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

My question is again to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I refer to the fact that in March 2004 Ambassador Bremer appointed an ADF officer, Colonel Michael Kelly, as legal adviser of the Coalition Provisional Authority to manage the CPA’s activities in relation to the oil for food program. I also refer to the fact that on 19 May 2004 Colonel Kelly sent an email to our deputy ambassador in Iraq saying:

Looks like the jig is up on AWB and the OFF scandal.

I refer further to this statement by Colonel Kelly to the Cole inquiry, just released by the inquiry, that in July 2004 he also told the Iraq Task Force in Canberra:

… AWB were “up to their eyeballs” in the illicit payments …

Given that a senior ADF officer working for the CPA had warned the government about AWB in May and July 2004, on what basis did the minister then instruct Australia’s ambassador in Washington to make representations to the US Senate three months later unequivocally dismissing allegations against the AWB?

See this speech in context