Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The Jull committee’s conclusion went on to say:

The government’s emphatic claim about the existence of Iraqi WMD reflected the views of the Office of National Assessments ...

I mention this and the moderate and sensible conclusions of the Jull committee because it is relevant to this question. This committee produced a bipartisan report signed by coalition members and Labor members and it made it clear that the government did not lie about the WMD intelligence. The Jull committee makes that perfectly clear. One of the signatories of that report was none other than the Leader of the Opposition himself. Today he has a new line.

Have we failed? There are 36,000 new teachers who have been trained in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. That is not a definition of failure. Seventy per cent of eligible children have been vaccinated against measles and 42 per cent against polio. Fifty-four commercial television stations have been set up from virtually zero in 2003. There are now more than seven million mobile phone—

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