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

This is rightly called a matter of public importance because I can identify few greater matters of public importance now than to establish the truth as to how the Howard government allowed Australia to bankroll Saddam Hussein to the tune of $300 million for 3½ years before invading Iraq and then, incredibly, allowed this scandal to run for another 1½ years after Saddam Hussein fell. The job of this parliament is to establish the truth. What we saw today instead from the Prime Minister was dissembling, dissimulation and deceit at its worst.

This $300 million wheat for weapons scandal has three core dimensions to it. It is an exercise in gross negligence on the part of the Howard government, it is an exercise in gross cover-up on the part of the Howard government and it is an exercise which has brought about grave damage to Australia’s national interests. It is gross negligence because this government ignored some 19 warnings given to them about this scandal before the Iraq war. Then, subsequent to the Iraq war, there was the grossest form of cover-up of this scandal. Despite receiving a further nine highly explicit warnings following the invasion in March 2003, the Howard government incredibly allowed this scandal to roll on for a further year and a half. Thirdly, this $300 million wheat for weapons scandal has done grave damage to Australia’s long-term national interests, to Australia’s national security interests and to the national security interests of the United States, the United Kingdom and the state of Israel. It has also done grave damage to our economic interests, to our export interests with Iraq and beyond and to this great nation’s international standing.

Today this MPI is about the cover-up. It is about the core element of this $300 million wheat for weapons scandal. Before the war it was gross negligence but after the war it was a gross attempt at cover-up. Remember what the Prime Minister had to say about this on national television some weeks ago. He was defending some other accusation being put to him about the government’s knowledge of these matters and his defence was: ‘Kerry’—talking to Kerry O’Brien—‘that was all before the war. But when the war came the dam of information burst.’ What did he mean by that? During the invasion the intelligence community were running all across Iraq. The key Iraqi officials, including those from the Iraqi Grains Board, were captured and all of the Iraqi secret documents were taken in. They tracked down Saddam’s money trail and brought all that together and this government, in about 2003, started to get deadly worried because, frankly, it was all getting a bit hot for them as it came very close to home. That was during the course of 2003, and we already know that the cover-up set in then because it only took a few months until June 2003 before they were formally cabled by our mission in Baghdad to say that all, not some, contracts under the oil for food program had been rorted. Yet they did nothing.

That is only phase 1 of the cover-up. Phase 2 of the cover-up was in 2004-05—the Volcker inquiry. Remember our fearless Prime Minister has assured the parliament that the government gave full cooperation and full documentation to the Volcker inquiry. That was simply not true. They failed to provide DFAT’s electronic files, they failed to provide a single document from the Wheat Export Authority and they refused to allow confidential information to be passed over to Volcker. They even refused Volcker permission to interview DFAT officials. This was from a Prime Minister who was pledging full cooperation. Finally, Mr Volcker lost it. In February 2005, 12 months into his inquiry, he fronted the Australian government and said that the government’s cooperation was beyond reticent, even forbidding. But then the Prime Minister tried to cover-up the expose of the cover-up. What did the Prime Minister then do? He then, having been sprung by Mr Volcker, issued this note which he was bandying around last week saying that in fact he had instructed the government to fully cooperate. What he said some time after that was that the only people not cooperating were the AWB. It was only most recently that we found out that the government themselves were not cooperating.

But, as the time rolled by, this cover-up in relation to the Volcker inquiry just kept on keeping on to the point that, to the question asked in parliament today by the Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister had assured Australians and everybody that from February 2005 he was really serious for the first time and was really going to try hard to make sure that everyone cooperated—the government and the AWB. What did we find out from the evidence presented in the Cole inquiry yesterday? That his own office is coaching the AWB about how to deal with the Volcker inquiry. The evidence presented says, ‘Keep your responses narrow and technical and complain about the process.’ This cover-up in relation to Volcker continues right through to the bitter end and we still do not know exactly what this Minister for Foreign Affairs did in his dealings with Mr Volcker and his officials at the bitter end—September or October 2005, only last year. Did they try even at that last stage to have Volcker’s conclusions watered down? All of this is relevant insofar as it relates to one core theme: the government’s response is to cover up and they had much to cover up indeed. That is phase 2 of the cover-up.

Phase 3, of course, arrived with the Cole inquiry itself. Remember that the justification used by this Prime Minister today was that Cole was given limited terms of reference because the government had no adverse findings given to it by the Volcker inquiry. The Volcker inquiry had never been given any documentation by the government to cover the field, so that argument on the part of the government collapses. Notwithstanding that, the government proceeded to give these paper-thin, exceptionally narrow terms of reference to Cole. And that is where the cover-up rests today: on the exceptionally narrow rorted terms of reference given to Commissioner Cole by a Prime Minister who knows full well how much there is to be exposed in this government’s actions over the five years that this scandal ran.

The Prime Minister consistently asserts that Commissioner Cole can make findings on what ministers and the Commonwealth knew. The Prime Minister seeks to give the impression that Cole will make comprehensive findings about the competence of ministers and officials in discharging their legal functions. That is just not the case. Under his current terms of reference, Commissioner Cole can only make findings on the facts of what the Commonwealth knew to the extent that that sheds light on the criminality or otherwise of the AWB. Mr Cole’s terms of reference do not empower him to make findings on whether or not the Commonwealth, including ministers, have acted lawfully in terms of the obligations of the Commonwealth under relevant Australian domestic and international laws.

If there is any doubt about this, reference should be made to Commissioner Cole’s statement of 3 February 2006, paragraphs 6, 7 and 8. If in the process of establishing what ministers knew the Cole inquiry uncovers information suggesting that a minister, adviser or public servant breached the criminal law, it is only then that Commissioner Cole has indicated he would seek an extension of his terms of reference to deal with that breach of the criminal law. And here lies the core of the Prime Minister’s dissimulation, deception and dissembling in question time today. He constantly referred to the potential breach of the law by Australian officials and that Commissioner Cole could seek extensions of his terms of reference to cover any such breach. It is quite plain from the statement by Commissioner Cole that his reference is a completely narrow one to cover any possible breach of the criminal law—not of the civil law or of the statute which deals with the whole body of administrative obligations ministers, particularly the foreign minister, have. The core obligation which the foreign minister has, of course, is of approving each export permit for the AWB of the 41 corrupt contracts which went through to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

This Prime Minister has again deliberately narrowcast his answer in question time today to try to deceive this parliament and the Australian people about the core fact that Commissioner Cole has not foreshadowed any widening whatsoever of his powers to deal with any failure on the part of ministers to discharge their obligations under Australian domestic law and regulations—incorporating into that law Australia’s obligations to enforce UN Security Council resolutions. There is nothing in the commissioner’s powers which enables him to investigate or make findings concerning whether or not the foreign minister has exercised his obligations properly under the Customs (Prohibited Exports) Regulations, which is the critical matter of administrative law at play in this entire scandal. Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing in Commissioner Cole’s terms of reference which gives him the power to investigate and make findings about whether ministers discharged their responsibilities in a proper way to give effect to this country’s solemn obligations under international law to enforce UN sanctions against Iraq. The reason the Prime Minister, after four or five questions today, refused to answer any questions specifically about those two points is that he knows that he is fundamentally exposed. His entire stratagem at the dispatch box—his entire stratagem for the last three months—has been to pretend that these terms of reference are wider than they are, and they are not. He is exposed completely by the responses he gave in the parliament today.

The commissioner’s powers must be expanded if there is to be any proper level of accountability on these core matters. These points have been made comprehensively, concisely and professionally in legal opinions provided to us by Brett Walker SC and deal specifically with the absence of these powers within the government’s current terms of reference given to Commissioner Cole. If the Prime Minister fails to extend the terms of reference to enable the commissioner to make findings on whether or not ministers have discharged their responsibilities under Australian domestic law and regulations, the Prime Minister knows that the commissioner has no power within his current rorted, narrowcast terms of reference to make any findings whatsoever about whether these ministers have actually done their jobs, whether they have earned the money they have received and whether they have discharged the responsibilities they have as ministers of the Crown.

To allay any doubt on these matters, and in fact in seeking ourselves to ask Commissioner Cole to widen the terms of reference, we in the opposition wrote to the commissioner earlier this month. On 10 March I wrote to Commissioner Cole submitting that the commissioner seek by way of an expansion a change in the terms of reference which would give the commission the power to investigate and make findings about compliance by Australia with international obligations imposed under article 25 of the UN charter and clause 4 of UN Security Council resolution 661, as well as the performance of ministers and officials with respect to the specific obligations of the Minister for Foreign Affairs under the Customs (Prohibited Exports) Regulations 1958.

On 13 March, the commission of inquiry replied to my letter in writing. The commissioner made it abundantly clear that it was not his function to determine his terms of reference, that it would not be appropriate for him to address a matter significantly different to that in the existing terms of reference, that it would not be appropriate for the commissioner to seek amendments to the terms of reference to enable him to determine whether Australia had breached its international obligations or a minister had breached obligations imposed upon him by Australian regulations and, furthermore, that it is open to the executive government to change the terms of reference. It stated clearly in black and white that Commissioner Cole has no powers to undertake these functions.

What is the point of the commission of inquiry, which this Prime Minister talks about at the dispatch box, if it cannot come to grips with whether or not ministers have honoured their obligations to enforce UN sanctions against Iraq as required of them by Australian domestic law through the customs regulations? This is the point which this Prime Minister has specifically evaded. That is why the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister to amend the letters patent to give the commissioner those powers. This Prime Minister chose not to respond positively.

This is all part of volume 3 of this government’s strategy of cover-up when it comes to the $300 million wheat for weapons scandal. There was a cover-up in 2003 when it all started to get a bit hot, a cover-up when it came to Volcker in 2004-05 and now a cover-up under Cole whereby this Prime Minister, to take the political heat off his colleagues and this poor, pathetic form of a foreign minister, has rorted the terms of reference of this inquiry. (Time expired)

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