Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

This government stands charged with incompetence. The Cole commission has not cleared it of that charge, because the government would not allow that commission to hear that charge. This is a government, I remind the House, that has a history of lacking in probity. Remember the ministers who had to resign, and the many others that should have resigned, because they did not comply with the Prime Minister’s code of conduct—a code of conduct that was ultimately trashed because the Prime Minister could not stand any more resignations. That is the government’s commitment to probity. This is a government that will go on the international circuit and lecture other countries about the need to get their systems of probity in order, but it does not practise that itself.

But this is no ordinary incompetence; this is an incompetence that has cost the nation dearly. It has cost the taxpayer almost $300 million. It has cost the wheat growers $500 million in lost contracts so far. And AWB shareholders have lost half the value of their investments. This is a government that has the gall to lecture people about good economic management. What sort of economic management can achieve that outcome? A management asleep at the wheel, one that thought it did not have to attend to these issues but is costing the nation dearly.

The $300 million figure was paid in bribes by the Australian Wheat Board—but, worse, it was paid to a regime the government had committed to toppling. Wheat for weapons—that is what this scandal represents. The Australian government became Saddam Hussein’s best friend. We became the biggest single source of illegal money flowing to that regime—significantly, money paid for weapons used against our troops. This is a government that should hang its head in shame. There can be no greater incompetence than achieving that outcome—incompetence that jeopardised the lives of our brave fighting troops, incompetence that cost the nation in economic terms, incompetence that cost us in credibility terms. How can this government hold its head high? Join the coalition of the willing but fund the enemy. You cannot have a greater incompetence than that. This sits, as the member for Corio has indicated, as one of the greatest scandals ever by a government in the history of this country.

Yet what is the government’s position on this? It is little wonder there have been few government members speaking in this debate. Last night they could not appear in any sort of debate or discussion about this because they were popping champagne corks, celebrating the fact that they got off. They believe and they claim that they have been cleared. And, in outrageous further audacity, they then seek an apology from those who have been raising the issues against them. The government claim that they have done no wrong. The fact is that the government on this issue have done nothing right. They are the ones who must apologise to the Australian people and to the Australian farming sector that is suffering huge economic loss against the background of already massive deprivation because of the drought and a failure by the government, through incompetence and negligence, to address one of the most significant causes of that drought: climate change. They must apologise essentially to all of those people who have been impacted, not least our fighting forces in Iraq.

The truth is that the government has not been cleared; it has been shielded by the limited terms of reference given by the government to Commissioner Cole. Those terms of reference were limited simply to criminal activity, breaches of the law—primarily by the AWB. The truth is that the AWB scandal is not just about criminal activity—important as that is to establish and to prosecute—but is also about competence, negligence and the role of ministers being held responsible for the actions or inactions of their departments, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has failed big-time.

Just look at the report in relation to that department, headed by two ministers that had to appear before the Cole commission. The report had this to say about DFAT:

... DFAT did very little in relation to the allegations or other information it received ...

Further on:

DFAT did not have in place any systems or procedures in relation to how its staff should proceed in response to allegations relating to the breach of sanctions.

That is absolutely damning. This is what the Cole commission found. But where does the buck stop? We are here in a parliament modelled on the Westminster system. The requirement in the Westminster system is that the buck stops with the minister. But these two ministers—God, you would not want any buck stopping with them! I have never seen two more embarrassing performances before any tribunal, let alone this commission. It was only a question of which one of them was worse.

For example, the performance of Mark Vaile, then the Minister for Trade and now the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, was the most embarrassing ever seen. I remember it being reported on The 7.30 Report that night. The reporter noted that Mark Vaile said he was not aware that wheat was being sold at inflated prices or that the AWB had agreed to payments whereby money went to the Iraqi regime. ‘I don’t recall,’ he said time and time again. The words also appeared 45 times in his written statement—the written record of it. How could anyone who saw that interview, and the bumbling, embarrassing performance of the minister, have faith that this was a government in charge of its responsibilities and in charge of its department?

Minister Downer, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, said he did not read his memos. What are these ministers paid for? He is the person who will always have that little snippet to use against someone else. He reads those memos, but the memos and warnings that advise him that there is something rotten going on in the AWB, he simply says he did not read. Then there was Minister Truss. This was the minister that actually, as Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, had responsibility for ensuring that the Wheat Export Authority enforced its obligations to protect the interests of wheat growers in relation to this fiasco. He failed completely.

Then there was the Prime Minister, who sat there and, in that knowing, controlled tone, denied that he ever was told about anything. We have seen this before. We saw it in relation to the ‘kids overboard’. We have seen the classic defence of this Prime Minister so many times: he does not want to know what he should not know. He has conditioned the circumstances in which the information that could prove embarrassing to him is not passed on. There you have it: they all do not know.

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