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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am certainly speaking to my amendment, which concerns ministerial standards. Some honourable members may not wish to hear about the conduct of their government in this matter, but this is a matter of great public interest and public importance and I intend to speak to it. The sorts of questions that the Australian public is entitled to answers to concerning the role of Howard government ministers in this matter are as follows. I believe that the terms of reference of the Cole commission need to be widened so that we can get some proper answers to our questions. First, did any of the ministers—that is, the foreign affairs minister, the trade minister, the agriculture minister or the Prime Minister—at any stage ever tell AWB not to pay bribes to Saddam Hussein in order to preserve Australia’s wheat sales? Then we have the Prime Minister’s statement of 31 January:

There were no alarm bells, there was no suggestion, there was no evidence before us that AWB was paying any bribes ...

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... the whole focus in 2002 was preserving Australia’s wheat sales—

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