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

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and I refer to his previous answer concerning his government’s policy success in Iraq. Does the minister recall telling parliament in February this year in relation to the $300 million ‘wheat for weapons’ scandal, ‘There is no smoking gun here’? Does the minister also recall this official record, just released by the Volcker inquiry, of his conversation with AWB chairman Andrew Lindberg on 4 October 2005, when he told the AWB that ‘The Volcker report,’ in the minister’s own language, ‘itself would be a smoking gun’? Minister, does your reference to a smoking gun—in your own language, in this, your own department’s record of conversation—refer to the AWB’s prior knowledge of its corrupt payments to Saddam Hussein’s regime, or are you referring to the government’s knowledge of the 21 cables you received as warnings about this, the worst corruption scandal in Australia’s history?

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