[Peetwo]

Is Truss distancing himself?

Overnight from the Weekend Oz - as you would expect - there was much coverage on the Reunion Island B777 flaperon discovery. However what I find passing strange is just how vocal & proactive Farmer Truss has been with the MSM and how he is not deferring (as is his usual practice) to his Mandarins & Minions for comment...

As an example see the following article from the Oz overnight:

MH370: Africa should watch for debris, says Warren Truss  

• by: BRENDAN NICHOLSON, ANNABEL HEPWORTH
  
• From: The Australian
  
• August 01, 2015 12:00AM
  

Brendan Nicholson

Defence Editor
Canberra

Annabel Hepworth

National Business Correspondent
Sydney

More drifting wreckage from Malay­sia Airlines Flight MH370 may wash up on Madagascar and along the east coast of Africa, says Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss.  

Mr Truss said yesterday that the discovery of a two-metre piece of aircraft wing on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion made it important for the coastlines of the much larger island of Madagascar and other African nations to be examined.

“But that will be a matter for the French authorities and some of the African countries because that will be in their search zones and it would be their responsibility,” he said.

While Mr Truss did not name the nations debris might drift to, they could include Mozambique and Tanzania and possible South Africa, depending on ocean currents.

“But what this will do clearly is alert the world to the fact that it’s possible even after all of this time that wreckage could be washed ashore in parts of Africa or on islands­ such as Madagascar, and that anything that is sighted should be taken seriously,” Mr Truss said.

Tony Abbott said yesterday the find was “by far the most encourag­ing sign so far”. The Prime Minister said the government owed it to the families of those missing to find answers.

Mr Truss said there was strong evidence that the wreckage came from a Boeing 777. “That has not yet been confirmed, but the pictures that are available for people to examine are certainly consistent with parts from the wing of a Boeing 777,’’ he said.

The French were sending the section to specialists in Toulouse who may be able to ascertain whether it came from MH370.

They would look for clues as to what caused the crash, how the section broke away from the aircraft and if there was evidence of fire or other misadventure.

It was very important to bring some kind of closure to the families whose loved ones perished on the aircraft, Mr Truss said.

He said a travel bag found on the same beach as the section of wing was less likely to be from MH370 as it did not appear to have been in the water for long.

    
It could be with the significance of this discovery and with the French involvement, that the PM & Minister's advisers feel that proceedings need to be seen to be oversighted at a Government Ministerial level. 

With the French having custody of the flaperon, it would also now be prudent for the Abbott Govt to be seen to distance itself from the KL Govt. For the reasons why, perhaps we should reference the recent Ben Sandilands post:

Confirmation of MH370 wing flap discovery comes with consequences

Ben Sandilands | Jul 31, 2015 9:45PM |


The recent 'still praying for MH370' mural in Kuala Lumpur

There are consequences from the confirmation this evening by Malaysia’s deputy transport minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi that the wing flaperon recovered from La Reunion in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday is from a Boeing 777.

The most obvious of these is that the general premises of the Australian managed and Malaysia directed sea floor search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are correct.

The jet with 239 people on board, did divert from its intended flight plan between Kuala Lumpur on 8 March 2014 over the Gulf of Thailand and after a period turned south and flew into the vastness of the south Indian Ocean until it ran out of fuel and crashed.

The flight lasted close to seven hours 39 minutes from lift off from Kuala Lumpur International until a last attempted computer generated ready-to-communicate sequence initiated from the 777 to an engine monitoring centre at Rolls-Royce in Derby in the UK via an Inmarsat satellite ended abruptly.

At that point the geo-synchronous satellite had to be about 44 degrees elevation above the horizon, meaning anywhere along the southern extent of what is called the seventh arc of possible locations for what is assumed to have been the point of impact with the ocean.

And the problem is that allowing for the wreckage to settle somewhere to either side of the line of possible impact points involves searching an enormous area of ocean.

The search priorities, in an area covering up to 120,000 square kilometres of sea floor, are framed by efforts to define the most likely combinations of speed, altitude, higher and lower level headwinds and tailwinds and crosswinds, and crucially a range of guesses as to exactly where over the eastern and close to equatorial parts of the Indian Ocean MH370 was when it finally turned south.

So far only 55,000 square kilometres of the search zones have been examined by deep level instrumented ‘towfish’, sonar scanning the sometimes very deep and complex ocean floor for the solid parts of the missing 777, including its landing wheels, engines, sections of fuselage and wing and tail or vertical stabiliser.

There are in some quarters, concerns that MH370 may have been passed over but not recognised by the sonar scanning equipment, although the capabilities of the search seem vindicated by the recent finding of a previously unknown shipwreck that appears to date back to the 19th century.

Even the starfish crawling over its anchor and scattered contents were visible in the images, built up by sound waves not visible light, as down there, and where the missing jet lies, there is no light, just an eternity of utter darkness.

Wherever MH370′s solid parts are, and they could include recoverable human remains and possessions, that site is also the source of any surface debris like the wing flaperon and some of the other items possibly from the missing jet, that were recovered this week from the north shore of La Reunion island,  which is near Mauritius.

One consequence of these discoveries, which may include bottles of water similar to those handed out to passengers on long flights, is that it is now impossible for Malaysia and Australia to abandon the search for the crash wreckage site, if, as some sources insist, both countries had already decided they would.

(The official lines has always been that the search would continue until the current search zone was exhausted, and then, if there was an absence of further credible leads, if would be called off. )

Another consequence is that France will be in control of the examination of any aircraft parts or personal items that might be recovered in or around La Reunion from MH370 as it has international treaty search and rescue or recovery sovereignty over those areas, just as Australia has for its search efforts in the south Indian Ocean.

Without putting too fine a point on it, the government lead by embattled Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak misled its search partners, including Australia, in the early stages of the saga by insisting that the search efforts be spread deeper and wider into the South China Sea and even as far as Kazakhstan when it knew full well, on the morning of 8 March, that MH370 had flown across the Malaysia peninsula.

Just why the authorities and government in Kuala Lumpur found it impossible to tell the truth about what they knew about MH370 from the outset remains a mystery, but on 1 May last year, the then acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein blew its cover with an astonishing post on his Facebook page.

The Najib Razak led government is this week wracked by a scandal over the alleged misappropriating of funds in a government investment body, with the PM looking as though he might lose control of the situation, or have to resort to extraordinary measures to retain it, and that involves further dealing with high level cabinet and party dissent.

With its credibility under fire over these issues, the matter of the Najib Razak government’s apparent inability to tell the world everything it knew about MH370 on the day of its disappearance demands resolution.  (Perhaps Foreign Minister Julie Bishop can make another plea to the UN security council for an impartial criminal investigation of MH370 as well as MH17, just for the sake of consistency.)

Which means that another consequence of the certainty that MH370 is on the floor of the south Indian Ocean-somewhere on it- is that Canberra is going to have to deal with the veracity of everything said by the current government in KL, and quite possibly, its successor, which might just possibly be more generous in its disclosures.

No aircraft has ever disappeared on a flight operated by a carrier of the size of Malaysia Airlines and seen such an indifferent and token response to its fate. Malaysia Airlines went back to bed. It only tried to call the sat phone in the cockpit twice. It never attempted to contact the massive amount of shipping under the flight path of the jet, nor to the west of Malaysia once it knew it had gone west.

The responsiveness of the airline and the authorities to MH370′s disappearance was so slack that the question has to be asked time and time again, what was know in high places in KL about this flight on the night of its disappearance?

A consequence of the certainty of this jet being in the south Indian Ocean is that these questions assume greater importance than ever.

And if somehow, some of those answers are to be found in what washes up on La Reunion, or lies in wait on the shores of Madagascar, they will be in a place where Malaysia can’t do anything about them.

    
MTF..P2

Ps. I would also like to think that Truss is placing some degrees of separation with Dolan. You will notice that Truss doesn't mention either Dolan or the ATSB in any recent media commentary??