John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Rather predictably, the Leader of the Opposition has moved a censure motion. The fact that he spent almost 10 minutes quoting from editorials was message enough to me that there was very little of substance in the motion that he brought before the parliament. But let me give it the seriousness that a censure motion against a Prime Minister and a government deserves and deal with the substance of the allegation made by the Leader of the Opposition. The substance of that allegation was that the government deliberately or through conduct equal to deliberation turned a blind eye to what was going on, that it did not want to know what was going on and, therefore, until confronted with irrefutable evidence that something was wrong, it preferred not to know anything about the allegations that were made in relation to AWB. The other allegation made by the Leader of the Opposition is that the government deliberately organised terms of reference that would prevent the commissioner making an adverse finding against me or against any of my ministers.

I want to deal in the time available to me with those two claims, because they are the only claims of substance that have been made. Let me deal first of all with the claim that in some way we manipulated the terms of reference. That is a claim which I emphatically reject. In emphatically rejecting it, I draw on no greater authority than that of Commissioner Cole himself. On 3 February this year, Commissioner Cole issued a lengthy statement amidst claims that in some way the terms of reference were too restrictive. Amongst other things, what he had to say is very pertinent to the claim raised by the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition is asking the parliament to censure the government inter alia because we rorted the terms of reference. This is what Commissioner Cole had to say:

That means that this inquiry will address and make findings regarding at least the following: (a) the role of DFAT in the process of obtaining United Nations approval of AWB wheat contracts within the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme; (b) the knowledge of DFAT in relation to such contracts; (c) what AWB told the Commonwealth, and in particular DFAT, relating to the Iraqi wheat contracts; and (d) whether the Commonwealth, and in particular DFAT, was informed of any knowledge AWB may be found to have had, regarding payments made by AWB to Alia.

In other words, Mr Cole was saying that, under the terms of reference given to him by the government, he would examine in full every aspect of DFAT’s behaviour in this whole matter. There was no restriction. He said he would look at everything that DFAT did—

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