Peter McGauran (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Six! They did not receive very wide circulation and some may think they are not especially interesting, but I pay full credit to him: he was onto it; he knew about the WEA investigating aspects at least of AWB dealings in Iraq. He states on six separate occasions that the WEA fully investigated these allegations. On 4 November he said:

The WEA has statutory responsibility for overseeing AWB(I)’s operations, including all aspects of the Iraqi wheat sales ... During estimates hearings this week WEA confirmed that it had been monitoring the sales of wheat to Iraq and had examined the contracts.

On 8 November he said:

The WEA has both the legislative responsibility and the power to oversee all of AWB(I)’s activities, including its involvement in the oil for food program.

On 15 November he said:

First it set up an inquiry with terms of reference designed to hang AWB out to dry but leave government agencies and Ministers in the clear, even though all contracts had been examined by at least two agencies—the Wheat Export Authority and—

DFAT. And others were along similar lines on 16 November, 17 November and 7 December, all talking about the WEA’s oversight and examination of AWB’s contracts with Iraq. It was not a state secret that the WEA had made investigations. So the smoking gun that the member for Corio promised us last night got a run—I have got to give the member for Corio credit. At this time when he needs some profile lifting it got a run. It is an old ‘un but it is a good ‘un. Sometimes a cliche particularly close to deadlines leaves a journalist with little choice, especially if they do not understand what the Wheat Export Authority is. If that is not confusing or baffling enough, there is the wheat marketing act, Australian Wheat Board Ltd, the Australian Wheat Board (International) and so on.

Nonetheless, let us strip away the political manoeuvring that the member for Corio brought to the issue and look at the substance. Where is the smoking gun? You do not need me to say there is no smoking gun. Why don’t we take the Leader of the Opposition this morning in a complete repudiation of a kind I struggle to recall previously. Has anybody got an example of a shadow minister being dumped on so quickly? One moment, it is coming to me: when the member for Werriwa, Mark Latham, was just appointed shadow Treasurer, didn’t he raise capital gains tax and his leader, the member for Hotham, dumped on him the next morning? I hope my memory is good. That is what happened here—deja vu in the Labor Party because this morning on ABC Radio by 11 am the Leader of the Opposition said this: ‘There’s no smoking gun here.’ That is not quite what the transcript of the night before says—‘There is the smoking gun,’ says the member for Corio. But I twigged there must have been tension in the camp last night. I thought something must have happened, because the news monitoring organisations got an email from the Leader of the Opposition’s office, from a Ms O’Leary, and it asked for Gavan O’Connor’s media release to be recalled.

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