It has been nearly three months since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370), carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 14 nations, went missing.
The international search effort has failed to locate the wreck, leaving the fate of the passengers and crew unknown.
In fact, the Australian Government yesterday confirmed that the plane is not in the part of the Indian Ocean where searchers had previously reported ‘pings’ from the airplane’s black box. According to the The Guardian:
An underwater search vehicle, Bluefin-21, has scoured more than 850 square kilometres of the Indian ocean west of Perth since four acoustic signals…
But the search has failed to turn up any sign of the plane, which went missing on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to beijing on 8 March with 239 people on board.
“The joint agency co-ordination centre can advise that no signs of aircraft debris have been found by the autonomous underwater vehicle since it joined the search effort,” search authorities said…
Australia’s deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, told parliament in Canberra on Thursday that the search would move into a new phase beginning in August that could take 12 months.
While the plane crash was a tragic event, particularly for the families involved, one has got to ask whether continuing to spend taxpayer money on the search is a sensible use of funds, particularly given the unlikelihood of finding the wreckage in a timely manner (if at all)?
According to the Budget papers, the Australian Government has committed to spending $89.9 million on the search effort over two years (see below table).
Personally, I would prefer to see scarce taxpayer funds spent on programs that benefit living Australians, rather than on a ‘needle in the haystack’ search for the dead that may never even bear fruit.
