this beggars belief. the cover of today's Age has a pic of a forklift delivering the wrong coffin at Tullamarine.

now, I am not a military-type person. but I have a nephew in the air force, and my grandfather served in WWII. and you do not send Australian servicemen home with "contractors". You do not leave their coffins on the tarmac, or even use a forklift. you use human beings to lift the coffin straight into an undertaker's van. in fact, even if that body was some unidentified person, that person deserves better too.

the whole thing just smacks of treating a person who volunteered to die for their country as a commodity, the waste of which is to be delivered home as cheaply as possible. there should have been a soldier or dedicated dept of defence person or diplomat with the body. all the way home. sheesh, the guy's not a delivery from amazon.com. come to think of it, amazon does a better job.