The Prime Minister says it was "emotional" to welcome New Zealand crew and passengers rescued from the sunken Navy ship in Samoa back onto home soil today.
The HMNZS Manawanui, a specialist dive and hydrographic vessel worth $100m, sank early Sunday morning after it ran aground on a reef off the coast of the Samoan island of Upolu and caught fire.
It was conducting a survey around one nautical mile offshore when it hit the reef.
Seven civilians and four military personnel from foreign forces were among the 75 on board.
The Air Force C-130J Hercules plane touched down in Auckland at 11.30pm last night with 72 crew on board who were evacuated from the HMNZS vessel.
A second plane, a C-130H Hercules, which took freight to Samoa yesterday, also returned to New Zealand last night.
Footage captured by 1News showed the plane touching down onto the tarmac, and people walking into the base in Auckland's Whenuapai.
A Court of Inquiry into the incident was in the process of being set up, the NZDF confirmed.
The focus would now turn to the potential environmental impact caused by the ships' sinking.
Clean-up the 'highest priority' for NZ - PM
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said New Zealand had committed resources to the "difficult and complex salvage" operation of the $100m vessel in Samoa. (Source: Breakfast)
Speaking on Breakfast this morning, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said it was "pretty emotional" to welcome home the HMNZS Manawanui crew last night, and said attention would now turn to the mammoth clean-up effort.
"It was pretty emotional being out there at midnight, just welcoming each of those young people back home and back to Auckland.
"It was a real privilege to be able to talk to them because they've been through a pretty harrowing experience. You know, in really rough sea, they had to abandon [the] ship, get into small boats, navigate a reef, some got capsized," he said.
"Literally, they came off the boat with nothing... We should be so incredibly proud of our New Zealand Defence Force personnel."
Luxon said he had spoken to acting Samoan Prime Minister Tuala Tevaga Iosefo Ponifasio over the weekend, who had agreed the clean-up was "the highest priority".
He said they also had Maritime New Zealand crews responding, as it would be a "difficult and complex salvage".
"Our job is to try and mitigate the environmental damage or impact and so we now need to move them to that mode. And so we've got divers going up, we've got Maritime New Zealand with a lot of their capability, environmental spill kits, all of those things.
"It's difficult on a reef and there'll be a whole bunch of complexity to work through. But we're putting everything, you know, it's right that we put all our resources into mitigating what could be an environmental disaster."
Asked how the Government would help with costs involved for Samoa, including disruption to the economy, Luxon said: "All of our resources are available.
"There's nothing more important for us. It's really important to us that we do everything we can now having secured our people... Now we move to mitigating environmental risk that sits there."
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