A Senate hearing is attempting to establish why Australia’s prime minister said in April that he was ‘very confident’ pings were coming from the black box

Tony Abbott received no official briefing from his department or special envoy suggesting they were confident early acoustic noises detected in the search for the missing flight MH370 were from the flight’s black box.



In a Senate hearing on Monday night the Greens leader, Christine Milne, asked how the Australian prime minister came to make a statement suggesting the search had been substantially narrowed and questioned whether he had acted recklessly.

In April Abbott said during an official visit to China that the search for the missing plane – which is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean killing all passengers on board – “has been very much narrowed down because we’ve now had a series of detections, some for quite a long period of time”. He added that he was “very confident” it was the black box.



But the comments were tempered later on the same day by the joint agency coordination chief, Angus Houston, who said there had been no significant developments in the search. The plane has still not been recovered, and no traces have been found in the Indian Ocean.

The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) confirmed on Monday evening that no briefing had been provided by them to the prime minister to support the assertions made in China.

DPMC assistant secretary Helen McDevitt said: “The prime minister’s statements on each occasion were made on the best advice available to him, and of course the prime minister was in discussions not only with the department of the prime minister and cabinet … but also with his special envoy, Angus Houston, and a range of experts involved in the process.”

Milne questioned how Abbott came to make the announcement, if it appeared that the joint agency coordination centre and DPMC had not provided any evidence to support the assertion.

“I’m asking where it came from since his chief envoy clearly clarified later in the day to say there was no breakthrough, Amsa [the Australian Maritime Safety Authority] said they didn’t provide the information to the prime minister, the bureau of transport and safety says it didn’t provide the advice to the prime minister, so I’m just trying to find out where the prime minister got this from,” she said. “It was pretty reckless, surely, to go and make a statement like that if there’s no detailed analysis at all of the substance.”

McDevitt said: “It wasn’t the case that on every case that the prime minister spoke that there was a brief for the department.”

The DPMC was asked to take on notice the source of the information relating to the assertions.

The search for the missing MH370 flight continues months after it was initially believed to have crashed. No traces have been found of the plane, despite an exhaustive air and underwater search being undertaken.