Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

This letter from the embassy to the mayor of Beijing continues:

I understand that the project may be experiencing some delays and the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade) office of the Australian Embassy, Beijing, would appreciate any assistance that the office of the Mayor of the Beijing Municipal People’s Government is able to provide so that the project can move forward in line with project timelines.

It goes on:

The Australian government has maintained an ongoing interest in this high-profile project in the centre of Beijing. As you may be aware, the Australian Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon. Mark Vaile MP, visited the project during his December 2006 visit to Beijing. The project—

and this goes to the question—

involves the provision of products, services and facilities supplied by both Australian and Chinese companies to what will be a landmark project of cooperation between Australian and Chinese businesses.

That is a letter from the Australian Embassy in Beijing seeking the cooperation of the municipality of Beijing in support of this particular company and invoking the Deputy Prime Minister as a keen supporter of the project, he himself having visited the project at that time. Of course, the honourable member said in his statement this morning that his government knew nothing of this particular company. I would suggest that letter suggests that his government in fact knew quite a lot about this company and what it was doing. The question was: what did the company do? I have referred to what the company did.

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