Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Hansard source

for this parliament is that it has to come to grips with why it is that the Deputy Prime Minister of this country has failed to discharge his responsibilities to the country and to the wheat industry in this country. Talk of this being the responsibility of an opposition raising legitimate questions in parliament is, I have to say, the most appalling attempt at political distraction strategy 101. The reason this is urgent is that we have a crisis today in Australia’s wheat industry, because National Party ministers in this parliament, in this government, have failed to do their job. This crisis exists, and the reason this motion is urgent is that warning after warning has been ignored by these ministers. The consequences have flowed through to Iraq and now business dealings between Australia and Iraq have been suspended. But, in particular, the reason this is urgent is that it goes to the core question of the undertakings provided to this parliament by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister has said to this parliament that Australia’s full responses and cooperation and full documentation were provided to Volcker. The Deputy Prime Minister said to parliament as well that all the information they had was provided to the Volcker inquiry. Today in parliament, on five occasions, we asked the Deputy Prime Minister whether he could confirm to us that what he had told us had occurred was the truth—whether, Deputy Prime Minister, you had in fact provided full documentation for the Wheat Export Authority to the Volcker inquiry. Five times we asked this question and five times the Deputy Prime Minister failed to answer.

The reason this matter is of urgency for the parliament to consider is that the Wheat Export Authority is the supreme regulatory authority sitting across the AWB and has the capability and powers to inspect all AWB contracts. That is why the question we pose about whether WEA documentation went to the Volcker inquiry is so critical: Volcker could not have made a comprehensive conclusion about whether this government had acted properly unless he had full documentation. By this minister’s silence today, we know that they did not have that full documentation—that the WEA did not provide documentation to the Volcker inquiry. We know from answers already given in Senate estimates that full documentation was not provided by DFAT, because DFAT failed to provide access to its electronic files.

The case, therefore, that the government constructed in defence is unacceptable and collapses at this point, because the Prime Minister, in giving Commissioner Cole such narrow terms of reference, said that they are narrow and do not affect a government directly because the Volcker inquiry has given the Howard government a clean bill of health. We now know that the Howard government failed to provide Volcker with full documentation; therefore, on what basis could Mr Volcker have reached comprehensive conclusions about this government’s complicity in the management of the $300 million ‘wheat for weapons’ scandal? The Deputy Prime Minister’s role in this is extraordinary. The reason this issue is a matter of urgency for our parliament is that ministers and Deputy Prime Ministers are paid a large salary in order to do a job.

If you receive—one way or another, through officials or through foreign governments, over a five-year period when $300 million is flowing through to the enemy—15 warnings and choose not to act, then frankly you should not be drawing a salary. And the 15th warning was plain as day through warnings also given by representatives of the government of the United States through the United Nations.

Deputy Prime Minister, you now tell us today that, having created this crisis for Australian wheat exporters, you are now providing the solution to this crisis by heading off to Iraq. The only good news for Australian exports this week is the news that Mark Vaile is about to be exported out of this country to Iraq.

See this speech in context