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

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I refer to the minister’s statement to parliament that the United Nations had only raised with the government ‘a general concern about contracts of the Australian Wheat Board’ and, further, ‘When the opposition talks about warning bells, it picks out obscure documents.’ Why did the minister make these statements when the government had received this cable, dated 13 January 2002, which was sent to the minister’s office and contained the following warnings from the United Nations Office of the Iraq Program: first, that the Iraqis were demanding a surcharge of $US14 per metric tonne for wheat which would be paid outside the oil for food program; second, that the funds were to be provided into a bank account in Jordan; third, that the system was designed to provide illegal revenue for Iraq in US dollars; fourth, that the UN believed that the company involved in the scheme was owned by the son of Saddam Hussein; and fifth, that the AWB had concluded contracts of a similar nature to this with the Iraqi regime? Minister, how could you regard this cable as an obscure document containing only general warnings?

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