[Peetwo]

'That man' Higgins sniffs a rort?

Courtesy the Weekend Oz x2 :

A question of confidence in filling $100m MH370 black hole

• Ean Higgins
  
• The Australian
  
• January 23, 2016 12:00AM
  

The revelation that Australia is relying on Malaysia to meet a potential $100 million “black hole” in the search to find MH370 demonstrates the pitfalls in the government’s approach to this project.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief Martin Dolan said on ABC Radio last week that Australia did not need to find out what happened on board MH370, since under international law the investigation was Malaysia’s responsibility.

The fact that Malaysia promised to contribute a survey vessel to the search, and it never showed up, does not augur well for the country’s enthusiasm over solving the mystery.

Mr Dolan and the bureau have fallen over themselves to avoid the clear evidence that the most likely scenario, given the deliberate flying evident in the first part of the flight back over Malaysia and the turning off of the radar transponder and cut in communications, is that captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own plane.

The bureau has said the first part of the flight doesn’t matter for its purposes, and is working only on the track from the last turn south and a scenario consistent with the crew passing out from lack of oxygen because of decompression or otherwise becoming “unresponsive’’.

Zaharie was a strong supporter and relative of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who the day before the flight had faced court where his acquittal on sodomy charges had been overturned, in what is widely seen as a politically motivated trial.

If it turns out that the loss of MH370 was a political statement by Zaharie, it would be a bad look for the Malaysian government. One has to ask in those circumstances how confident Australian taxpayers, who have so far put up $60m for the underwater search, can be that if the cost blows out, Malaysia will stump up as much as $100m to meet it.

&..

Questions over MH370 search funding shortfall

• Ean Higgins
  
• The Australian
  
• January 23, 2016 12:00AM
  

Australia is relying on Malaysia to fund a potential $100 million shortfall in the search for Flight MH370, as it emerges that a survey vessel promised by Malaysia to join the search never showed up.

Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss’s office would not produce any public statement from the Malaysian government in which it committed to meet the remaining cost of the search, and the Malaysian high commission did not respond to a similar request.

The Weekend Australian can also reveal that while nearly two months ago Mr Truss, whose transport portfolio covers the search for the Malaysia Airlines plane, said a Chinese vessel would join the search this ­summer, none has appeared; his department did not say when one would.

The federal government has taken prime responsibility for the search for MH370, which dis­appeared on March 8, 2014, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, because its presumed final resting place, in the southern ­Indian Ocean, is within Australia’s search and rescue zone.

The hunt will be called off once the designated 120,000sq km target zone has been searched, ­expected in June.

Australia has committed $60m to the cost of the search, and China has recently committed $20m in “assets and financial ­contribution”.

In a statement this week to The Weekend Australian, the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre, set up within Mr Truss’s department to orchestrate the search, said: “It is expected that the underwater search may cost up to $180m.’’

Asked how the $100m gap, understood to be the result in part of a declining Australian dollar against a US contract with the Dutch Fugro survey group whose three ships are conducting the search, would be met, Mr Truss’s spokesman said: “Malaysia has committed assets and financial contribution to fund the balance of the cost of the underwater search.”

The spokesman would not provide a copy of the tripartite agreement he said embodied the commitment, or produce any other corroborating statement from the Malaysian government.

Since the Boeing 777 was ­Malaysian-registered, under international aviation law Malaysia is charged with investigating its ­disappearance.

This point has been repeatedly stressed by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau when asked why, rather than work on the dominant opinion put by commercial airline pilots and other aviation experts that MH370 was hijacked by its captain, it relies on a theory consistent with the pilots becoming unconscious due to lack of oxygen during decompression or otherwise “unresponsive.”

Early last month, Mr Truss said “within the coming months a fourth vessel to be provided by China will add to the search ­effort’’.

Recent weekly bulletins from the joint co-ordination centre about the search have made no mention of a Chinese vessel joining the effort.

“Any new vessel entering the search will be announced at an appropriate time, prior to it arriving in the search area,” a co-ordination centre representative said.

Hmm...sounds like there are some serious questions that fall within the remit of 'the Heff' & his band of merry men & women that they could possibly ask at Estimates in a couple of weeks time...


MTF..P2