginning here, we will not rest until this is done.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, just to clarify, you said an Australian plane will take the Australian bodies to Holland.
PRIME MINISTER:
An Australian plane will be involved in taking the bodies from Ukraine to Holland. There is an Australian C17 which is en route to Holland now.
QUESTION:
That presumes that the Australian bodies will be identified in Ukraine…
PRIME MINISTER:
No it doesn’t. I said an Australian plane will be involved in the transportation of all the bodies which will be in Kharkiv to Holland.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, you were cautiously optimistic earlier, just after your phone call with Vladimir Putin about the Russian separatists now doing the right thing. Are you any more optimistic today after the events overnight or should we still be cautious?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the point I made 24 hours ago is that President Putin had said all the right things, I then went on to say that the challenge is to hold him to his word and to President Putin's credit he has been thus far at least as good as his word. But he did also say yesterday, and I'm quoting President Putin now, “We must do everything to provide security for the international experts on the site of the tragedy.” They were President Putin's words to the Russian media in Moscow in the last 24 hours and these are the words which he needs to live up to.
I give him credit for being as good as his word over the last 24 hours. These are quite properly his latest words and let's now get cracking with providing security on the site for the international experts. That's the next challenge: to secure the site, to get the experts in and to conduct the investigation fully, fairly, impartially, so that as far as is humanly possible we can know exactly what happened to this plane, we can learn as much as we possibly can about who did it, how it happened, and then punish those responsible.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, on the question of securing the site, now that you have a United Nations Security Council resolution, is it just out of the question to mount a multinational security force to go in there and secure this site? I know it's contested ground, but is that just an impossibility, or why isn’t it happening?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, a multinational police force or a multinational force of some kind is not something that can be just summonsed up in a matter of a few hours, but obviously there does need to be security for the site and I would think that the security for the site would best be provided by the countries that have been so wronged here, that's what I think would best be done, security for the site provided by the countries that have been so wronged. But there's quite a long way to go between what we’ve got now and what we would like to see, which is a fully secure and protected site where investigators can go about their task without hindrance from others – so without hindrance from armed rebels, without hindrance from anyone who might seek to interfere with the investigation.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, you said that ‘after the crime comes the cover up’ and that there’s been evidence tampering of an industrial scale. Are you now more certain than you were a few days ago that the site has been deliberately sanitised?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well this is why we need a full investigation and this is why we need to have investigators on the ground – investigators on the ground who are properly protected so that they can go about their job.
This site has been trampled from the beginning, and we haven't just seen all sorts of random individuals roaming around the site picking over remains, picking over wreckage; we've seen heavy equipment coming on to the site and the point I made yesterday was that it looked more like a garden clean up than a forensic investigation.
The more recent footage suggests that it's more like a building demolition than a forensic investigation and this again is simply unacceptable.
Again though, I return to what President Putin said yesterday “We must do for everything to provide security for the international experts on the site of the tragedy” and I absolutely agree with him – I absolutely agree with him. President Putin, myself and I'm sure the Prime Minister of Holland, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, the leaders of every country who has lost citizens would agree with President Putin. We must do everything to provide security for the international on the site of the tragedy and let’s try to ensure that that happens as quickly as possible.
Paul?
QUESTION:
Malaysia Airlines is offering victims’ families $5,000. Are you any closer to, or have you received further advice on the attitude of Australian Government to compensation?
PRIME MINISTER:
There's been some speculation over the last 24 hours about payments to Australian next of kin under the Victims of Terrorism Overseas Payment Scheme. I haven't got the advice I sought, but I do wish to assure Australian families in grief and in pain that we will be erring on the side of generosity when it comes to their treatment.
Michelle?
QUESTION:
You said that there must be punishment for those who committed this crime. What would be the exact mechanism for punishment?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we need to identify people, we need to find out exactly what happened as far as we humanly can and then we can talk about how the punishment might fit the crime.
Lane?
QUESTION:
Given what you said about tampering and the cover up, how can you be confident that those perpetrators haven't already fled and aren’t being covered up?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that’s a fair question, Lane, but forensic experts are able to work out a very great deal indeed from even interfered with sites and tampered with evidence, and we will have the world's best experts looking at this evidence, should we get the opportunity to do so. So I'm confident that an enormous amount can be learnt about the final moments of MH17. I'm confident that an enormous amount can be learnt about the weapon that brought it down and quite likely the circumstances under which it was brought down.
QUESTION:
Just further to Michelle's question, what would be the forum to bring people to justice and do you see this as a war crime, as such?
PRIME MINISTER:
Again - a long way to go, so let's not get ahead of ourselves but plainly, any civilian aircraft which is hit by a military missile is... well, there is at the very least, reckless indifference to human life here – at the very least there is reckless indifference to human life here and to act with reckless indifference to human life in circumstances where 298 innocent people have been killed is a crime.
It is not an accident, it is crime.
David.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, who do you hold responsible for the cover-up and do you have any fears about any Russian involvement in the cover-up? And secondly in response to Mark Riley you said that it would be good if the site could be secured by countries that have been wronged. Well Australia has been wronged, Holland has been wronged.
PRIME MINISTER:
Malaysia has been wronged.
QUESTION:
Have you talked to the leaders of those countries about that idea?
PRIME MINISTER:
As I detailed yesterday, I've had now very many conversations with other international leaders and I expect that those conversations are just going to accelerate and increase in the days ahead. I'm not going to go into which particular person I've spoken to and what was the content of the call, but obviously I have been speaking at length with the Dutch Prime Minister, I've been speaking at length with the Malaysian Prime Minister, I imagine that we will continue to have conversations about what should happen now to ensure that the site is secure and the investigation goes ahead in an unhindered way.
QUESTION:
Just on that, so are you looking into what sort of agency or what sort of force would go in there to secure that site and how do you secure a site in what is currently a combat zone?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the interesting thing is that there is apparently some kind of a ceasefire in place. I imagine that it is a somewhat fragile ceasefire, but nevertheless there is now - it seems perhaps out of respect for the dead, perhaps out of recognition of the enormity of what has happened - there is some kind of a ceasefire in place and that plainly impacts on what is necessary to ensure that investigators can go in in a safe and secure way to do their work.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, just in terms of maintaining the security however, are you considering sending in either ADF or AFP personnel to keep that safety and security there?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look, again, I'm not going to get ahead of myself here and I don't think any of us should get ahead of ourselves here, but the resolution of the Security Council, which I'll read to you demands - paragraph six: “demands that the armed groups in control of the crash site and the surrounding area refrain from any actions that may compromise the integrity of the crash site, including by refraining from destroying, moving or disturbing wreckage, equipment, debris, personal belongings or remains and immediately provide safe, secure, full and unrestricted access to the site and the surrounding area for the appropriate investigating authorities, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission and representatives of other relevant international organisations according to ICAO and other established procedures”. So what needs to happen here is that paragraph six of the UN Security Council resolution needs to be adhered to and complied with, and the best way of ensuring that's the case is to have appropriate international people there.
QUESTION:
Sorry, is it now up to President Putin though to use his influence over the separatist leaders in the area to ensure that that happens and how long do you give him to do that? How long should he have?
PRIME MINISTER:
Today is a day to acknowledge that President Putin has been as good as his word and to hope that this continues - that not only will he be as good as his word today, but he’ll be as good as his word tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that. And again I stress his words: "we must do everything to provide security for the international experts on the side of the tragedy." So I'm much more optimistic today than I was yesterday or the day before about how things might work out, but again I do want to caution people against facile optimism because while the train containing the bodies is moving, while there does seem to be some kind of a ceasefire, while international experts do seem to be getting more access to the site now than before, this could change at any time and it's only by the united will of decent people everywhere that we are going to help to ensure that the aftermath of this event is less tragic than the event itself.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, what are Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston movements? Is there any plans that he would travel to the crash site or travel to [inaudible]?
PRIME MINISTER:
It's a fluid situation, as you can imagine. My hope is that Air Marshal Houston will be on hand in Kharkiv to help receive the bodies when they arrive and yes, it would be good if Air Marshal Houston can visit the site of the wreckage as soon as possible. As I said, he is the coordinator for Operation Bring Them Home, he's a man who has enormous expertise in all these organisational matters as well as enormous authority and standing, and I have great confidence that he will do the best possible job for Australia under these difficult circumstances.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, have plans been drawn up for family members here to go to the Netherlands to perhaps help with identification of those bodies?
PRIME MINISTER:
As well as properly receiving the bodies in Kharkiv, we want to make sure that they are received with suitable dignity when they arrive in the Netherlands and we'll make sure that one way or another that happens.
Phil.
QUESTION:
Are the families of the victims, as is procedure in these things, being asked to provide DNA samples to help with identification that could be sent to Amsterdam?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes they are. If I could just wrap up with the families, Julie Bishop made a very powerful speech today at the Security Council, but the really great thing about Julie's speech is that it wasn't about national pride, it wasn't about anyone's agrandissement, it was about doing the right thing by the families, and in the end that is what all of us have to focus on, doing the right thing by the families and there are 37 Australian families who are enduring almost unimaginable grief, and we've got to be with them in every way we can at this time.
[ends]