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. I refer to a confidential cable to the minister of October 2003 on the $300 million ‘wheat for weapons’ scandal, on which he was questioned by the Cole inquiry, which states that the Australian embassy in Washington had been advised by the US state department that ‘scrutiny of oil for food contracts revealed that 10 per cent had been added to the price of every oil for food contract’. Given that this was the 19th warning that the government had received about corrupt AWB payments to Saddam Hussein’s regime, why did the government later direct Australia’s ambassador in Washington to tell the Americans that accusations against the AWB were false? Is it not a fact that the government directed our ambassador to lie to the Americans to save the government from political fallout just prior to the last Australian federal election?

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