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

That is such a staggering indictment of your nonperformance as a minister in allowing the sanctions to have been breached so grossly. Then there comes a question of our wheat exports. Here we have in this chamber the farmers’ friend—at least the member for Maranoa might hang around for a bit; this bloke over here, Mr McGauran, looks as though he is about to jump ship to the Libs. They are part of the government, and the National Party describe themselves as the ‘farmers’ friend’. What have you done as a consequence of your failure to uphold the principles of international law and enforce UN sanctions? You have caused the new Iraqi government to penalise Australia because of the AWB. In the last 12 months alone our wheat exports to Iraq have sunk by 50 per cent. Those from America to Iraq have gone up by 300 per cent. Again, how do you blokes stare at yourselves in the mirror of a morning? You represent the wheat-growing areas of Australia and you have trashed Australia’s wheat exporting reputation.

But it gets worse. We now have a huge legal case on foot in the United States and another legal case in Australia. If these things wash through and the AWB is on the wrong side of the law, the legal and financial implications and the costs to be paid, which will potentially flow through to Australian wheat farmers, are mind-boggling indeed.

Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, how do you think this government rewards itself after this spectacular record of incompetence and gross negligence, gross cover-up and gross damage to the national interest? You would think they would hang their heads in shame, but in the last few days—and the member for Corio is going to talk about this a bit later on—we discovered that the Wheat Export Authority, set up by this government to make sure all was under control with the export of Australian wheat to markets like Iraq, has just awarded itself, approved by the agriculture minister, a 15 per cent pay rise for staff. Despite this spectacular scandal—the biggest corruption scandal in Australia’s history—what does this government do? It pats itself on the back and rewards its staff in the WEA.

Today in the parliament we sought to extract some truth from this Prime Minister about the exact state of the terms of reference. These rorted terms of reference represent the absolute core of this government’s attempted cover-up of its political and ministerial culpability in this scandal. The Prime Minister has become the cover-up king of Australian politics. This Prime Minister makes Richard Milhous Nixon look like a rank amateur. If you put it together and look at these rorted terms of reference, the misleading of the Volker inquiry and the misleading of the Americans when they sought to investigate these matters, you can only conclude that cover-up has become their credo. Across the board they have sought to prevent this information from reaching the public because it is all too politically damaging for them.

In these terms of reference, these letters patent which were released at the time the commission of inquiry was established, there is no power to determine whether ministers did their job to enforce sanctions—none whatsoever. So Mr Cole cannot make any findings on that. There is no power to determine whether the foreign minister did his job. What was that? To uphold the Customs regulations to approve each export contract with Iraq before moneys were paid. There is no power to determine whether ministers were negligent in not responding to the 33 warnings they received and no power to determine when ministers engaged in attempted cover-ups—none whatsoever.

From day one these terms of reference have been deliberately rorted by the Prime Minister. They knew what they were doing; they did not want the information to come out.

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