Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do not know who wrote that speech for the Minister for Trade, but whoever it was did him no service, because he did not answer the key questions. It was quite clear that at any time he went to facts he was reading somebody else’s words and each time he adlibbed he fluffed it, as he did in question time continuously—and I will come back to that in a moment.

However, in all these matters, for publicly elected officials the key question comes back to that which was posed in the Nixon impeachment hearings of 1974: what did you know and when did you know it? We now find out that the minister’s argument is that he never knew anything. That is not what I would call a great advocacy of ministerial responsibility and success because, as has been detailed on many occasions—and I will go back to some of them—on very many occasions the minister should and, by any credible explanation, must have known.

I do not want to refer too much to that rather pathetic set of contributions that were written for the minister, which he just read into the Hansard, but I do want to refer to two points. Firstly, he repeated the point that the Prime Minister made: that the Cole inquiry’s powers are sufficiently broad because the commissioner has made it clear that, if there is any breach of law by a Commonwealth official, he will either seek broader terms of reference or act upon it. But we all know that most, if not all, of the major findings that have been made, for example, leading to royal commissions causing the resignation of ministers, have not referred to breach of laws; they have referred to impropriety—to people failing to discharge their responsibility and not acting properly. These are serious allegations and the evidence raised so far suggests that they do apply—and I do not make those allegations against the officials at DFAT. I have worked with that department and it is a fine department. If there are serious problems in a department that go to questions of impropriety on this scale, with this level of public awareness, the responsibility lies with ministers.

The second point I want to make is that the minister continues to say, ‘This must all be okay because the UN accepted our assurances.’ One of the strengths and weaknesses of the UN system is that the UN does not have the capacity to go behind the word of member countries. If a member country says, ‘No, there’s nothing to look at here,’ until the Volcker inquiry was set up, the UN had no capacity independently to assess that. The minister says, ‘We must be okay because the UN said so.’ The UN said so because Australia advised it so. This is one of those circular arguments that says, ‘We must be okay because we said we are and we got someone to verify it independently who had no capacity to verify it independently.’

Today we saw again from the Minister for Trade, for the second day in a row, an incredible, unbelievable attempt to defend the indefensible and the deliberate avoidance of serious questions in question time. For example, yesterday we asked who gave instructions to the ambassador for his visit to US Senator Coleman. There was no answer. Today we had questions about contracts and meetings, which were met with either refusal to answer, avoidance or ignorance.

We are confronted here with a scandal of the highest order and a failure of proper administration, which endanger Australia’s reputation and interests. Like many other people in this place, I have spent a lot of time trying to work internationally to enhance Australia’s standing, its reputation and its interests. I do not take lightly the fact that incompetence, maladministration and culpable negligence have undermined some of that good work.

Let us have a look at what we know. Firstly, we know in this matter that $300 million was funnelled to Saddam Hussein’s regime by the Australian Wheat Board in a process that began when the Australian Wheat Board was wholly owned by the Australian government. Secondly, we know that the Australian government was concerned about abuse of the oil for food program to fund weapons purchases—because two or three years ago the Prime Minister said so. We know that the Canadians were concerned that the Australian Wheat Board was paying this money and they raised it in a manner that came to the attention of the Australian government in 1999, more than five years ago. We know that the United Nations was concerned and that it raised it with the Australian government. We know that the New York Times reported concerns in March 2001 and we know that the Weekly Times reported concerns in Australia in August 2002.

If nobody else was looking at this, what was ONA, the Office of National Assessments, doing? We know from the ‘children overboard’ affair that ONA scans newspapers and provides reports to the Prime Minister. I would have thought it should do more than that. But, if that is all it does, it should have known in March 2001 that the New York Times was reporting concerns and in August 2002 that the Weekly Times was reporting concerns and drawn it to the attention of the Prime Minister—and I find it very hard to believe that it did not.

In the ‘children overboard’ affair, the Prime Minister was prepared to release ONA advice, in an unprecedented manner—a manner I thought perhaps he should not have done—to support his political interests. Therefore, I would like to know and see what ONA reported to the Prime Minister, to the Minister for Trade and to the Minister for Foreign Affairs about this matter.

I would also be very interested to know—the Australian Financial Review referred to it this morning—what the Australian security services were doing for 5½ years not to find out that an Australian company was funnelling money to Saddam Hussein—the biggest security concern of international security agencies, which work cooperatively. The security agencies of the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand work together and it is incredible that none of them knew that an Australian government agency had commenced and an Australian privatised company had continued to funnel this money to Saddam Hussein—the biggest fear of those agencies. We are told that none of them knew and, even if they knew, none of them told the government.

If it is true that ministers did not know, it must have been extremely difficult for them to arrange not to know. They must have gone to great lengths to arrange not to know, because it was public knowledge. It was raised with Australia by the Canadian government, it was raised with Australia by the United Nations, it was reported in international newspapers, it was reported in Australian newspapers and yet nobody knew. How could they not know? They must have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure that they did not know. There is precedent for Australian government ministers going to extraordinary lengths not to know, but this is more damaging than just some internal political game at the expense of the Labor Party. This is serious stuff causing serious damage to Australia’s national interest.

There have been a lot of references to a letter of November 2000, where DFAT gave approval for arrangements with a trucking company, and to how, clearly, the AWB’s letter had not referred to Alia. That is right—read on its face, there is no problem. But we know that the United Nations had raised concerns about the role of Alia before that, generally. When that matter came to such an efficient department as DFAT, it is incredible that nobody associated the fact that the United Nations was raising generic concerns about the use of a particular trucking company to funnel funds to Iraq and that nobody asked whether that was the trucking company being used here—they did not want to know, therefore they did not ask.

We have always had the allegation until today that the AWB went into Iraq accompanied by DFAT. I heard the minister refute that today. I am very surprised that DFAT would allow them to go in without accompaniment. They would not have in the time I was minister. People who went into Iraq in that period were accompanied by DFAT officials, or at least by Austrade officials, so I would be very surprised if that is the case. I cannot prove that it is not so—the minister has asserted it is not so, but I am very surprised and it should be investigated.

What we are saying here is that we have a trade minister who has been culpably negligent—incompetent beyond belief. It has created a scandal and a farce that embarrasses Australia. It is incompetence at best. It is probably culpable negligence, and the government does not deserve to survive. This Minister for Trade does not deserve to survive. It is clear that being leader of The Nationals, he has spent too much time trying to solve the problems of his party and not enough time taking care of the problems of Australia. (Time expired)

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