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

Mr Deputy Speaker, clearly Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. We can only conclude, therefore, that the invasion of Iraq was in fact illegal under international law. 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 nether world between departmental officials and ministers, as it so often does with this government. The Prime Minister’s address to the nation of 20 March 2003 also expressly accused the government of Iraq of being a funder of terrorism. The Prime Minister said:

Iraq has long supported international terrorism. Saddam Hussein pays 25—

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