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 trade minister and refers to a record of conversation between his department and AWB executives. The government tells the AWB ‘to stay in touch with Minister Vaile’s office for advice on the government’s public lines’—that is, on the impending release of the Volcker inquiry report. Why was the minister still colluding with AWB on the eve of the release of the UN Volcker report when, by then, the government had received a June 2003 cable from Baghdad stating that every oil for food contract had a 10 per cent kickback, a September 2003 US defence report stating that AWB contracts had been upped by 11 per cent, an October 2003 report by Australian Treasury officials virtually to the same effect and a May 2004 briefing from an ADF officer in Iraq who said that the jig was up on the AWB and that the AWB was up to its eyeballs in corruption?

See this speech in context