Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Hansard source

This government is led by a gutless Prime Minister who does not come into the chamber to defend himself against this most serious censure motion, against the credibility of his entire government. Instead, he despatches the minister for hyperventilation, the foreign minister. Today we have been exposed to the hyperventilating foreign minister at his hyperventilating best. He has advanced to us today the great Alex in Wonderland thesis, which is this. The central point of this entire wheat for weapons scandal is this: it validates the Howard government’s decision to invade Iraq. The thesis runs like this, and I quote the foreign minister: the Howard government wanted to invade Iraq. Why? So that the Howard government could find out that it was violating sanctions against Iraq. Had we not removed Saddam, we would not have found out that we have been bankrolling Saddam. Beauty, Alex; that actually takes the cake. Rhodes scholarship material! I have to say he leaves me speechless every time he gets to the despatch box.

What is our core charge against these ministers that forms the basis of this censure motion? It is this—that these three ministers had a national security responsibility under United Nations Security Council resolution 661 to prevent any Australian company from breaching financial sanctions against Saddam Hussein. They are not my words, but a Security Council resolution embraced by the government of Australia. Second, these three ministers failed spectacularly to discharge this most basic national security responsibility and allowed $300 million to be funnelled through to the enemy. These three ministers dismissed, at a minimum, seven sets of warnings that the AWB was up to no good in Iraq. The purpose of our debate in this parliament today—the proper place to have it—is to give these ministers the opportunity to explain to us why they chose not to act each time they were warned.

There were seven warnings, over a long period of time. We asked time and time again in question time: what was the reason that you did not act? The reason we have moved to a censure of these three ministers is simple. They did not have an answer. They turned a blind eye. As a result, this parliament can only conclude that they are guilty of gross incompetence on national security, of gross negligence on national security and of turning a blind eye to deep warnings, which threatened national security. These cases they have yet to answer.

The first point is that the government had a responsibility. It had powers. The trade minister was disputing this today. This is part of the core of the debate. We contend, and we are well fortified in this, that the government’s obligations are entrenched in its requirements under UN Security Council resolution 661. That is plain and transparent in terms of what is required on the part of the government. It is for those reasons that the government set up the elaborate approval processes within DFAT which went through each of the 41 contracts. The government has disputed this. Its dispute of this falls apart fundamentally.

The government say they were just a postbox. They say their job was to make sure that each contract form had the boxes filled in—that they put it in the post, put a stamp on it, off it went to New York and then the money came back. They say that any problems were all at the UN. The government are fundamentally hoisted with their own petard, because in October-November 2000 you have a critical exchange of letters. This is a very important point. The AWB writes off to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and says, ‘We’re about to engage a Jordanian trucking company. Any problems?’ DFAT writes back three days later and says, ‘What you are contemplating in terms of your contract arrangements with Iraq does not violate international law. It does not violate UN sanctions.’

Who provided that advice back to the AWB? Answer—the Australian government. The trade minister’s case today is based on the argument that DFAT and the Australian government were incompetent to answer any such substantive question, that that power lay exclusively in the United Nations in New York; that, if they got a letter from the AWB saying, ‘We are proposing a new structure for our contract arrangements with Iraq,’ how would they, the Australian government, approve that because, according to their logic, that executive power exclusively lay with the United Nations in New York. What did the government do? They did exactly the reverse. They did not consult the United Nations. They did not even take legal advice properly within their own department. They simply sent back a letter unilaterally saying, ‘Your proposed new contract arrangements conform with international law.’

The government’s argument is self-defeating. You cannot have it both ways. Either you have the power to approve contract arrangements or you do not. Their thesis in question time today is based on the proposition that they had none; that therefore all problems lay with the UN. But they got a letter from the AWB which proposed a radical new addition to the contract structure and what did they do? They answered it themselves and did not consult the UN. That fundamentally destroys their entire argument, not to mention the overarching legal responsibilities which lie with the UN Security Council resolution 661, which sets up the arrangements.

Establishing the fact that they had the power, the responsibility and the legal responsibility to act is one basis for the censure motion we move. The second basis of the censure motion we move is this. Systematically over the many years that these 41 contracts, which paid out this $300 million to Saddam Hussein, ran they dismissed one set of warnings after the other. They dismissed the United Nations warnings in January 2000. They dismissed the United Nations warnings when the UN warned again, in March 2000. In the exchange of letters which I have just referred to, in October and November of 2000 once again the department failed to take any comprehensive advice, dismissed the fact that they had already been given warnings by the United Nations only nine months before and sailed ahead and provided the green light to AWB, turning Alia into a funnel for money for Saddam Hussein. They dismissed the warnings which were inherent in the massive price escalation in the wheat contracts which ran through this period.

If you were a responsible officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and noted this happening to the price of wheat over the contract periods we are talking about, you would think that anyone worth their salt, anyone being paid money to make sure the AWB was not violating sanctions against Saddam, would raise a question. I am not saying you would bring the house down; just raise a question. But this mob opposite, in their negligence and incompetence and in their culture of turning a blind eye, ignored it in its entirety. They then did not stop turning a blind eye.

If you roll over to the period after the Iraq war, the situation gets much worse. In June 2003 in comes a memorandum from the coalition provisional authority saying, ‘What? There are 10 per cent kickbacks attached to contracts under the oil for food program.’ This mob dismissed that as well. They did not act. They took no action. They simply regarded that as a piece of fairy floss out there, once again dismissing the warnings that came. 

Roll the clock ahead further, later into the year 2003, and you have in fact seven US senators warning publicly in the United States of their concerns about the AWB’s irregular payments to Iraq. And still the scandal rolls on. Still the warnings are dismissed, culminating in the most scandalous of them all.

In the middle of the last federal election campaign, when we were out there on the hustings fighting for our respective political survivals, this mob were dispatching secretly our ambassador in Washington to head up to Capitol Hill to shut down a US Senate inquiry on this matter. Why? One reason: their political interests, not the national interest. They did not want a squeak of this out in the public domain while we had an election under way. There is no national interest argument which underpins what Ambassador Thawley was sent to do. By that stage they had seven sets of warnings in their possession—pre war and post war—that the AWB was up to no good. They failed Australia. They had powers and responsibilities, under international law, to act. Their own actions in the handling of the exchange of letters in October 2000 demonstrate that they knew that. We now know from the record that they dismissed arrogantly and turned a blind eye to the seven sets of warnings spread over several years while this scandal ran, and they failed their country. They failed their fellow countrymen.

We have asserted in the past that the money went to Saddam Hussein, that it went through Alia. The truth is—and we now know it from evidence presented—that this whole scheme was dictated from the central command council within Saddam’s regime down. The economic council of ministers under the central command council dictated the precise architecture of this kickback scheme. The 10 per cent impost, the $12 per metric tonne in the initial rort, the jack-up to $25 and the further jack-up to $50 per metric tonne were all dictated centrally. Why? This was central, not marginal, to the financial requirements of a cash-strapped regime getting ready for war.

But it does not stop there. What we have had revealed today, I am told, is that the AWB’s company of choice, Alia—that Jordanian trucking company approved by the Howard government in that exchange of letters in October-November 2000, despite the fact they did not have a truck to bless themselves with—were very well connected in Baghdad. What we have had revealed today, just now, in the commission of inquiry is a letter from within the AWB which refers to the head of Alia, AWB’s company of choice, meeting with—guess who?—President Saddam Hussein. It says:

Met President Saddam Hussein on Thursday in Baghdad. Mr Othman—

he is the guy from Alia—

raised the issue about the delayed discharge at Umm Qasr and the lengthy delay on the vessels. President ordered all outstanding vessels to be discharged. Situation to be fixed. The instruction was issued on Thursday for immediate action.

I bet he ordered immediate action. The AWB were Alia’s biggest clients worldwide. The biggest source of foreign funding going to Saddam personally was coming out of the good old AWB from Australia. So AWB’s representatives in the region, Alia, went and saw good old Uncle Saddam and said, ‘Mate, we’ve got a problem down there at the ports.’ And Saddam said, ‘I know which side my bread is buttered on. It’s with good old Aussie butter. What I’m going to do is make sure the problem down the port is fixed.’ Put yourself in the position of Saddam Hussein for a minute. There he is scratching his head saying, ‘These blokes want to come and invade me, but they’re bankrolling me at the same time.’ I mean this is a pretty puzzling set of circumstances. There you have an extraordinary situation whereby Alia, the AWB’s company in the region, the Jordanian trucking company without trucks, approved by this mob, are in there seeing Uncle Saddam Hussein and saying, ‘The clients have got a problem down there at the ports. Can you fix it?’ He says, ‘Bob’s your uncle. We’ll fix it quick smart.’ And guess what? They did.

The scandal in terms of where the money went does not stop there. There is the question of suicide bombers—and we had some hyperventilation from the foreign minister on this today. Can I just say that he should sit down quietly and look at some facts. Here is how the money trail went. The AWB paid their money to Alia. Alia, smart bunch of operators, kept a commission. They then forwarded the bulk of the funds—guess where?—to a little bank called the Rafidain Bank in Amman in Jordan. That is the bank account used by the government of Iraq. We know from US congressional testimony that that same bank is the bank which makes payments of $25,000 a hit to Palestinian suicide bombers. And he says we are making outrageous allegations! Say that to Congressman Hyde in the United States. He is the one who has drawn the dots on that one, brother, not me.

The money trail is quite clear. This government, up until now, has refused to provide any Australian with an assurance that no money went through that account to pay for suicide bombers who blew up Israelis day by day—and not only that. There was the purchase of weapons. We know that from the Iraq Survey Group. This government stands censured and condemned for its negligence on national security, its incompetence on national security and the fact that it has trashed this nation’s good name. (Time expired)

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