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 Deputy Prime Minister and I refer to his answer to my last question concerning the Austrade cable of 11 March 2000 and his specific answer to it. I also refer to the Deputy Prime Minister’s statement just now that the general issue of concerns about AWB’s dealings with Iraq ‘was certainly known to the government at the time’. Deputy Prime Minister, if these concerns were certainly known to the government at the time, referring to the time when this cable was sent in March 2000, how is that compatible with the Deputy Prime Minister’s formal statement to the parliament on 8 November 2005, when he said, ‘The allegations raised first came to my attention as a result of the Volcker inquiry,’ which did not begin until April 2004, some four years later?

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