A senior opposition MP has urged the Australian government to reveal what it knows about missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, after a report obtained by U.S media said the flight's captain might have deliberately brought down the plane.
On Monday, Australia's shadow Transport Minister Anthony Albanese questioned the legitimacy of the current search zone currently being combed by the government, and wants all documents relating to the missing flight to be made public by the Turnbull government.
Albanese said the government owed it to the families of the 239 passengers and crew missing with the Boeing 777 jet to be transparent and honest about any possible evidence of what happened more than two years previously.
"My concern all along has been the need for clarity for the families affected by this tragedy," Albanese told News Corp on Monday.
"The Australian government should be transparent about what it knows about issues related to this (U.S report)."
Over the weekend, New York magazine published an article in which it said it obtained a secret FBI report about the investigation of MH370.
The report said the flight's captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had used a flight simulator program to fly an eerily similar flight path to that which MH370 ultimately took, less than a month before the Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8, 2014.
"Based on the Forensics Analysis conducted on the 5 HDDs obtained from the Flight Simulator from MH370 Pilot's house, we found a flight path, that leads to the Southern Indian Ocean, among the numerous other flight paths charted on the Flight Simulator," the New York magazine quoted from the FBI report.
Despite the revelations over the weekend, Australia's Transport Minister Darren Chester said it was not the Australian government's jurisdiction to investigate the New York report's claims, and said the 120,000 square-km search zone was carefully considered.
"Recent media reports regarding information collected from MH370 captain's home flight simulator are a matter for the Malaysian investigators to consider," Chester told News Corp on Monday.
"Everyone is entitled to an opinion and to speculate on possible scenarios but I won't be second-guessing the experts from Australia and around the world who have had access to all of the available data.
"All end-of-flight scenarios have been considered including controlled and uncontrolled flight in determining the 120,000 square kilometer search area."
The news comes as the Australian-led search begins to wind down, with just 10,000 square-km of a 120,000 square-km zone in the southern Indian Ocean still to be searched.
