Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today we saw in the House why this government is increasingly being described by members of the public across this country as the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in recent memory. Today, yet again, the government refused to allow the parliament to debate a censure motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition. Today the government gagged the MPI, because it wants to silence the opposition on what is clearly the greatest act of corruption and treachery in this country’s recent memory. The government has sought to rort the outcome of the royal commission into the ‘wheat for weapons’ scandal by deliberately limiting the terms of reference and firewalling the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

If this government were an open, democratic, accountable administration, it would ensure that ministers relevant to this matter and indeed their staff would provide evidence on what they know and what they have known throughout this awful national disgrace. This government would have allowed an effective scrutiny of all the decisions made by agencies and by ministers and the actions by staff and ministers. They could have allowed $300 million to be provided to an enemy of this country. It is a treacherous situation, where we have a government that does not want to get to the bottom of $300 million being provided to the Saddam Hussein regime, which would have used that money to resource weapons that would have been used against forces in the invasion of that country.

I think it is fair to say that it is not just Labor who have pointed the finger at the government and, in particular, at the Minister for Foreign Affairs. The heading of yesterday’s editorial in the Australian was absolutely right when it said that the credibility of Mr Downer—the ‘Billy Bunter’ of Australian politics—is crippled. Indeed, in this editorial, the Australian went on to say:

Short of a neon sign flashing “Saddam bribes hidden here” it is hard to imagine what more Mr Downer and DFAT would have needed to comprehensively investigate AWB, long before the Volcker inquiry belled the cat.

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