Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2005 amends the Ministers of State Act 1952 to increase the limit on the sum appropriated from the Commonwealth consolidated fund in 2005-06 and beyond in respect of the salaries of ministers of state. The increase is necessary following a determination of the Remuneration Tribunal with effect from 1 July 2005 that increased the base salaries of all senators and members. The additional salaries of ministers of state are set as a percentage of the base salaries of senators and members, so when the base reference point increases for senators and members, so too do the salaries of ministers.

Labor supports the bill, in line with its position that issues to do with MPs and ministerial entitlements should be determined by a body independent of MPs themselves, that is to say, the Remuneration Tribunal. But I wish to move a second reading amendment as follows:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for allowing Ministerial standards and accountability to decline at the same time as Ministerial salaries are increasing”.

It is all very well for ministerial salaries to rise, but what is happening to ministerial standards? There has been no more striking example of the appalling standards of ministerial conduct and accountability than the government’s decision to go to war with Iraq and the AWB scandal which has emerged in its wake.

There can be no more serious decision a government can take than the decision to go to war. The decision to go to war in Iraq was even more serious as it was made without the support, the authority or the mandate of the United Nations. We took it on ourselves to join the coalition of the willing—to act like cowboys, to throw out the international rule of law, to send a message to everyone else in the world that we believe that might is right.

The Howard government told us that we had to do this, because Iraq was a threat to us—that we were in danger from Iraq, which possessed weapons of mass destruction. Never mind the fact that the United Nations inspectors had not found any such weapons, and were asking for more time to continue the search. The government told us that there was no time to waste—we had to act now.

Were there any weapons of mass destruction? No. In fact there were none at all. Not one! The governments of the United States and Australia sent us to war based on a lie. You would think there would be repercussions. You would think there would be consequences. You would think there would be recriminations. You would think heads would roll. You would be wrong. No heads rolled. The Prime Minister and his ministers claimed they were acting on advice from their security chiefs, so they could not be held to account. This advice never materialised, and no security chiefs, if any of them really did provide this false advice, were ever brought to account. No-one was responsible for this debacle. Perhaps society was to blame. Responsibility just sat out there in the murky netherworld between departmental officials and ministers, as it so often does with this government.

The war in Iraq inexorably and inevitably turned into another Vietnam, weakening and undermining Australia’s moral authority in the war on terror and giving aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden and fundamentalist terrorists. Foreign Minister Downer said that the war would be over in months, not years. Less than six weeks away, on 20 March, is the third anniversary of the invasion—with no end in sight and no exit strategy; an utter mess.

As the debacle unfolded, a second, largely retrospective, justification for the war emerged: the need to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I say ‘largely retrospective’ because, before the war, Prime Minister Howard expressly rejected the idea of regime change as a reason for going to war. But over the last three years there has been no shortage of rhetorical puffery from those opposite about the evils of the Saddam regime and the need to destroy it. And so it is that I have been absolutely astonished by the revelation from the Cole commission that the AWB deliberately sabotaged the United Nations oil for food program and paid $300 million in corrupt payments to Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq.

I find the Howard government’s double standards on this matter absolutely breathtaking. On the one hand, the government told us the Saddam Hussein regime was so evil that we had to go to war to overthrow it, at the cost of at least 30,000 lives of Iraqi men, women and children. We were sucked into a debilitating war that has no end in sight. It is producing a whole new wave of recruits for Osama bin Laden’s cause, and those recruits are becoming highly skilled and trained in the black arts of bombing, kidnapping and murder. On the other hand, through the AWB, the Australian government were so anxious to do business with Saddam Hussein that we did everything we could to sneak our way around the United Nations sanctions and pay him $300 million. The foreign minister kept telling us that Saddam was so evil but, at the same time, we were his biggest benefactors. As the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are being pieced together, it is increasingly evident that the AWB payments provided Saddam with the largest access to discretionary cash.

There are two very serious consequences from this. Firstly, money we gave the Iraqi government ended up as rewards and incentives for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers—blood money. Secondly, it is increasingly clear that it was these bribes that kept Saddam on his feet and enabled him to behave in a way that made the US administration determined to remove him. You have to wonder whether the war in Iraq might have been avoided altogether and regime change achieved without invasion had AWB kickbacks not been propping up Saddam.

But now the real story is coming out. The government is being dragged, kicking and screaming, to the truth. First, there was the cover-up by AWB itself. They claimed that they were the innocent victims of the deceit of Saddam Hussein. Even after the Volcker inquiry, AWB claimed: ‘The AWB was an unwitting participant in an elaborate scheme of deception,’ and ‘The AWB never acted in a manner suggesting complicity in a wrongful endeavour,’ and, ‘The AWB never acted secretively.’ However, the Cole commission has uncovered emails between AWB officers, which stated: ‘We need to find a way to implement the payments as Iraq’s account’s frozen,’ and, ‘Discretion is required here,’ and ‘We could probably bypass the account in Jordan and transfer directly to the special nominated account as long as the link was not apparent that the funds were going into Iraq.’

Blind Freddie could see what was going on here. AWB was trying to get around the UN sanctions, which said that no money was to go to Saddam. AWB was trying to deceive the UN. Certainly counsel assisting the Cole commission is in no doubt about these matters. In his opening statement to the commission, Mr Cole made five points, notwithstanding AWB claims and denials: firstly, that AWB always knew that Alia was a conduit for the payment of money to Iraq; secondly, the fees, whether described as trucking fees, inland transportation fees or after-sales service fees, were always known to be fees payable to Iraq; thirdly, these matters were always known to AWB to be in breach of UN sanctions; fourthly, fees were paid to Alia directly or through third parties in the knowledge that they would be transmitted to Iraq; and, fifthly, these matters were known at a high level within the AWB.

This situation is absolutely unacceptable. We lecture other countries about standards of governance and corruption. We cannot tolerate such corruption in our own ranks. The head of AWB, Andrew Lindberg, has put himself in an absolutely untenable position. He told the Cole inquiry that he had done nothing after he learned that AWB employees had deceived the United Nations. He said, ‘There was no basis, I believe, to do anything.’ This is incredible. There was no advice to the federal government about a major diplomatic embarrassment—Australia bankrolling Saddam Hussein? No disciplinary action was taken against those responsible? Furthermore, Mr Lindberg conceded that evidence he gave last year to the United Nations inquiry into the oil for food scandal might have been wrong. Just when was he going to tell the United Nations?

The next day, AWB gave advice to the Australian Stock Exchange about its role in the oil for food scandal—advice which was immediately attacked by the Cole commission as misleading and was withdrawn before the day was out. Mr Lindberg was unable to be clear with the commission about whether or not he approved this advice. Has the Howard government done anything about this? No, it has done absolutely nothing. Mr Lindberg has also told the inquiry that he did not necessarily read every memo that was prepared for him and that he knew ‘very little’ about AWB’s dealings with Iraq, despite having visited the country just months before the US invasion to secure new wheat contracts. Such a performance from a managing director with regard to the biggest corruption scandal in Australian history is simply unacceptable. That the Howard government has not already given a message to Mr Lindberg to resign says volumes about its standards of accountability.

First we had AWB saying they were the innocent victims of the deceit of Saddam Hussein. This has been exposed for all the world to see. We had the Prime Minister saying, when the United Nations first implicated AWB in the oil for food scandal, that he had always found the people in AWB to be:

... a very straight up and down group of people, and I can’t on my knowledge and understanding of the people involved, imagine for a moment that they would have ... been involved in anything improper.

That was an extraordinary statement. On just what did he base it? Inevitably we will hear a different tune, and the foreign minister is now out there suggesting that his department were the innocent victims of the deceit of AWB. Just to make sure the government does not get caught by the Cole commission, the Prime Minister has rorted the terms of reference of the commission to expressly exclude it from making findings—

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