CAVE:
Joining me now is Prime Minister John Howard from Kirribilli House in Sydney. Prime Minister thanks for joining us on AM. Are you convinced that Australia is doing all it can to help?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes I am. We will of course do a lot more than we have to date, but it's important to remember that when something of this magnitude occurs it does sadly take time to work out exactly how we can best assist because there is so much disorganisation and chaos on the ground. I'm very proud of the fact that we've got Australians on the ground already through those 4 Hercules transport plus one also from the New Zealand Government that has been made available, so we have 5 altogether. There are also two medical teams now in Sumatra and in addition today, at the request of the Government of the Maldives, a medical team will go to the Maldives. The plane that drops that team will then go on with another medical team to Colombo where that second medical team will be embedded in the World Health Organisation group that will be fighting the real problem of contagious disease which is the next real threat following a disaster of this magnitude.
We will have assembled today still further medical teams, three in number, taking the total to 7, and they will be available for deployment where they are specifically needed. And I can say as I speak now that all of the particular requests that we have received from governments in the region have been responded to or are in the process of being responded to. There is an ad hoc group of Australia, the United States, Japan and India which is getting together today to make sure that there is enough coordination of the international aid effort.
The amount of $35 million which we've already announced will be added to significantly, in the time ahead. We have a moral obligation on the basis of pure humanity to help and we will help. We are a prosperous country. Many of these countries are very, very poor in infrastructure and their services are overwhelmed but others are better able to cope. And we must also remember that we're operating in another country, we just can't go in and start taking control, we must help, we must be available, we must be willing and I'm very proud of the international effort that Australia has mounted so far.
CAVE:
Prime Minister we've heard from our correspondent Tim Palmer in Aceh that a field hospital may well be needed, is that being considered?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes it is and we're also looking at options to provide some further helicopter capacity. We are examining the issue of a field hospital and I will be in Canberra this morning and I'll personally meet all of the members of the disaster relief taskforce that have been working quite magnificently for the last few days and I want to thank particularly the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as well as the Defence personnel and also the State Health authorities, there's been tremendous cooperation between the Commonwealth and State Health authorities. And the other thing that I should mention of course is that we have working on the ground in Phuket at the moment Australian Federal Police and police officers from the various states in the grim task of disaster victim identification and we were particularly asked to send people with that expertise by the Government of Thailand and of course they'll not only be identifying possibly Australian victims but also victims from other countries around the world and of course Thais as well.
CAVE:
Yes, we'll be speaking to one of those shortly. Prime Minister are there problems with Indonesia in sending in Australia military personnel?
PRIME MINISTER:
No, we had ready cooperation in fact I think was 3 or 4 days ago within 28 or 48 hours of the disaster striking, the head of the Indonesian Military made contact with General Cosgrove, the head of the ADF, to make it very plain that they wanted cooperation and would make it available. And then there was contact between the Australian Defence Minister and his counterpart in Indonesia and I've had a discussion several nights ago, I had a discussion with President Yudhoyono and he expressed his gratitude to me for the speed of the Australian response and we have not encountered any difficulty at all from the Indonesian military and we are very pleased with the cooperation that has been forthcoming so far.
CAVE:
With so many countries affected what do you think should be priority as Australians?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think we have to try and help everybody but obviously Indonesia is next door. The loss of life appears to be greater in Indonesia in sheer numbers, although on a proportionate basis the loss of life in Sri Lanka is probably the greatest of all. Look we are closer to Indonesia, we are giving help to Sri Lanka but we are putting a lot of effort into Indonesia because the infrastructure in that country is wanting in many areas and of course it's next door to us and it's a very populous country.
CAVE:
What's your advice to Australians who want to help out?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, give money. I would exhort people to give money, I would also exhort any people who are still in the affected areas unless they have a need to stay there they should come home, and we of course have put on with the generous assistance of Qantas and Virgin Blue, we have put on additional aircraft and the Qantas one is arriving back this morning, I don't think it's full so there maybe some people who are still not making arrangements to come home, I think they should because there's the risk of disease. The chaos is so total in some of these areas that staying behind does risk the possibility of being caught up with infectious diseases and I can't stress how important it is to anybody listening who has relatives in other parts of the world, unless they have need and I can understand if they're still searching for loved ones or waiting to hear news, I understand that fully but if that is not the case then they should be encouraged to come home.
CAVE:
How concerned are you that 5000 Australians are not still fully accounted for?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I am concerned that the casualty number will grow, I think the 5000 is a in-theory figure. Obviously a lot of those people, although in the affected area have not been touched by this and the process of trying to locate each one of them to see if they're safe is very slow and laborious, although our people have reached about 3 and a half thousand which is pretty impressive in the circumstances but I do have a genuine fear that there will be more Australians found to have lost their lives then the 8 or so that's been mentioned to date and beyond the 12 for whom grave fears are held because their disappearance has been specifically reported. And of course this is the situation that faces many European countries, it's suggested that somewhere order of 1000 to 1500 people from Sweden are so far missing because these are very popular holiday resorts and the tidal wave, of course, has taken everybody before it.
CAVE:
Prime Minister thank you very much for joining us on AM this morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you.
[ends]