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

An article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald and the Age penned by Matthew Moore falsely accuses both the Minister for Foreign Affairs and me of distorting test results during a white powder incident last year at the Indonesian embassy. There are serious inaccuracies in the article. It suggests, amongst other things, that the foreign minister and I added the term ‘biological agent’ to the description of the substance received at the Indonesian embassy. The article also alleges that the public was never informed of the true nature of the substance. Both of those claims are wrong.

Advice that the white powder posted to the embassy was a biological agent was included in an incident report prepared by the Australian government’s Protective Security Coordination Centre at 2.13 pm on 1 June. The advice said:

Initial analysis of the powder has tested positive as a biological agent—

those are the words of the authority, not words added by the foreign minister and me—

though further testing will need to be carried out to determine what that substance is.

The foreign minister provided a statement to the House of Representatives approximately an hour later. He quoted directly from that report and he also advised that further testing would be required to determine the exact nature of the substance. He also said there was a possibility the Indonesian embassy would be shut down for quite a period of time and the 22 staff would remain in isolation.

In media interviews later that day when answering questions about the white powder incident I was also quoting from the advice provided by PSCC. Advice at 6.24 am the following day said:

Testing by health authorities in the ACT reveal that the substance was gram positive bacillus bacteria, which has a number of different forms. While one form, anthrax, can be lethal, others are naturally present and harmless.

The article in the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald alleges that this advice was not provided to the public. That is quite simply factually wrong. In question time that day, 2 June, I advised that analysis of the substance indicated that, in all probability, it was not toxic. I did that at question time. The Chief Police Officer of the ACT and the Chief Minister of the ACT also made this clear in a press conference on 2 June.

Finally, prior to publication of his erroneous article, Mr Moore was advised there were other documents that did indicate the material was biological but he chose not to pursue them or include any reference to them in his article, operating on the principle that facts should not get in the way of a good story. His conclusion that the government exaggerated the threat is both outrageous and factually incorrect.

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