Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

I am interested that the member for Griffith should quote a legal opinion because I thought he would have understood quite clearly that our system of law in Australia is adversarial. I am pretty sure that you could go out and buy another opinion very quickly. There will be a great debate about the legal points that might be involved but I am sure that he cannot just stand here and quote and say: ‘This is absolute. I have a legal opinion and this is exactly how it stands.’

I am interested that the opposition are a little bit touchy about this. They have put forward a matter of public importance which talks about accountability, the declining standards of integrity and squandered opportunities. I would have thought it was quite legitimate therefore that this parliament could have a very open debate about those particular issues. Those who listened to the Leader of the Opposition here this afternoon would know that it is patently obvious why Bill Shorten has decided that he will never win the next election. It is patently obvious because he never articulated what I thought were reasonable arguments in any of these areas. As the Prime Minister has said before, for the last three or four weeks we have had question after question on the Australian Wheat Board, and not one iota of evidence has been raised by the Australian Labor Party that the government, its ministers or DFAT, for that matter, knew anything about this.

In fact, it is an exercise of trial by media using the ALP to do it: ‘We’re not prepared to wait for the Cole commission to come down with its findings. We want to come into this place and throw as much mud as we possibly can and try and impugn decent people.’ I think we should get to the real facts about this. It is fairly obvious, as I said earlier, that Bill Shorten has said, ‘This particular group over here will never win the next election, so we’ve got to do something about it.’ What I am interested in is the fact that the Leader of the Opposition will not defend the people on the front bench even though they must have voted for him at the particular time to become leader. As the member for Corio so rightly says, ‘If we’re going to sit back and let these people be crucified on the altar of the ALP left-wing factions or right-wing factions or whatever they might be, then obviously you cannot guarantee—(Quorum formed) The member for Corio was quite correct when he said that the Leader of the Opposition should not be so complacent about this because, if Mr Shorten is so good as to stack the numbers in Victorian branches, I can assure you he will stack the numbers here too. The Leader of the Opposition will not be the Prime Minister, I can guarantee you that. Let us consider that.

I also want to say a little bit about the member for Griffith because he has been deeply involved in this. The member for Griffith has been the advocate in this parliament for the American Wheat Associates. There is no doubt about that. I suspect he has been getting leaked information from the American Wheat Associates so as to use this forum to try to undermine our markets. The ALP have substantially undermined the Australian wheat market. There is no doubt about that. Not only does that affect hardworking wheat farmers but also it affects the Australian economy. I have news for the member for Griffith. He comes in here and defies the chair at times. He has ambitions. He thinks he might be the Leader of the Opposition very shortly. In fact, he is working on it quite hard. I have never yet seen anyone with a short fuse become a leader, and he has got a short fuse. He blows very easily. I have got news for the member for Griffith: he will never be the Leader of the Opposition because I am certain that the Labor Party will not elect a person like him who cannot handle the heat in this place.

There are some pretty hard heads in my electorate who have been involved in farming for a very long time and in selling as well. When I walk along the street they say to me: ‘What’s going on down there in Canberra? Don’t people know how you sell in the Middle East? Don’t they know how you sell in Asia? Are they stupid or something that they do not understand the methods of selling in those countries?’ Of course, there are always payments. We do not like it. We have been selling wheat to Iraq for 50 years. Can anybody in opposition put their hand up and say they did not know that there may have been some payments in the sale of wheat to Iraq over that 50-year period? Can the member for Brand stand up as a former Minister for Finance and say that he did not have any idea that that might go on in those countries? Of course it does. The only thing we are worried about—and I think we should all be worried about—is whether some of that money went to the Saddam Hussein regime. That is the point that we are really debating here. So far, there has been no concrete evidence of that before the Cole commission of inquiry. I wait with bated breath to hear what Justice Cole has to say because, from the evidence at the present time, I doubt whether the boards even knew what was going on. There has been a lot of huff and puff coming from the opposition on this issue, but at this stage there is absolutely no substance to it.

I want to make one more comment, which I do not suppose will surprise the media because I have been having an ongoing row with them for a long time. Some of the statements that have come out of the media on this subject have been reprehensible, to say the least. They have not been reporting the full story. (Time expired)

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