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

They do not like to be reminded of it, but the truth is that, if the Labor Party had had its way, the oil for food program would have gone on indefinitely. There would have been no discovery of the widespread rorting of the oil for food program, because that was made possible as a result of the investigations that took place in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. What the opposition professes to be the one piece of convincing evidence it has is a cable from June 2003 which reports an officer from the American army in the Coalition Provisional Authority. The opposition says, ‘Look, there you are. This scheme was being rorted.’ But hang on, I say. If Saddam Hussein’s regime had remained in place, that American officer would not have been in Iraq. The Coalition Provisional Authority would never have been established. The investigation would never have taken place. I would have thought that the fact that the Labor Party seems to think that this is an issue and is trying to land punches on the government before the Cole commission has concluded its work is little more than an effort to cover up its own embarrassment about its policy in relation to Iraq.

The Leader of the Opposition says that anybody who had half a brain would have cracked this—in other words, officers of my department, other government departments and the Office of National Assessments. As a minister, I accept that personal abuse is a big part of the political game for the Labor Party, but apparently no-one in my department even had half a brain. That is the assertion. Sure, I accept that it is an assertion made about me, because the Labor Party has never had a polite thing to say about me in my 21 years in parliament. I accept that and I do not mind that. But to say that about the officers of my department is deeply offensive. Those officers have been before the Cole commission. Let me tell the House something. They have been very nervous about it. They have worried about it. It has been very difficult for them. These are good people. These are honourable people. These are not people who have been tutored by the government to push a particular line or to perjure themselves under oath before the Cole commission. If the government had been involved in corruption, officers of the department would have been involved in that corruption. It is perfectly obvious from what they said that they were not.

Let me also say this. Since the House last sat, those officers have been before the Cole commission. There is not a scintilla of evidence that those officers have been involved in a cover-up. For the government—that is, the Prime Minister and ministers—to have been involved in a cover-up, officers of the department would have had to be complicit in that cover-up. It would not have been possible otherwise. All of the relevant material would have had to be buried somehow. Whatever would have been done to execute a cover-up, officers of the department would have had to do it.

No matter how hard the government’s opponents and critics try to prosecute it in this case, the problem for them is that the officers from the department who have appeared before the Cole commission have made it perfectly clear that, if AWB Ltd was deliberately and knowingly paying kickbacks, it was doing so in defiance of and in deceit of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian government and the United Nations itself. Let us not be conclusive about this, but according to the evidence that has been put to the Cole commission, officers of AWB Ltd endeavoured to deceive their own board—I do not know if that is true or not, but that is certainly the claim that is being made. If there were a conspiracy, corruption or a cover-up, that would be pretty obvious.

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