Families gather to see MH17 plaque

Just a stone's throw from Parliament House a sacred piece of the Ukraine now lies.

Mounted on soil brought back from the spot where flight MH17 was shot down a year ago, a plaque commemorates the Australian victims, unveiled by Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Friday.

He praised the federal police officer for thinking to return a piece of that place back to Australia.

"It was a humane and decent thing for him to know and do," Mr Abbott said.

"It was a contrast to the savagery that brought down the plane."

Etched into the stone reads the names of the 38 Australian citizens and residents killed on that day.

About 120 of their family members gathered in the chilly, hedged garden to the east of the House of Representatives, which is also home to the Bali bombings memorial.

"We won't forget them and we won't abandon you," Mr Abbott told them, before laying a wreath at the plaque's base with his wife Margie.

You've had the worst year of your life, he recognised.

"Hardly a moment would go by when you don't think of a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend, present in your thoughts but painfully absent from your life."

As soft music played, family members - as well as Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin - presented their own sprigs of wattle.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who last August broke down while describing her grief over talking to the parents of the Maslin children, stood before the unveiling with watery eyes.