Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well may we ask: why are we having this debate at all? The reason, of course, is that the Labor Party needs some form of divertissement. It is presently engaged in ripping itself to shreds. It is presently engaged in a vendetta with its figurehead and its spearhead being that campaign against Simon Crean. Why? Because Simon Crean had the audacity to say he wanted to reform the Australian Labor Party and reduce the amount of union power in picking candidates for preselection who subsequently become members of parliament. That is what this is really about. Read the newspaper headlines: ‘Queue for safe Labor seats grows’ and ‘Six Victorian MPs facing the boot’. Again and again we are seeing disarray in the Labor Party, and what better way to deal with that disarray than to show a concerted front on which they could all agree by trying to give the government a hard time on the Wheat Board.

Let us look at the reality of the situation. The terms of this matter of public importance are:

The failure of the Government to properly account for its role in the continued abuse of United Nations Iraqi aid programs following the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

Firstly, you can thank the coalition of the willing and the Howard government, which joined in that coalition, for the exit of Saddam Hussein. If it had not been for that determination, he would still be there. That would please the Labor Party, who did not support the downfall of that dictatorship. They were wishy-washy and, quite frankly, if their views had been followed he would still be there today. But the proper role of government was fulfilled on 10 November, when the Hon. Terence Cole AO QC was:

... appointed Commissioner to conduct an inquiry into and report on whether decisions, actions, conduct or payments by Australian companies mentioned in the Final Report (‘Manipulation of the Oil-for-Food Programme by the Iraqi Regime’) of the Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme breached any Federal, State or Territory law.

That was the government’s role and that was the government’s response to the Volcker inquiry—quite proper and fulfilled. In the terms of the MPI being moved today by the honourable member for Griffith, quite simply the government has fulfilled its role of accountability by appointing a commission which has powers conferred by the Royal Commissions Act 1902.

I go back to the point of why we are seeing fulmination by the Labor Party on every occasion. I think we must be up to 90 questions asked by the Labor Party on this issue to date—90 questions that have not laid a glove on anyone. No connect has been made to the government. Not prepared to let the Cole inquiry do its work and bring out its report, the Labor Party simply want to have, as I said, a smokescreen and divertissement which takes people’s attention away from what is really going on in the Labor Party—which is a mammoth bloodletting; a vicious vendetta against Simon Crean in particular for his actions in reducing the power of the trade unions and a vendetta against everyone who voted for the disastrous Latham experiment.

I can understand why the Labor Party are angry about the fact that they were stupid enough to pick Latham. I think, if you look at the way they self-destructed during the campaign under a man who clearly could not handle it, all those people who were there to—

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