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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I have raised in this House the issue of this government’s involvement in the war in Iraq, which is an entirely legitimate topic in relation to the appropriation debate.

I want to raise with the House just how it is that the Australian Wheat Board has not breached the government’s own Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism Act 2002. On 28 September 2001, just a fortnight after the September 11 attacks by al-Qaeda, UN Security Council resolution 1373 called on member states to: first, prevent and suppress the financing of terrorist acts; second, criminalise the financing of terrorist acts; and, third, prohibit their nationals or any persons or entities within their territories from making any assets available to terrorists or entities associated with terrorism.

The Howard government implemented this resolution through the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism Bill 2002. That bill passed through this House in March 2002 and the Senate in June 2002 and came into law on 6 July 2002. The act establishes the offence of financing terrorism, providing that anyone who provides funds, regardless of whether the funds will be used to facilitate or engage in a terrorist act, is guilty of an offence. The offence can be anywhere in the world. It is not limited to Australia. It can be committed by a corporation like the AWB, where the penalty is a fine of up to $1.1 million, or by an individual, where the maximum penalty is imprisonment for life. There is now no doubt that AWB provided kickbacks to the Iraqi regime and no doubt that it did so after July 2002.

See this speech in context