Blackhawk helicopters collide at military training area Townsville 1996, killing 15 SAS soldiers and three from Fifth Aviation Regiment

July 14, 2017

Former Australian Liberal Prime Minister John Howard was critical of Donald Trump seven months into his first term of the American presidency in 2017 claiming he would not have voted for Trump, essentially because the newly elected billionaire was a non-conformist and not a member of the Washington clique.

PM Howard, by coincidence was in New York when the CIA and Mossad allegedly took down the Twin Towers with explosives on September 11, 2001.

Trump’s insistence that Europe pay the US for decades of defence expenditure got approval from Howard but when pressed why he didn’t like Trump, he said it was because his style would not please a lot of Americans and that criticism of Trump from newly elected President of France Emmanuel Macron was irrelevant because Macron first had to earn some stripes.

“I trembled at the thought (of a Trump presidency),” Howard said.

“I am by nature a supporter of the Republican side.

“I didn’t like his attack on free trade,” Howard pointed out, being an avid disciple of Adam Smith, a Scottish economist and philosopher, whose principles are to deregulate all trade between countries. Liberals and Labor foolishly went down this path leaving Australia as the only country in the world which removed almost all tariffs on international goods entering the country much to the detriment of our once thriving manufacturing industries and car makers, which no longer exist.

Howard condemned Trump’s attacks on the intelligence services after signalling he would release files on CIA treachery particularly in relation to the killing of President John F Kennedy.

Perhaps the retired PM could be wary about Trump’s possible release of the CIA’s involvement in Australia particularly the sacking of the anti-Vietnam war, Whitlam Labor government in 1975 or the clandestine US involvement in the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 when two military men shot 35 innocent holiday makers and intelligence operatives at Port Arthur in Tasmania with precision military accuracy.

This operation paved the way for John Howard to take more than one million firearms from law-abiding gun owners, effectively disarming Australia of semi-automatic firearms which could have been utilised against foreign invaders.

Australian police records of this terrible Port Arthur psychological operation have been sealed for 75 years.

Then two months after the Port Arthur incident during training for counter-terrorism operations on the night of June 12, 1996, two Australian Army Black Hawk helicopters collided over Dotswood Station west of Townsville in the military Field Training Area. 

As a result of the accident, there were 18 fatalities in total; 15 from the Special Air Service Regiment and three from the 5th Aviation Regiment. 

This accident left those independent investigators of the Port Arthur massacre in a quandary as dead soldiers tell no tales.

Some years ago Cairns News was told of additional information about the contributing factors to this tragic accident.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3637334/Black-Hawk-tragedy-Retired-pilot-remembers-crash-June-1996.html