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

says it is true. But they obtained these cables because the government has set up a public inquiry, and these cables have been tabled in the public inquiry. In other words, the government have facilitated the publication of this material. We have made it possible. If the government were involved in a cover-up, we would hardly be having cables published in a public place and allowing the opposition to raise questions about these cables. We are very happy to answer questions about the cables. As to the substance of them, the cables are only a sliver of the total story and I took the time of the House during question time to give the total story. All of the material is with Commissioner Cole and he will make findings on all of these things, which will be findings based on the objective assessment of a judge, not the fulmination of a desperate Leader of the Opposition.

These cables show quite the contrary to what the opposition is claiming. They show that the department was actually assiduous, that the department followed up the allegations that had been made by the Canadian Wheat Board. It would have paid to have followed through and listened to what was said in question time instead of exploding into confected anger, having of course planned the whole attack before question time regardless of what was said by the Prime Minister or me during question time—it was all planned and the little speech was all typed out for the Leader of the Opposition by his office. What was said in question time was that there were subsequent investigations over quite some period of time which culminated with the department obtaining for the United Nations, the body responsible for the investigation, the key contracts that the United Nations wanted to establish the veracity or otherwise of in these claims by the Canadian Wheat Board. Eventually, and I would have to say, as I put it in question time, without being too judgmental, rather reluctantly AWB Ltd gave up these contracts to DFAT and these contracts were given to the United Nations. They examined the contracts. Nobody had hindsight, but for right or for wrong—and the Cole inquiry will establish this—the United Nations drew the conclusion that these contracts were actually in order. Maybe they were, maybe they were not, but there was no evidence at that time that these contracts were not in order. This matter is certainly not worthy of a censure. This is easily answered and easily dealt with, as the Prime Minister and I, I would have thought, had rather comprehensively demonstrated during question time.

I will make one final point. Unfortunately I was away yesterday. I hate to be away from the House because I like question time, I like the procedures of the House and I enjoy parliament. But I was in Jakarta, so I was not able to be asked questions. I noticed that the opposition yesterday spent a good deal of time, including in the media subsequently, attacking the personality of Trevor Flugge. Let me make this point about Trevor Flugge—

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