Prime Minister Tony Abbott has confirmed "there was talk" about sending Australian troops into Ukraine after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down last year.

Newspaper reports last August said Mr Abbott wanted to send 1,000 troops to the crash site in disputed territory in eastern Ukraine to retrieve the bodies of dead Australians.

In response to an Opposition question in Parliament, Mr Abbott said the option was discussed with Dutch authorities "in the days immediately after" the attack on the plane.

"We did talk to the Dutch about what might have been done in those perilous circumstances, because certainly they were perilous circumstances," he said.

"There was talk with the Dutch about a joint operation."

Mr Abbott said it was not his suggestion nor a "frivolous exercise" instigated by him.

"This arose out of the most important and the most necessary discussions between the Dutch military and our own," he said.

The Opposition also asked Mr Abbott to confirm another report in The Australian newspaper that he had pushed the idea of sending 3,500 troops to unilaterally invade Iraq to fight Islamic State militants with the nation's "leading military planners" last year.

Mr Abbott again denied the report, which he repeatedly described as "fanciful" on the weekend.

He referred Parliament to a statement released today by the Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshall Mark Binskin, and the Secretary of the Defence Department, Dennis Richardson, saying "this claim is false".

"At no point has the Prime Minister raised that idea with the ADF and/or the Department of Defence, formally or informally, directly or indirectly," the statement concluded.

Yesterday, Mr Richardson told the ABC the report was "piffle".