The federal government remains convinced MH17 was shot out of the sky by a missile.
The Dutch Safety Board on Tuesday released a preliminary report into the downing of the Malaysia Airlines plane, which shows it was pierced from the outside by "high energy objects" before it broke up, killing 298 people including 38 Australian residents.
The preliminary report stopped short of saying the Boeing 777 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile on July 17, but its findings appear to point to that conclusion.
Investigators found no evidence the crash resulted from a technical problem or crew error.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss released a joint statement saying the report does not attribute blame or liability for the incident
"This is the role of the multinational criminal investigation led by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service, which is currently underway," they say.
"The international community must remain focused on finding, prosecuting and punishing the perpetrators of this cowardly attack."
The families of the Australian victims received an advance copy of the Dutch report.
But Brack Norris, the son of West Australian Nick Norris and uncle to Otis, Evie and Mo Maslin, says his family haven't had the chance to read it yet.
"The world stopped but then we still have to work," he told AAP.
Earlier, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said nothing she's heard since the tragedy has changed her view about how the plane wound up strewn across eastern Ukraine.
"Indeed I'm even more resolved in my view that it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile," she told AAP on Tuesday.
She and Mr Abbott have pointed the finger at Russia, claiming there's clear evidence Russian-backed rebels were most likely behind the attack.
They're both pushing for a criminal investigation to determine who was responsible.
Mr Abbott and his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak have agreed to send their forensic teams back to eastern Ukraine as soon as possible to recover whatever human remains may still at the crash site.
Ms Bishop said the initial search of the crash site was "pretty comprehensive" but agreed a second look would be best.
"There were highly trained, sophisticated professionals involved, plus sniffer dogs plus equipment," she said.
"I'm confident that a competent job was done, but one would always like the opportunity to go back one more time."
Australian investigators were forced to suspend their search in August as fighting between Russian-backed rebels and Ukrainian forces around the crash site intensified.
A fragile ceasefire between the groups is now in place.
But Ms Bishop said unless that truce was maintained sending search teams back to the crash site would be problematic.
The process in The Hague of identifying the human remains found during the initial search was nowhere near concluded, she added.
The first bodies of the Australian victims from the tragedy arrived back home last week.
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