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

Alistair Nicolas did not work in my department; he worked for Austrade. But I share a department with the Minister for Trade. Some of these officers work in my department. The Leader of the Opposition singled out particular people in a television interview. This causes these people great pain. I will say more than that: these are good people, who work hard, and they are decent people, and they do not deserve to be dragged through the mud by the Leader of the Opposition.

The Leader of the Opposition wants to move a censure motion here, a confected argument based on the fact that the government has made available documents. The government made available documents to Cole, which have been tabled in the Cole commission. The Leader of the Opposition argues that this is a cover-up. It is a cover-up but the government makes the documents available through a public inquiry that the government established! It beggars belief that that could possibly be a cover-up.

The point we make is that, unlike at least 63 of the 66 countries that had companies involved in oil for food rorts according to the Volcker report, we want to get to the bottom of this. The government thinks that it is best for Australia that we deal with this up-front and in a transparent way—and if there are eventually to be prosecutions that should happen. If we wanted to do what other countries have decided to do, we would have just referred this matter to the Federal Police or to the Australian Crime Commission or whatever. Of course the government could have done that. That was absolutely an option for us. That was an option we considered, and we decided we would not do that. We decided that what we would do was set up a transparent public inquiry. And when it comes to this point about whether the Cole commission’s terms of reference have anything to do with the government—of course they do.

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