Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

First, can I thank the honourable member for her question. I can confirm, as I think everyone in the House knows, that a One-Two-Go Airlines flight from Bangkok to Phuket tragically crashed on its arrival in Phuket yesterday afternoon. The details of the crash and the cause of the crash remain unclear and the number of those killed has not yet been confirmed, though there are estimates coming from the Thais that 87 people have been killed and perhaps somewhere in the vicinity of 43 injured and that quite a number of those who have been killed are foreigners.

The Thai authorities have now provisionally identified one of the victims as an Australian. But, because of the uncertainty about the identification process, the Thai authorities are proceeding with further disaster victim identification methodology, in particular DNA assessment, so this process could take quite some time. Obviously, both under international protocols and for perfectly understandable other reasons, it is important that they get this process right.

The Australian Federal Police are willing to provide a disaster victim identification team to assist the Thais with all of the disaster victim identification work that they have to do. The Federal Police have good experience of working with the Thais in this area: they did so during late 2004 and early 2005 in response to the tsunami. So my department is now putting the offer to the Thais and the AFP team is at the ready to go.

I can also confirm that an Australian has been hospitalised with non-life-threatening injuries and our honorary consul in Phuket is providing consular assistance. Also, a consular officer has arrived in Phuket from Bangkok and another consular officer from Bangkok is on his way there. It is possible that other Australians may have been on the flight but at this stage we are not able to confirm that, and consular officials are seeking to confirm the nationality of the passengers unaccounted for. The manifest does not detail the nationality of the passengers because this was a domestic flight, not an international flight, so reconciling our passport and immigration records with names is obviously an insufficient way of establishing someone’s nationality and the appropriate identification and a good deal more work will need to be done. But at this stage we are not able to confirm that any other Australian has been deleteriously affected or has been killed.

As I have said, we are reinforcing our consular presence in Phuket. We are very conscious of the fact that there are a large number of Australians living in Thailand. Well over 3,000 of those people are registered with our embassy, and about 300 of them live in Phuket. There are probably more than 300 Australians living in Phuket but 300 of them are registered with our embassy. So this is a very tragic event, we are very happy to provide assistance to the Thai authorities as best we can, which is through the provision of a disaster victim identification team, and we will continue to provide extensive consular assistance to those Australians affected.

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