Jason Clare calls on Laos to take up Australia’s offer to help investigate deadly methanol poisonings

Laos’s hesitancy to take up Australia’s offer to help investigate the deaths of teens Holly Bowles and Bianca Jones is “disappointing”, a senior Labor minister says. Ms Bowles and Ms Jones, both 19, died after a mass methanol poisoning incident while holidaying in Laos in November. Four other visiting foreign nationals died from the same incident. NewsWire understands the government is in talks to get a team of Australian Federal Police (AFP) officers into the southeast Asian country to assist local authorities, who have released few details about their investigation. The Laotian government has not yet accepted Australia’s offer. Education Minister Jason Clare said on Friday those responsible for the deaths must be “brought to justice”. “Two young Australian women died here. We need to know how this happened, their mums and dads deserve to know how they died,” he told Seven’s Sunrise. “We need to make sure the people responsible for this are brought to justice and also make sure that this doesn’t happen to any other young Australians or parents affected by this in the future.” AFP officers have been deployed all over the world to assist investigations where Australians have been affected, such as Ukraine following the downing of MH17. The AFP also has several permanent overseas postings. Mr Clare said AFP officers “are really good at the work that they do”. “They can help here to track down the criminals, work out what happened,” he said.