Kim Beazley (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That this House censure the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs for:

(1)

its negligence in failing to act on the 35 warnings it received over a five year period thereby allowing this $300 million wheat for weapons scandal to occur;

(2)

for its attempted cover-up of this scandal through its attempts to shut down a US Senate inquiry into AWB in 2004; its reluctance to cooperate with the Volcker Inquiry; and its failure to provide the Cole Inquiry with powers to determine whether or not Ministers did their job in enforcing UN sanctions against Iraq;

(3)

for the cost that has been borne by Australia’s hardworking wheat farmers because of this Government’s negligence—farmers who have now seen half a billion dollars of their Iraqi wheat market lost;

(4)

for allowing $300 million to be funnelled from AWB to Saddam Hussein’s regime which the Iraqi dictator used to buy guns, bombs and bullets for later use against Australian and coalition troops; and

(5)

for the damage inflicted on Australia’s international reputation because this Government’s negligence turned Australia into the world’s single biggest violator of UN sanctions against Iraq.

There are five volumes here of absolute infamy—2,065 pages. Sometimes in politics it is not easy to see the wood for the trees. When you look at this—volume after volume of one piece of chicanery after another by AWB’s rorting the UN sanctions regime, effectively funding Saddam Hussein over a five-year period, on a matter at the very core of Australian foreign policy—you have to ask yourself a fundamental question about the competence of this government and the slipshod public standards represented by this government’s culpable negligence on this issue, about which it received 35 warnings and chose not to investigate.

Even though this commission of inquiry did not have the authority to go after that negligence through the terms of reference that were put down, it nevertheless did point out, as it slightly strayed from the path set by the government, the failure of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to even remotely understand what would be regarded as a reasonable interpretation of its role and authority in monitoring those contracts it was ticking off. That ought to at least cause the Minister for Foreign Affairs to step aside if the man had any sense of honour at all. The fact remains, irrespective of whether or not it was being lied to by the AWB, that 41 contracts were signed off by this foreign minister.

These are contracts with consequences. The Prime Minister, in his extraordinary answer to my last question said, ‘Well, it’s not really Australian money—ha ha!—it’s money from an escrow account in the UN,’ as though that excuses them. It is so typical of the trickiness with which they have addressed every single element of this crime—tricky in their terms of reference and tricky when it comes to the claim that it is Australian money that went to supply those bullets, ‘Oh no, it was not Australian money.’ It was UN money let loose by your negligence. That is what it was, and it has consequences.

Let me tell you, Prime Minister, how Saddam Hussein used the money that he got—and remember that our negligence was the single biggest contributor to his poultice of illegal money that supported his activities. Saddam, as a result of our actions, was able to maintain the Scud missile launchers for which the SAS were asked to risk their lives to destroy. He was able to maintain the Iraqi soldiers in machine-gun-mounted four-wheel drives that the SAS fought running battles with early in the war. He was able to maintain a good proportion of the 50 aircraft that the Australian Special Forces Group captured at Al Asad air base west of Baghdad. He was able to maintain the sea mines which RAN boarding parties risked their lives to neutralise before they were deployed from tugboats to destroy coalition shipping. He was able to maintain the tanks, trucks, artillery bunkers and logistical support which RAAF Hornet pilots risked their lives to destroy in strike and close air support missions. It would be entirely unsurprising to me if some of that money were still being used to maintain the insurgency which continues to threaten our troops on a daily basis with IEDs, antitank missiles, suicide bombers and small arms. Somebody pays the price. A lot of Iraqis have paid the price, but Australian soldiers pay the price for this sort of negligence.

While this government presided over the utter failure of the relevant departments to properly inquire into what AWB was doing over a five-year period, other Australian service personnel were putting their lives on the line. I have only gone through that which was confronted immediately by service personnel in the Iraq war and now, but before then there were Australian warships operating in the Gulf with the explicit charter to enforce and uphold sanctions. They asked questions, they stopped the boats and they inspected the innards of those boats. They did not ask a question of the captain, ‘Are you smuggling anything, old chap?’ and when the captain replied, ‘Oh no, I’m not smuggling something,’ they did not turn away. They boarded the ships and they went into the holds—night after night after night. That is what the armed services do when they are instructed to do something by the government. They do not just ask a series of vapid questions and, because the questions are being directed to their mates in the National Party, not bother to follow up on them; they actually go into the ships that they are inspecting.

It is not surprising to me, therefore, that a man so closely connected with the events which were set loose by this government in Major Tinley should now feel, as he looks at the rort of the AWB operation, like saying something like this—an absolute rort on the Australian Defence Force, on the people who actually went into western Iraq and did all the work that was required and asked of them by this government. Actually, it was worse than a rort; it endangered them. What was done by this government endangered them.

There has been an obscene celebration around the government benches that the government’s rorted terms of reference produced the only outcome that they could produce, and that was that its culpable negligence was never subject by this commission of inquiry to any serious investigation because it could not be. The government says there is no evidence that it did anything wrong but, frankly, as you go through the five volumes, the 2,065 pages, there is no evidence that the government did anything right. It says there is no evidence that it did anything wrong, but in those 2,065 pages there is not one word that says the government did anything right—that it ever made the serious detailed inquiries or that it ever did the political equivalent of what our naval personnel did day after day of enforcing their end of the sanctions regime in the Persian Gulf. There was hard action by the military, risky action by the military, diligent action by the military, and complete and utter compliance by this government in the things that were being done.

Those in the government have been very boastful in their statements to us over the last couple of days. There is not the slightest suspicion on the part of the member for Griffith or me that there was ever going to be a decision reached by this inquiry that would find these folk culpable of anything, because we understood from the outset that it was set up that way. That was obvious to us after correspondence between the member for Griffith and the Cole commission. It is no particular revelation to us. There is no overwhelming disappointment on our part for the fact that no responsibility has been accepted by the Prime Minister or by any of his ministerial colleagues. There is disappointment, however, on behalf of the Australian people.

Let me go to one of the editorials that has been produced today on the performance by our government in the Cole commission of inquiry. I will go through these in some detail a little later. Mr Speaker, you will recollect in this chamber—and we had it here again today—the constant calls from the government for an apology, of all things, from me and the member for Griffith to the ministers who are the perpetrators of this negligence. I will go to the last paragraph of the editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald today:

‘I don’t expect it will happen, but Mr Downer and Mr Vaile are owed apologies by Mr Beazley and Mr Rudd,’ Mr Howard said yesterday, citing his political opponents’ pursuit of his ministers over the AWB scandal. On the contrary, Prime Minister, it is the Australian people who are owed the apology. Your ministers, who have so signally failed to manage their portfolios, should make it.

Indeed they should. I have not seen such unanimity by editorial writers on the culpability of this government. Every one of the editorial writers in the major daily newspapers today has picked up on the obvious fact that this government has dodged a bullet largely by its own manipulation, not by the fact that its conduct was inspected and regarded as adequate by an appropriate authority. You can see that in the headlines. The Age said:

The Federal Government says it has been exonerated by the Cole report. Questions, however, remain on its responsibilities.

The Herald Sun editorial is entitled ‘A case of incompetence’, and it starts with quite a nice quote from the Prime Minister from October 2005 in which he said:

‘My dealings with the people in AWB ... (they’ve) always been a very straight up and down group of people.’

Then we have the editorial in today’s Financial Review entitled, ‘Matter of shame and competence.’ The Canberra Times editorial is entitled, ‘PM’s wheat-wash not white enough’. In the Australian we see:

Cole shows depth of AWB deceit.

AWB’s double dealings in Iraq have cost Australia dearly and politicians must share some of the blame.

They shared an awful lot more of it when you go into the detail of that. ‘No excuses for funding a villain’, said the Daily Telegraph. The Sydney Morning Herald article that I quoted from earlier said, ‘Government still not off the hook.’

They are very bored with this analysis of their activities; nevertheless, they stand condemned. This Prime Minister and his ministers say that it is simply not their fault. They will not take responsibility. He never takes responsibility for himself. He never pays the price for his incompetence. Alexander Downer and Mark Vaile do not pay the price. Who pays the price? Australians pay the price: not just our young heroes in Iraq facing insurgents armed by AWB’s bribes; Australia’s hardworking wheat growers have paid the price. AWB is threatened by lawsuits both in Australia and overseas. There are potential further restrictions on AWB’s trade overseas, and trade with Iraq worth more than $500 million a year has been lost. AWB shareholders have lost half the value of their investment.

How did that happen? What are the shattering facts? Firstly, Australia’s monopoly wheat exporter bribed the Saddam regime to buy Australian wheat. As I said, this is no ordinary scandal. Domestic laws were broken, international obligations were ignored and there were hundreds of millions in bribes, and topless photos to boot. It took special people to manage this. You see, Prime Minister, this was the National Party on tour. You can just see the emails home: ‘Send lawyers, guns and money.’ Lying with lawyers, playing with guns and bribing with millions! They thought they could get away with anything because they knew the government did not want to know. That is the nasty little secret here, Prime Minister: the essential connection between the people who were running AWB and your ministers and the government. The people in AWB knew the government did not want to know. They thought it was ‘mates’ rules’: what goes on tour stays on tour. The departments of Alexander Downer and Mark Vaile—

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