PM: It's important that we are gathered here today at this place, the War Memorial; because one of the great and profound mystery's for Australia from the events of the Second World War has been the search for the HMAS Sydney. And the reason we are here today is to indicate that we are one step closer as a Nation to potentially finding the Sydney.
Ted Graham, chairman of the Finding Sydney Foundation will speak to you in a minute; But I am here to confirm today that on behalf of the Australian Defence Force and the Finding the Sydney Foundation that the search has now located the wreck of the German raider Kormoran.
This has been a core part of the missing element of the jigsaw in the search for the Sydney for the last 65 years. The Kormoran which we know was the German Destroyer engaged the Sydney in November of 1941. As a consequence of that engagement the Kormoran went down and the Sydney went down.
In the case of the Kormoran there was significant loss of life and in the case of the Sydney all hands were lost, all 645 brave men of the Royal Australian Navy.
It has been a continuing source of unresolved business for the country as to what has happened to this great vessel. The HMAS Sydney earlier in the war was engaged in extraordinary actions in the Mediterranean and was the pride of the Australian Navy at the time. Its action against the superior German cruiser the Bartolomeo Colleoni in the Mediterranean is a matter of record and pride for all those who have followed the history of the Royal Australian Navy.
Therefore for all of us concerned about this great ship and those of us who are concerned about what happened to the 645 brave souls who went down with her have all these years been wondering where she lay and what in the end actually happened.
So finding the Kormoran is one big step forward. Of course that does not mean that the search has yet found the Sydney itself but it does place us one significant step closer. I would commend the work of Ted Graham, chairman of the Finding Sydney Foundation. They have been assiduous and dedicated in the work which they have done and the support in one form or another which had been given to them also by the Royal Australian Navy.
This is an important part of resolving a 65 year old puzzle, national puzzle as to what finally happened to the Sydney and I commend this search operation and the Australian Navy in their support for this activity.
If I could now turn to Ted Graham to give you some details on what has occurred
TED GRAHAM: Prime Minister; Minister Snowdon; Chief of the Defence Force; Chief of the Navy and the families of the 645 Australians lost on HMAS Sydney; Ladies and Gentlemen.
Thank you Prime Minister and your Government and the previous Howard Government; The Royal Australian Navy; My fellow directors Don Pridmore, Keith Rowe, Glenys McDonald and Bob Trotter; The search team under David Mearns; Our project management team; researchers Gladys McDonald, Kim Curser, David Mearns, Peter Hawthorn and others.
Today's announcement follows years of voluntary work and to commence to close the long standing controversy. Whilst we have a lot of work to do still we have achieved remarkable progress in the last four days.
We found the first signs of Kormoran about 36 hours after we had our sonar system deployed and operating properly. We will be putting a significant amount of information on our website as we speak now. The website is www.findingsydney.com and is also an associated press room site which the press can log onto.
Whilst our confidence level in locating the Kormoran was always high, it received a considerable boost from an excellent recent forecasting work undertaken by the Bureau of Meteorology in Perth for recent weeks. This provided us with further scientific evidence that the estimated location of Kormoran was correct and verified as we located her as I mentioned, in a few hours. It is also very appropriate at this time to remember that some Navy German sailors did not survive the battle.
We have also located what we believe to be the battlefield site and there is an amount of wreckage there but that has yet to be identified. We have not yet located the Sydney.
There are many people which we need to thank and we will do so later via our website and after we find the Sydney. I do however wish to acknowledge the major donations in funds from the Australian; NSW and Western Australian Governments and Corporate and Private donors.
To the future; Our primary task now is to locate the Sydney. I was talking to the ship a few minutes ago, they are looking in a search box which follows where we believe the Sydney should be and obviously we need to continue that work until we find her. Assuming we find the Sydney in the next short while or if we don't find the Sydney the ship is going to come in into Geraldton on Tuesday or Wednesday and take on board a remotely operated vehicle so we can go and closely inspect this site of the Kormoran and battlefield site, hoping that in particular the battlefield site may give us more indication of the direction that the Sydney proceeded in.
The remainder of the equipment to undertake that is currently on its way from Europe. We will be inspecting the Kormoran in water depths of approximately 2560 metres and the site of what we believe is the battlefield in approximately 2740 metres. We will also obviously inspect any other wreckage that we may find in the area.
Really that's all I wanted to say, there will be a lot of material on our finding Sydney website right now and there will be some video imagery posted on there this afternoon that came from the ship last night.
Prime Minister thank you for your kind words, your invitation to be here today and to the Governments past and present and the Royal Australian Navy for their help and advice and close relationships with us.
PM: I might ask the Chief of Navy to speak briefly about the significance of the Sydney itself.
CHIEF OF NAVY RUSS SHALDERS: Thank you Prime Minister. The Navy is jubilant that we've got to this point. As the Prime Minister said this is unresolved business and has been now since the 19th November 1941.
Its unfinished business, what has now been found will allow us to proceed toward finishing something that has been a mystery, Australia's major maritime mystery. This is only a marker, it will be a long, hard and difficult and highly technical search from this point onwards and so we should not hope that this will be resolved quickly. But I say again the Navy is absolutely jubilant that we've got to this point. I congratulate the Finding Sydney Foundation for their resourcefulness, their initiative and their sheer hard work and persistence over many, many years to get to this point.
The Navy looks forward to the day when we can find the Sydney and perhaps more importantly find out why the battle turned out the way it did. Thank you
PM: One final point before taking your questions. Because there's also been a significant loss of German life on this vessel our embassy in Berlin has notified the Government of Germany and that occurred as I am advised during the course of today. And furthermore when it comes to the proper protection of this particular vessel the Kormoran, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Arts has responsibilities under the Shipwrecks Act, Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976 and has the powers vested in him under that act to provide appropriate protection for any such wreck.
This matter of course will now be considered by the Minister as is required under the provisions of that act.
Happy to take your questions or to throw them in whichever direction you would like.
JOURNALIST: Mr Graham perhaps if I could throw one to you. Could you explain to us please how important and why it is important that the discovery of the Kormoran is made in terms of ultimately finding the Sydney? How much does it matter?
TED GRAHAM: Finding the Kormoran was most important to us. The location of the Kormoran matches exactly with the German account of where the Kormoran should be and of the battle location and that gives us a cornerstone if you like to start the search for the Sydney from. So if we hadn't found Kormoran it would have made it much more difficult.
JOURNALIST: Can you tell us exactly where it is?
TED GRAHAM: I haven't got the coordinates in my head but they... It's about 150 miles west of Shark Bay. The coordinates are or will be on our website as we speak.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
TED GRAHAM: The bureau, well I didn't know either until I walked in to ask them could they help. The worldwide metrological bureaus have an enormous computer power for weather predictions. They and the American bureau and the European community bureaus combined together to look at all the data they had over the last 40 or 50 years and they provided a lot of information on currents and tides and wind effect off the West Australian coast.
Their work showed us that the life rafts from the Kormoran had to have come from the location where we subsequently found the ship. So that was very important to us.
JOURNALIST: Do you believe it's now simply only possible or probable that you will find the Sydney? How would you describe that?
TED GRAHAM: There can never be a guarantee. We're working in water depths of several thousand metres, our search box was initially 1800 square nautical miles. We're now working in a search box that's approximately 300 nautical miles and that's where currently we're looking for the Sydney.
I was talking to our search ship, they rang me just before I came in here. Their out there today working, we have to remain confident but there can never be a guarantee.
JOURNALIST: likely?
TED GRAHAM: There can never be a guarantee. It's a big ocean out there.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible) What was it about the wreck that identified it?
TED GRAHAM: We are putting a lot of imagery on our website, it's imagery which is much better quality than this. But in that imagery which is a bit pointless me showing it to a big room, but the site scan sonar has identified the wreckage of the Kormoran. The bow section of the Kormoran which was blown away from the rest of it and what they now believe is the battle site about 6 kilometres away.
So does that answer what your asking
JOURNALIST: When was it found what date?
TED GRAHAM: On the evening of the 14th. Sorry I should re-clarify that we've had inkling that we had something there on the evening of the 14th. We didn't confirm it properly until yesterday.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister you spoke about the number of lives lost on the German vessel and you talked about the Minister determining the future of that wreck. How likely is it that you would attempt to recover the remains of the people on that wreck or is that out of the question?
PM: The shipwrecks of this nature have to be completed with complete respect. Complete and absolute respect and hence why the Historic Shipwrecks Act is crafted in the way in which it is.
Whatever side we are on in this appalling conflict, where so many people lost their lives. There are families involved here, families of the 645 brave Australians who lost their lives and families of those of the crew of the Kormoran. That's why these processes will be attended to meticulously by the Minister under the provisions of the act. Do you wish to add to that?
SNOWDON: Because of the battleship is a German battleship it remains the property of Germany. We will do nothing about that vessel until we've negotiated with the German Government but we will be trying to provide interim protection. We will certainly provide protection but ultimately it's a matter for us to discuss with the German Government.
JOURNALIST: Graham can you tell us what you think happened on that particular day after the Kormoran sank? Where do you think the Sydney went? There's talk of it going over the horizon.
TED GRAHAM: All I can do is say exactly what you said to me. There are no survivors from the Sydney so we don't know. All I can do is quote exactly what you said “she was seen going over the horizon” and we honestly don't know.
PM: Any other questions. I just conclude by saying; To commend again the Foundation. I mean this is very difficult technical work, the depth of water here is huge. We are talking about 2600 metres it's very deep.
And secondly decisions by the NSW Government, the West Australian Government and the previous Australian Government to commit funds to this. Funds which have continued to flow of course under us. But the sharp edge of this has been executed by the foundation with the support of our very fine Navy.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister can we ask some questions one or two other issues briefly if we can?
PM: Sure, if I can allow our friends to not be part of the fray
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister first have you damaged our diplomatic relations with Tokyo by excluding Japan from the Itinerary of your upcoming world trip?
PM: Well the Government of Japan and ourselves have already confirmed my visit to Tokyo in early July and that will be to attend the G8 summit during which time there will be a significant bi-lateral meeting between myself and Prime Minister Fukuda of Japan.
The other thing to say is that apart from that and on top of that the Japanese Government and ourselves have been in discussions for a long, long time since January actually about possible timings for a bi-lateral visit on top of that. Those discussions continue and furthermore to reinforce the importance of the relationship with Japan both the Foreign Minister and the Trade Minister have visited Japan already. Underlying the absolute importance we attach to our relationship with Tokyo.
JOURNALIST: How concerned are you about reports that the TWU in NSW has been harassing businesses and perhaps using stand over tactics to get them to give financial support to the union to elect NSW Labor MP's.
PM: I have an absolutely hard line on this stuff. If anyone has any substantive allegations to make about any illegality on the part of any union or non union organisation it should be drawn immediately to the attention of the relevant regulatory authorities. Either the AEC or the Police that's my view. Simple as that.
JOURNALIST: And what (inaudible) will they be excluded from being appointed to certain Government bodies?
PM: If there is any substantiated allegation whatsoever then no such appointment will proceed. In fact the government has not confirmed any such appointment.
JOURNALIST: Is Australia hypocritical for going ahead with the Kangaroo cull which the Australian Government supports considering Whale (Inaudible)
PM: Well our attitude to Whaling goes to the whole nature of the international whaling commission and relevant International convention which is an agreement between many states. And it goes to whether or not what is occurring is scientific whaling or not.
The reason we have commissioned activity during the course of the year to determine precisely what's going on in the Southern Ocean has been to establish whether or not that claim is true.
So therefore we're dealing with a body of international law, National assertions within that and our contrary assertions within that. That is why this particular action has been embraced by the Australian Government as we indicated in clear cut terms prior to the last election.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible) certain middle class so called welfare payments including Family tax benefit B. Obviously you've created a cap of $250,000 would you look at lowering that to make further cuts in the forthcoming budget?
PM: Look I think the important thing is to make sure that we have policies which help all working families and on the detail of the upcoming budget. We're going to adhere to the integrity of the budget process but all working families, all working families will be protected by our Government in the production of that budget and we will honour all of our pre election commitments. Every one of them, every one of them.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: We will honour all of our pre election commitments. I mean there is a suggestion here that we shouldn't. Well it's not my view and some have suggested that we shouldn't honour tax cuts because tax cuts benefit people on middle incomes as well.
Not my view we went to the people and said that's what we are going to do and that's what we intend to do. We went to people with a series of commitments in relation to a range of other payments including the baby bonus and that's exactly what we're going to do.
I think if you make a commitment to the people that's what you go ahead and do and I am absolutely confident that all working families will be properly protected by the measures that we embrace in the budget.
Last question, then I got to zip
Sorry is there a last question from someone else. You have just done three and there's someone else waiting up there. Now Patricia there are other people in the room.
JOURNALIST: Mr Rudd, Joe Hockey this morning said that the Reserve Bank has gone too far in raising interest rates and put more pressure on the commercial banks who are already paying too much money.
PM: What I would say to Mr Hockey, is that he needs to sort out with Mr Turnbull whether he believes or doesn't believe there is an inflation problem. Mr Turnbull the Shadow Treasurer says there's no inflation problem. The fact is we have the highest inflation rate in 16 years, given to us by that Government.
So once they arrive at a public position about whether there is an inflation problem or not and what should be done about it. Then perhaps then we could engage with a productive debate about these matters in the future.
The second thing is we have this extraordinary set of circumstances concerning Mr Turnbull allegations about the minimum wage case last week. He's just inventing stuff as they go along. This is serious economic debates about a serious set of global economic and national circumstances at present and we have instead the Shadow Treasurer inventing things out of thin air, point 1.
And we have the Shadow Treasurer and Mr Hockey and in fact Dr Nelson not accepting one core point and that is whether we have an inflation problem in this country or not. We say we do and we have put forward a plan for dealing with it. The opposition at this stage are in a state of denial.
Got to zip