Gavan O'Connor (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries) Share this | Hansard source

The matter of public importance we are debating today is the biggest scandal this nation has seen in its recent political history: the payment of kickbacks worth $300 million by the Australian Wheat Board to the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. These kickbacks occurred at a time when the Australian government was strutting the domestic and international stage railing against the excesses of the Saddam Hussein regime and preparing for war against it. There is one central, undeniable fact in this whole sordid saga: this scandal occurred on the Howard government’s watch. No-one else is to blame; this scandal occurred on the Howard government’s watch. The Liberal and National party government led by John Howard has presided over a scandal of gigantic monetary proportions—$300 million worth of growers’ money paid to an Iraqi dictator.

The Prime Minister is an emperor without clothes in this scandal. It is of such proportion that there is really no credible defence for this bankrupt government. The government claims that it knew nothing of the kickbacks in face of the evidence that we now have. If that is the case, then it is culpable on a grand scale. If it knew of the kickbacks and failed to act on that information, then it is culpable on an infinitely greater scale. Either way it stands condemned. It stands condemned for its failure to act to investigate the Australian Wheat Board over payments of some $300 million to the Iraqi dictator.

The charges of substance now against this government are most serious indeed. In the face of the evidence presented to the Cole inquiry thus far, on the most generous of interpretations this government is guilty of negligence and incompetence. At worst, it is guilty of a breathtaking betrayal of Australian wheat growers, the rural communities on which they depend, the Australian community and the international community of which we are a part.

As the evidence from the Cole inquiry mounts, front and square now in the docks are the Prime Minister, John Howard, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, the former Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Warren Truss and the current agriculture minister, Peter McGauran. The issues at stake in the failure of the government to investigate the Australian Wheat Board over payments to the Iraq regime go to the very heart of the values that underpin the democratic processes in this great country. They go to the value of accountability. They go to the issue of transparency. They go to truth in government. And they go to the culture of cover-up and deceit in a government drunk on its own hubris, arrogant in its actions and now in complete denial of any responsibility for this scandal.

This nation’s great international reputation is being sullied by each new revelation in the Cole inquiry. Piece by piece, as the evidence mounts the Australian people are inexorably drawn to the conclusion that, from the Prime Minister down, this nation has been betrayed by a cabal of senior ministers that, pathetically, now deny any culpability for the facts and the effects of the scandal.

The effects of this scandal are enormous. They are already being felt by wheat growers around this nation. There has been direct damage to wheat growers and their families as a result of the negligence and the incompetence of this government. Australia recently lost a contract for $1 million tonnes of wheat. The price of shares in AWB, which shares are largely held by wheat growers around this nation, has declined some 30 per cent—a direct consequence of this government’s ineptitude, incompetence and negligence. The damage is being done, as we speak, to the wheat growers of this nation. It is no use the government attempting to shift the blame, as it always does in these issues, onto the opposition or onto its officials. It cannot escape its most singular responsibility in this scandal. At the heart of it is a $300 million kickback payment to an Iraqi dictator at a time when this government was spinning the line to the Australian people that this person and his regime were evil and when it was preparing to go to war.

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