Richard Marles says it is too early to talk about the future of the type of helicopter, known as a Taipan chopper, involved in the accident, with all attention instead on the search and rescue effort.

“The accident [only] occurred on Friday night and there is much work still to be done there,” he says.

But he pledges an investigation into what went wrong will follow that effort.

“There will, of course, be a full investigation into this accident so we can properly understand exactly what has happened and make sure lal the lessons that can be learned from this are.”