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

I thank the honourable member for Blair for his question and his interest. As I think the House is beginning to know now, the final Volcker report was issued in October 2005, very recently. Like Australia, the United Kingdom government fully cooperated, to the best of my understanding, with the Volcker commission, but in the final report there were 14 British companies named as having been involved with illicit payments, including two from the giant pharmaceutical group Glaxo, which I think honourable members would be familiar with.

By the way, the report also named a number of UK personalities as having received barrels of oil from Saddam Hussein, including the member of the House of Commons for Bethnal Green and Bow, Mr George Galloway. Honourable members will remember that this once Labour member of parliament was a very strong supporter of Saddam Hussein.

Following the publication of the Volcker report—and there is absolutely no evidence that the British government had any involvement in or complicity with the payment of kickbacks by the 14 British companies—the British government stated, on 22 November last year, that it would bring the report to the attention of the Serious Fraud Office and they would review Volcker to determine whether further investigations were warranted. But what the British government did not do—and made perfectly clear it would not do—was set up a separate independent inquiry or a royal commission.

In saying that, I make no criticism of the British government, despite the fact that there were 14 British companies involved. What is interesting is that there are not allegations in Britain that the British government should have known all about those 14 companies being involved in making illicit payments to entities in Saddam Hussein’s regime.

It simply follows that in this country the government has set up an independent commission of inquiry with all the powers of a royal commission, and that independent commission of inquiry is able to review all of the evidence and to make findings. We look forward to hearing what the Cole commission has to say on or around 31 March when it is scheduled to complete its work.

But I make the point that, of the 65 other countries which had over 2,000 companies that Volcker found had been involved in kickbacks—14 in the UK, four in Canada, 15 in Sweden, over 50 in Germany, two in New Zealand, 21 in Denmark and over 50 in Switzerland—none has set up an inquiry that is commensurate with the Cole inquiry. None of them has set up a transparent and open process in the way we have. And I know, from the response our diplomats are getting around the world, that what the Australian government has done in response to this has been well received and well regarded.

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