Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That this House censure the Prime Minister for:

(1)

deliberately restricting the terms of reference of the Cole Inquiry to ensure the actions of the Prime Minister, his office and his Ministers for allowing AWB Limited to rort the UN Oil-For-Food Programme are not subjected to proper examination; and

(2)

cravenly hiding behind Commissioner Cole to defend the Government’s continuing cover-up of its improper conduct in relation to the Wheat for Weapons scandal.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition moving immediately: That this House censure the Prime Minister for:

(1)

deliberately restricting the terms of reference of the Cole Inquiry to ensure the actions of the Prime Minister, his office and his Ministers for allowing AWB Limited to rort the UN Oil-For-Food Programme are not subjected to proper examination; and

(2)

cravenly hiding behind Commissioner Cole to defend the Government’s continuing cover-up of its improper conduct in relation to the Wheat for Weapons scandal.

This is the seventh attempt we have made to censure the government on this matter, and the government have cut and run on every one of them. They have absolutely refused to take a censure motion in this place, apart from on day one, on a matter which is the greatest scandal this country has ever confronted. The Prime Minister, in his last answer to me, continued the deliberate misleading of this chamber and the Australian people. Let me quote from the correspondence of the Cole commission to the opposition, when we pointed out to the Cole commission that we did not consider that the commission had sufficient powers to make determinations about the conduct of ministers in relation to a number of matters and that there was in fact unequal treatment between those people who are involved with the Wheat Board’s activities and those who are government agents, including ministers, associated with the approval regime. This is what the commission said to us:

Seeking amendment to clarify terms of reference, or to address peripheral and anomalous circumstances which arise during the course of an inquiry may be regarded as appropriate conduct by a commissioner. However, it would not be appropriate for a commissioner to seek amendment of the terms of reference to address a matter significantly different to that in the existing terms of reference. The suggestion, implicit and perhaps explicit in the opinion and submission forwarded by you, that the commissioner should seek amendments to the terms of reference to enable him to determine whether Australia has breached its international obligations, or a Minister has breached obligations imposed upon him by Australian regulations falls, with respect, within the latter category.

That is, outside their frame of reference.

There is no question that the Cole commission does not have powers to make those determinations. The Prime Minister wants in his answers in this place to clothe himself with the Volcker committee report on the activities of the Wheat Board—the report that revealed those most shameful and scandalous of circumstances. That committee, we find out, was deliberately frustrated for a substantial period in its considerations by the activities of the minister and the minister’s department, no doubt on the directions of the minister. The Volcker inquiry was deliberately misled by the Prime Minister, and we find out subsequently—

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