Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Hansard source

As a consequence, I think that defence is not worth any further time. His next defence was that the opposition had been nasty to officials. The opposition is serious about this: holding this government accountable for the biggest corruption scandal in Australia’s history. It was the biggest single source of foreign funds illegally delivered to Saddam Hussein’s regime, and this minister can sit here and simply smirk about it.

We do not have a particular case to make against officials; we have a case to make against the ministers who received the officials’ advice. This minister and his fellow ministers received 27 separate warnings, including eight separate intelligence warnings—including three specific intelligence warnings about a Jordanian company called Alia—three specific warnings from the UN about what the AWB was up to and two cable reports from Baghdad on kickbacks on oil for food contracts, not to mention the minister himself receiving a ministerial submission specifically on this subject concerned about what AWB was up to; and this minister chose to do nothing.

The reason this motion has to be dealt with with urgency is that these are serious matters. We have had gross negligence on the part of this minister, but that was up until the Iraq war. In the period following the Iraq war, gross negligence was followed by the grossest attempts at a cover-up, and that has been going on ever since—gross negligence and gross cover-up, with grave damage being delivered to Australia’s national interests. Our national security interests, our economic interests and our export interests have been fundamentally undermined by this minister’s failure to do his job. He stands condemned. (Time expired)

Question put:

That the motion (That the motion () be agreed to.

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