Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

There were 66 countries’ companies involved in this, including those of Britain, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand and Canada. A raft of countries were involved in this and none of those kickbacks had been identified by either those governments or the United Nations. This country was far from unique, and those countries did not support kickbacks. That is not an assertion that we would make. The opposition would make that assertion, but we would not. Tony Blair did not support the 14 British companies that paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime. Is that the suggestion here? No. They did not. It was the work of the Coalition Provisional Authority that discovered the nature of the corruption which led to the establishment of the Volcker committee. We made it perfectly clear that we would be very happy to not just fully cooperate with but assist the Volcker committee.

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