Oh dear. Confusion. Senior Defence officials tell #estimates the Defence Minister has announced that Australia will send up to four Bushmaster armoured vehicles to Ukraine after a request from President Zelenskyy. Then clarify a few minutes later there's been no announcement 1/
It turns out that officials were referring to the Defence Minister's interviews this morning where he flagged Australia *was* willing to help but could only send three or four Bushmasters to Ukraine (at a time) on military planes. No final decision made yet, apparently 2/
Here's the full quote from Dutton on @RNBreakfast - he's basically saying the government is happy to send Bushmasters but officials are trying to work out how we'd get large numbers to Ukraine quickly 3/ 
About half an hour later the PM seems to confirm that a final decision to send Bushmasters *has* been taken: "we will be sending our armoured vehicles, our Bushmasters, as well. And we will be flying them there on our C-17s to make sure they can be there" 4/
Perhaps I'm getting bogged down in semantics here. No formal announcement, but clearly Australia has made a decision that we *are* going to send Bushmasters: question is how many we send, and how we get them there. But it's all a bit messy 5/
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