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  • 3 hours ago
The families of two Australian teenagers killed in a mass methanol poisoning in Laos believe the punishment for their deaths is completely inadequate. 19 year olds Bianca jones and Holly Morton-Bowles, died along with four other travellers in 2024 following the incident. Officials in Laos are expected to charge those responsible, with two offences that collectively carry up to one year in jail, and a maximum 16-hundred dollar fine.

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00:01I would ask that Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong continue their engagement with Laos.
00:11Mark Butler suggested that we, the Australian Government, have been offering federal police
00:18support.
00:19I believe that to be true, but I would encourage Mr Albanese and Penny Wong to continue to
00:27offer those services from what we're led to believe in regards to what some of the charges
00:33may be and some of the outcomes to those charges could be.
00:38It's just, it's unacceptable that the passing of our daughter, her best friend Holly and three
00:48other beautiful women lives come down to the potential maximum outcome of a one year in
00:57jail and $1,600.
00:59Michelle, this has been obviously a long fight for justice for these two beautiful
01:03young women, but also a fight to prevent this from happening to anyone else as well, young
01:10people in Laos.
01:12What was your reaction when you got the news?
01:14So you found out from DFAT yesterday that this could possibly be happening and we're still
01:19to get confirmation from Laos officials.
01:22What was your reaction to finding this out?
01:24Well, it's like their lives didn't even matter.
01:28We were just really appalled by it all.
01:31You know, they were just going over to have a bit of fun and just doing the rite of passage
01:35that every, you know, child or teenager does.
01:39So for that outcome was just devastating.
01:47Have you had a lot of communication throughout all of this from DFAT, from even officials in
01:53Laos about exactly what's happening?
01:55Certainly DFAT this year have been quite engaged with us.
02:00We've had zero communication from anyone in Laos, from Laos authorities.
02:09But DFAT has done their best, I believe, to keep us up to date.
02:14What do you do now?
02:16Keep fighting for the girls.
02:20One thing we said right from the very beginning was the passing of our daughter was not going
02:25to lead to nothing.
02:27We'll continue to fight.
02:29We'll continue to educate the public on methanol.
02:34There's some great work happening in fact in the University of Adelaide and South Australia.
02:39But we will absolutely continue to fight for justice for the death of our daughter.
02:46Someone, a number of people are responsible for what happened to our daughter.
02:52And I will not rest until justice is served in some way, shape or form for the death of
02:59our beautiful girl.
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