Defence minister Richard Marles has copped an on-air grilling from Today Show host Karl Stefanovic after the announcement was made to retire Australia’s MRH90 Taipan helicopter fleet.
The fleet was initially planned to be withdrawn in 2024 however the deaths of four military personnel in a crash during a military exercise in July contributed to its early retirement.
“We have families desperate for information about what happened to their loved ones. You’ve said that you won’t finger-point. They said there were problems with the aircraft and now you’re grounding them. A statement released by Mr Marles on Friday revealed the Taipan helicopters will not return to flying operations with the government’s highest priority being the “safety and wellbeing of our people”.
“The moment that this incident occurred, we said we would not fly the helicopters again until investigations were completed, that we understood what had happened and if there were any rectifications that needed to be made, they had been made,” Marles responded. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m sorry for my tone. I feel genuinely, genuinely sorry for the families of those defence personnel and if I’m sitting there and I’m one of their family members and you’re saying to me the very helicopters that my loved ones went up in, crashed, took their lives, can no longer fly anymore, I don’t know how you explain that to them,” he said
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