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

Mr Deputy Speaker, do not take my say-so for this. It is in black and white in the correspondence I referred to today with the Prime Minister in question time. The Prime Minister stands up and says black is white and white is black. Here it is, a letter from the Cole inquiry itself saying the matters that I have just referred to here—that is, whether ministers have actually done their job—do not have any head of power whatsoever in the current terms of reference.

His second line of defence is: ‘If these terms of reference are not up to it, what can I then do? It is all up to Commissioner Cole. He can request extra powers.’ Commissioner Cole’s office says in this letter that he cannot make any request whatsoever for an expansion of his terms of reference because that would represent such a grand, significant expansion of the limited powers he was given at the very outset. The nature of the cover-up embarked upon by this government is rendered for all to see. It is stark, it is clear and it is deliberate. These rorted terms of reference constitute an affront to any sense of accountability in this place.

Where does this leave Commissioner Cole? Commissioner Cole has a responsibility under law to report to the government. He has stated he will report by the end of September. The problem we face is that he has no power to act in making determinations about whether these ministers actually did their job. He only has the power to determine whether or not criminal offences have been committed, in particular by the AWB.

It would take an extraordinary act of courage on the part of Commissioner Cole to go beyond these terms of reference and make the types of findings that need to be made concerning these ministers’ complicity and the worst corruption scandal in Australia’s history. Unless Commissioner Cole ignores the constraints deliberately placed on him by the Howard government, my prediction is that the government in all probability is going to deliver a whitewash in terms of ministerial culpability and responsibility for this scandal. That is why the terms of reference have been constructed that way.

The Cole commission of inquiry is important in the overall process of accountability, but ministers, of course, are not accountable to it. This parliament is not a source of accountability, because each time we ask a question they say it is being handled by the Cole inquiry, but the Cole inquiry is not handling it. The Senate estimates have been shut down so they cannot deal with any question concerning the wheat for weapons scandal, and no Senate inquiry can sustain itself to investigate these matters of accountability.

This is a scandal of the first order of magnitude. As a member of this parliament, I cannot understand how ministers can stand at this dispatch box and seek to exonerate themselves of responsibility for the damage they have done to the good name of this country, to the interests of our hardworking wheat farmers and to those who have depended on Australia’s good and sound international reputation. They stand condemned. (Time expired)

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