Reasonable chance of finding plane: RAAF

Three planes have left Perth to continue the search for a missing Malaysia Airlines plane. Source: AAP

LONG-RANGE aircraft have joined the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, boosting confidence that suspected debris from MH370 will be found.

The large debris that was captured on satellite imagery on March 16 and publicly revealed on Thursday after being analysed is the most credible lead so far in the hunt for the missing plane.

While it is yet to be spotted by search aircraft, the HMAS Success is due to arrive at the search area on Saturday afternoon.

Acting Prime Minister Warren Truss told a large international media contingent at the Royal Australian Air Force Pearce air base north of Perth, from where the search is being coordinated, that the Australian effort has so far covered some 500,000 square kilometres.

Mr Truss said there had already been 15 sorties from the base, mainly Australian and New Zealand Orion aircraft.

Two longer range aircraft being deployed this weekend had intercontinental capability and would be able to search the area for five hours, compared to the 2-3 hours that military aircraft had available over the past two days, he said.

Aircraft from China will arrive at Pearce later on Saturday and join the search on Sunday, when Japanese aircraft will land at the base.

They will become involved on Monday.

Several vessels from around the world are also en route to assist.

No aircraft or vessels have been sent from Malaysia to help with the Indian Ocean search, but it has sent military personnel to Pearce to act as liaison officers.

"They have other search areas where they are concentrating their efforts, in their own waters and nearby," Mr Truss said.

He said Malaysian authorities were being contacted every few hours

The search area has been adjusted to account for considerable drift.

Weather conditions had much improved and would remain so for the foreseeable future, Mr Truss said.

"If there's something there to be found, I'm confident that this search effort will locate it," he said.

RAAF group captain Craig Heap was cautiously optimistic.

"There's a reasonable chance of finding something," Captain Heap said.

At a press conference in Papua New Guinea, Prime Minister Tony Abbott described the lead as "tenuous", while Mr Truss conceded the debris may be a shipping container.

He said the search would continue as long as there was hope.

"It is important from the perspective of those who have families, whose whereabouts are unknown ... and indeed for the future of the aviation industry, that we do whatever we can to firstly confirm whether or not the sightings as a result of the satellite imagery are indeed connected in any way with the Malaysia Airlines flight," Mr Truss said.

"And then if so, what can be recovered so we can learn more about what has happened on this flight and learn any lessons that are necessary to make sure this doesn't happen again." Australian authorities would their utmost to keep the public informed, he said.

"These families .... they're anxious for information," Mr Truss said.

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Qld police search garbage dump for body

A SEARCH is underway at a Queensland landfill site for the remains of a diamond miner who vanished a month ago.

David Hanson, 71, was supposed to catch a flight to Tanzania on February 22 but never made it to the airport.

Police believe his body and belongings were dumped in a bin south of Brisbane and on Saturday began searching garbage at a waste transfer station.

Fifty-two State Emergency Service volunteers began sifting through 5000 tonnes of compacted waste at the Browns Plains Waste and Recycling Facility using rakes and garden forks on Saturday.

Police won't speculate on a motive.

They say Mr Hanson was jailed for drug trafficking in the United States two decades ago and was not a particularly wealthy man.

Detective Superintendent David Hutchinson said police had set aside a month for the search, which would be a slow and methodical process.

"There's been no proof of life in relation to Mr Hanson since the 22nd of February," he said.

"We always hope for the best and we hope that there's been a reason why he's gone away ... but the evidence that we have would suggest otherwise."

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Cops firing blanks in sex exemption debate

Police in Hawaii may lose a law that allows them to have sex with prostitutes while on the job. Source: AAP

POLICE in Hawaii are facing the prospect of losing an exemption that allows them to have sex with prostitutes while on the job.

The state's Senate Judicial Committee chairman, Clayton Hee, has announced plans to get rid of the exemption in Hawaii's prostitution law that permits police to have sex, so long as it's part of an investigation.

His announcement at a committee hearing this week followed expressions of outrage after police had lobbied to keep the exemption for the so-called morals officers who are charged with the responsibility of investigating prostitution.

"To condone police officers' sexual penetration in making arrests is simply nonsensical to me," Hee said.

State legislators have been working to revamp Hawaii's decades-old law against prostitution. They toughened penalties against pimps and those who use prostitutes, and they also originally proposed scrapping the sex exemption for officers on duty.

But Honolulu police said last month that they needed the legal protection to catch lawbreakers in the act. Otherwise, they argued, prostitutes would insist on sex to identify undercover officers.

The legislation was then amended to restore the protection and the revised proposal passed the House and is now before the Senate.

While police say the exemption is necessary, Myles Breiner, a former Honolulu prosecutor who now works as a defence lawyer, testified that some of his clients who are prostitutes often complained to him that police had sex with them before making an arrest.

"How do we expect people to follow the law when the police engage in criminal conduct," Breiner asked.

Police testified in writing and in person to the House Judiciary Committee in February that keeping the exemption protected undercover officers from being found out. They said internal department protocols protected citizens against abuses.

Law enforcement experts say there's never any need to have sex with a prostitute to make an arrest, because the agreement to exchange money for sex is sufficient evidence of a crime.

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Double bombing kills seven in Iraq

A DOUBLE bombing has killed seven people north of Baghdad.

Police say the attack happened on Saturday morning when a roadside bomb exploded in a commercial street in the city of Tikrit.

Minutes later, a car bomb struck officers arriving to inspect the first blast.

Officials say five policemen and two civilians were killed and 18 people were wounded in the bombings.

Violence has spiked in Iraq since last April, a surge unseen since 2008. The relentless attacks have become the government's most serious challenge.

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Road accident kills 35 in Pakistan

A COLLISION between two passenger buses and a petrol tanker killed 35 people in southwest Pakistan on Saturday, officials said, with many of the victims burning to death.

A bus travelling to Karachi collided with the tanker in the early hours of the morning in Gadani district on the coast of Baluchistan province, senior administration official Akber Haripal told AFP.

"The bus and the tanker had a head-on collision and the oil tanker turned over, but the situation got worse when a second passenger bus coming from behind rammed into the first bus as it skidded on the oil spilled on the road," he said.

The first bus then caught fire, he said, adding that 35 people were killed, most burning to death while trapped inside the bus, and 30 were injured.

Amir Sultan, another senior administration official confirmed the incident and toll and said the dead bodies were "beyond recognition".

"These passengers buses travelling between Baluchistan and Karachi have automatic hydraulic doors and their windows are sealed because the buses are air conditioned, so most of the passengers were trapped inside," he said.

Sultan said the injured were being taken to Karachi after receiving first aid at a government-run medical dispensary because there was no hospital in the area.

Pakistan has one of the world's worst records for fatal traffic accidents, blamed on poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and reckless driving.

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Principal says school trusted staff

A FORMER Adelaide principal who hired a pedophile says he did not lie but made a mistake when he initially said he had done a police check on the bus driver.

Claude Hamam also said the school was extremely vigilant about supervision, but he had not known children went to the woodwork shed at lunchtime to see the driver, Brian Perkins.

"At the time we had an element of trust that we had for all the staff there," he told the royal commission into sex abuse on Friday.

It is investigating St Ann's Special School and Perkins who sexually abused intellectually disabled children between 1986 and 1991.

Mr Hamam hired Perkins, who had three child abuse convictions, without doing a police check, could not recall if he verified his references, and interviewed him alone which breached catholic school policy.

He told the commission he deeply regretted telling the Catholic Education Office (CEO) in 2001 that he had carried out the check, before revealing in 2003 that he had not done so.

"It is something I have got to carry for the rest of my life," he said.

It had been a mistake and an error of judgment, so he was shocked and devastated to be accused of lying and to be dismissed on the grounds of not being a fit and proper person.

Mr Hamam agreed that as Perkins took on more school activities, he had greater opportunities to be alone with children but said "we were extremely vigilant".

Perkins did volunteer respite care of students on weekends and helped out in the woodwork shed.

Mr Hamam said he did not recall a mother telling him that Perkins had placed her daughter on his knee in the shed and tried to feel her breast.

If that happened, he said he would have informed police.

He did recall a teacher raising concerns about Perkins bringing another man - whom the commission heard was now a convicted pedophile - onto the school premises.

"She felt perhaps he was a little creepy and she didn't like the look of this person," Mr Hamam said.

He told the man he did not want him at the school, but he could not recall if he brought up the incident with Perkins or if it gave him concern about the driver.

He said he first found out about the abuse claims when police contacted him in 1991.

Mr Hamam said he told Michael Critchley, who worked in the CEO's resources section, and expected him to take the case further.

He denied only approaching Mr Critchley for help in terminating Perkins' employment, saying "I thought it was a much more serious matter than looking at an industrial issue".

He did not tell parents their children may have been abused as police told him to keep the matter confidential so as not to compromise their investigation.

He did not raise the allegations with the Archbishop or at school board meetings.

Mr Critchley testified that he did not inform anyone in the CEO of his conversation with Mr Hamam.

"I can't recall why I didn't do it," he said, but agreed that in retrospect he should have.

Perkins, jailed for 10 years in 2003 after pleading guilty to sex offences, died in prison in 2009.

The hearing is continuing.

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Australia's real Pacific solution

Guards at Australia's detention centre on Manus island are ordered to carry hooked knives. Source: AAP

GUARDS at Australia's detention centre on Manus island are ordered to carry hooked knives.

The knives are used to cut ropes when asylum seekers try to hang themselves.

This is the harsh reality of Australia's so-called Pacific Solution.

Here's another reality - in one sleeping area in Foxtrot compound 122 men sleep in a steaming hot, darkened room with no air-conditioning.

Large, industrial fans are spaced unevenly between the beds, leaving little room for people to move.

And another reality: these are men - 1296 of them - living with the dark memories of the February 17 riot that claimed the life of 23-year-old Iranian man Reza Berati.

Broken window panes in the dining hall at Oscar compound, missing windows in Mike compound, bullet holes in a large white container exposing - like wounds - the rusted brown interior.

"They hit him and he fell from here and they hit him till he died," one asylum seeker said of Berati, pointing to a stairwell in Mike compound.

"They hit him in the head until he died." Guards and immigration officials quickly moved us on.

On Friday, a select group of media organisations including AAP was permitted rare access to the centre by court order as part of a Papua New Guinea human rights inquiry into the treatment of asylum seekers.

We were not allowed to interview staff or detainees.

Men in Delta, Foxtrot and Oscar compounds held pictures of Berati.

"Please report this, we want freedom," shouted one man, who gripped tightly onto the shoulder of this journalist.

"Please, we can't sleep. We are scared all the time."

Another became visibly upset. "Six months, seven months, eight months like this here," he said.

"We have no (running) water, no safety."

In Delta compound, media were shown filthy toilets with no running water, while in another compound there were broken showers.

This part of the facility is constructed on the remains of the old Manus Island detention centre, built so the Howard government could implement the first instalment of the Pacific Solution.

Tightly packed shipping containers in rows, each one sleeping four or five men.

Facing each other, the walkway between them is shielded from the heavy and frequent Manus rains by a metal roof.

Peering down, you can barely make out the faces of the men in the dark.

There are vast differences in the quality of the compounds.

While Delta and Foxtrot compounds are extremely run down, others are not.

Mike compound is made up of blazing white shipping containers stacked on top of each other. Each room sleeps four men.

In Oscar compound - made up of a dining hall and large marquee sleeping halls for up to 50 men - showers were broken.

In one of these sleeping halls the words, "you'll never find a rainbow if you keep looking down", are scrawled on a wall above one of the bunk beds.

The beds are spaced about a foot apart.

The court party was informed there are fewer tables in the dining halls since the riot, with none in one compound.

Next to Oscar compound, behind a large corrugated iron fence, is the mental health sleeping quarters.

Inside, a bearded man clutches his violently shaking right hand to his chest.

"I am from Syria, please I want freedom," he said.

Next to Mike compound is "the green zone" where asylum seekers can make calls to their families at night.

But there's nothing safe about it.

An asylum seeker points out a bullet hole in a metal support beam - another memory of February 17.

As the team of court officials and media walks between Oscar and Delta compounds, men hang against the fences and stare at us silently.

One group of about eight men stand with their faces pressed against the rusted metal.

To their right: a sign ordering guards to carry the hooked knives.

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Nats will do better at re-run poll: Joyce

THE Nationals will improve their performance at the re-run West Australian Senate election, Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce says.

The party - which began in the west - missed out on a seat at the September poll because of preference deals wrangled by minor parties including the Australian Sports Party.

Shane Van Styn and Colin de Grussa are running again at the April 5 election, but former AFL star David Wirrapanda has decided he won't.

"We had David Wirrapanda and he did a good job - we got a better vote than one of the senators that got in, it's just that our preference flow wasn't right but this time, the preference flow is better for us," Mr Joyce told Fairfax radio on Friday.

"We've got a better position (on the ballot paper) in box B.

"There was an overwhelming desire for change at the last election and I suppose the National party, because they stand on their own, got run over a bit in it.

"But this election is different."

Mr Joyce said the party's policy platform was centred on abolishing the carbon tax, progressing trade agreements and more infrastructure in WA.

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No sweet tooth for Australian cake champ

FOR an award-winning cake decorator who spends Monday to Friday surrounded by the temptations of her sugary creations, Jacquie Goldstaiz's palate is a blessing in disguise.

"I never bake for me. I just really love fresh fruit and vegetables," she said.

"The only time I really taste cake is to make sure it's the right flavour or it's not too dry."

Ms Goldstaiz's artistic flair earned her the championship title and a $2000 prize at the Australian Cake Decorating Championships in Sydney on Friday.

The Gold Coast woman's marzipan fruit creation took two months to make.

While the competition version was not edible, Ms Goldstaiz estimates a real cake would take two weeks to create and would weigh about 10 kilograms.

Throughout her five-year career, Ms Goldstaiz has created cakes in the shape of a Louis Vuitton bag, a Native American head and a diving helmet.

But somehow the former florist manages not to overindulge.

"To me, it's an art," she said.

"I never look at it as a cake and never look at it as something to eat."

Her winning confection will return to Queensland to take prime position in her cake-decorating shop.

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Trio charged after Vic bikie gang raids

Police are conducting raids on properties linked to the Comancheros outlaw bikie gang in Victoria. Source: AAP

THREE men have been charged and guns and drugs seized after raids on the Comanchero bikie gang across Melbourne.

Police searched a series of homes and businesses across the city on Friday morning, finding firearms at a property in Dewhurst.

Ammunition and drugs, believed to be steroids, were found in Lynbrook.

Three men were arrested and all charged with perverting the course of justice.

Robert Morando, 41, of Narre Warren South, Michael Murray, 36, of Lysterfield South and Almir Dzafic, 33, of Hampton Park, were remanded in custody to face Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday.

Murray is also facing charges of possessing firearms, steroids and ammunition.

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