Shirtfronted Part 4

Shirtfronted Part 4 seem Abbott had a fetish for using the armed forces

When the disaster occurred, Abbott convened cabinet's national security committee, which was to meet an extraordinary 18 times over the next three weeks as Abbott conducted Australia's response to the shooting down.
"He was magnificent," said a senior minister on the committee. "There was some reluctance by some of the agencies to really fully commit and Abbott, almost physically, had to move them to do what needed to be done." In the end, the recovery operation, a risky one in a combat zone, went smoothly.

But most of the officials involved thought Abbott guilty, at least in the initial few days, of recklessness in his early effort to mobilise a force of 1000 armed troops to the crash site.
In the earliest days, when it seemed the Russian-backed rebels who had control of the site were not going to allow the Dutch and Australian governments to retrieve their dead, Abbott and his Dutch counterpart discussed the idea of sending an armed force to Ukraine. The troops would confront any interference.

Abbott wanted Australia to contribute a force of 1000, as a matter of urgency. Without the force, there was no guarantee that the site could be secured, remains of the dead recovered and a proper crash investigation carried out.

The idea was adamantly opposed by all the defence and security and intelligence agencies involved, and their cabinet ministers.

There were three main objections. First was simple logistics. Defence said that it would take a couple of weeks to get 1000 properly equipped and supported troops to Ukraine, too slow to usefully secure the site against interference.
Second was that Ukraine would have to grant permission to allow a foreign army on its soil, another source of unpredictable delay.

Third was the biggest. The risk that Australia's troops could become entangled in a war with the Russian-backed rebel force was real, and was too great.

The mission was to retrieve bodies, not save lives. "It was overwhelmingly a national tragedy, not a national security crisis," one official pointed out. "Abbott was treating it as a national security crisis."

Did Australia really want to find itself entangled in a hot war with Russia by accident in defence of no one?
Abbott insisted the troops be deployed. The heads of the agencies and ministers spent two days talking him out of it. Opposing Abbott were the chief of the defence force, the secretary of the Defence Department, the overseas spy agency ASIS, the Australian Federal Police, the domestic spy agency ASIO, the Department of Foreign Affairs, as well as all the cabinet ministers with responsibility for these agencies – Defence Minister David Johnston, Attorney-General George Brandis and Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop.

Even the secretary of Abbott's own department, Michael Thawley of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, was opposed.

Rounding out the solid wall of opposition to Abbott was the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the National Party, Warren Truss.

The prime minister was isolated but undaunted. "He was quite narky to the chief of the defence force [Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin], implying he was being less than helpful," said a participant.

http://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2015/Shirtfronted/PartFourSecurity.html