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

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade. I refer the minister to his non-answer to my last question. I refer the minister to the statement of the then Chief Executive of the AWB, Mr Rogers, that the July 1999 changes in the contracts with Iraq were discussed ‘with DFAT in Canberra before we proceeded’. Given that this statement by Mr Rogers was made more than three weeks ago, the Volcker inquiry has been ongoing for about two years and that the contract changes that we are talking about were at the very beginning of what was to become a five-year long $300 million scandal, how on earth can you stand up in the parliament today and evade answering the question? Will you report back to parliament by the end of the day on the question I just asked? When did the meeting happen, who was there and what was discussed?

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