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

by leave—I move:

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

(1)

their failure to investigate repeated warnings of breaches by AWB Limited of the United Nations Oil for Food Program; and

(2)

their gross negligence in allowing AWB to provide $300 million to the Saddam Regime through that program for the purchase of weapons and the funding of suicide bombers.

This is a scandal that goes to Australia’s international reputation, the safety of Australian troops serving in Iraq and our country’s national security. It is a sorry story of a government in a mode of reckless negligence, now fully exposed by evidence to the Cole inquiry and the shameful revelation that, presented with mounting evidence of kickbacks, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Trade and the Minister for Foreign Affairs all turned a blind eye.

Let us understand this completely. The case of reckless negligence is already proved. There can be no question about that. There were repeated warnings, which I will go into a little later. There were 41 contracts that had to be signed off by departmental officials and ministers. There was plenty of warning out there, massive amounts of it, that there were problems in the oil for food program—all of it out there inviting attention from a government official charged with the responsibility to ensure that this incredibly sensitive area of international politics and policy saw any Australian participation in it monitored to the nth degree by the ministers responsible. This clearly did not occur; therefore the case for reckless negligence is automatically proved.

Then there comes the question of turning the blind eye. There is a slightly different standard of proof applying to the question of turning a blind eye. There we must go to the details of the facts, not simply the process which occurred. Again, we on this side of the House accuse this government of turning a blind eye to the circumstances in which they were engaged. You cannot say that the way in which they handled complaints that came through from the Canadians, complaints that came through from the UN, the responsibilities that went to studying these contracts, which produced such huge gaps between the international market price and the price that was actually being received for the Australian wheat, was anything other than flashing warning signs that something was seriously wrong with this program. If nothing was done about it, then of course the case is proven for turning a blind eye to it.

We had a person appear before the Cole royal commission yesterday, Hogan, who pointed out in the course of his remarks that he just assumed that the gap was so great, and the government knew so much about it, that obviously the government must have known. And obviously that opinion was general throughout the Australian Wheat Board—throughout those servants associated with the AWB who had direct responsibility for this. They believed, obviously, that the government had turned a blind eye to this and that they were doing their masters’ will. Indeed, we believe that that is exactly what was happening.

This is so John Howard: arrogant, out of touch; spin, no substance. This government for 10 years has refused to burrow down into the entrails of their processes to ensure that—when they have made a statement out there and got all the wonderful gladhanding for keeping up the wheat sales to Iraq or whatever, and you can think of any other project in which they entertain themselveswhen it comes to getting down to the nuts and bolts and making sure that this is done in an acceptable way, our reputation is protected and nothing is happening which would render our troops unsafe if they were sent into this situation. Not a single jot of attention was paid and—we would say—with great deliberation on their part.

The consequences of it for the reputation of this nation are simply awful. We cannot assume from this that we are dealing here with one of those side issues which rise up every now and then in international politics but for which a Prime Minister or minister could be forgiven for not having paid any mind to the matters that were there before him. The simple fact of the matter is that this issue, the issue of the Saddam Hussein regime, the issue of the question of his weapons of mass destruction—or what were alleged to be his weapons of mass destruction—and the question of whether or not the sanctions regime imposed on him was effective, was front and centre at the heart of US foreign policy, the foreign policy of our principal ally, for about a decade before the war in Iraq.

It was an absolute moral, legal and political obligation on the government to ensure that in every element of Australian participation in international politics where those issues of concern to our allies were raised, where those issues of concern to Iraq’s neighbours were raised and where those issues of concern to the UN were raised, it was the responsibility of Australian ministers—not UN officials, not Australian public servants; not even, in the end, AWB CEOs and servants. In the process there is supposed to be a minister with a guiding hand and an absolute determination as the final point of reference for the Australian national interest, to make absolutely certain that the Australian national interest was being protected. And Howard, Downer, and Vaile failed their nation. They failed their parliament.

They were the three wise monkeys of this issue: they saw no evil, they spoke no evil, they heard no evil. But they knew all about the evil, every one of them. Yet they stand in here, boasting of their ignorance and puffing themselves up for the press gallery and the gallery here. ‘I am so proud of the fact that I am a completely ignorant human being’, says the Prime Minister. ‘I am so proud of the fact that I and my ministers didn’t administer one jot or tittle of this particular program. It was all the UN’s fault. It was all the AWB’s fault.’ Three hundred million dollars went to Saddam Hussein—the biggest element of the whole program: 15 per cent of it.

And what did this program do? It did three things: three things into which Australian money went. And the Prime Minister sneakily said, ‘No, it wasn’t my responsibility to look at that; it was the UN’s responsibility to look at it.’ That $300 million went to pay for Saddam Hussein’s research effort into weapons of mass destruction—that is absolutely clear. That $300 million went to arm Iraqi troops—actually, not so much Iraqi troops but the insurgent element: the Fedayeen. That same Fedayeen subsequently became the basis of one part of the insurgency which is now killing and maiming thousands of Americans and thousands of Iraqis. That is what Australian money went to. And it went to arming troops who may—and thank God it has not occurred yet—mount attacks on Australian soldiers now serving in Iraq.

Poor old Bob Menzies got labelled Pig Iron Bob for sending pig-iron to the Japanese before 1939. What are we to describe this Prime Minister as: Wheat Bag Johnny? From his performance here, he is every bit as deserving of the sort of epithet that was attached to Menzies. This is incredibly serious.

You see them out there again today—the spin merchants—as they try to work their way through the press gallery and out into the public to get their explanation out; to get their straw men erected and invite the media and the public to pay attention to their straw men. They are out there singing and dancing with them, as they go and split hairs over the levels of approval and responsibility that each has. They have one responsibility only, as ministers, and that is to make sure that everything, particularly in major areas of their departments, is done according to the laws that are established for them and the policies which surround those laws—and in this instance they have failed massively.

They are out there saying too that the demand in the United States that we examine this is a product of nefarious behaviour by wheat lobbyists in the United States, and that that is all that Coleman, Daschle and all the journalists in the United States are concerned and worried about. They are just worried about their wheat contracts in competition with us. No doubt they have an interest in those particular wheat contracts, but I will tell you about another interest the Americans have—and if this government does not do this inquiry properly, it will come home to haunt it. I note that the Prime Minister is not in the chamber—more of his arrogance. The United States complaint about this is driven primarily not by their wheat interests but by the fact that 15,000 young Americans have been killed and maimed in the Iraqi exercise, and so have countless thousands of Iraqis.

There are many Americans now who would have much preferred that the United States government had not proceeded in the way in which it did. But the fact of the matter is that it has happened, and many in the United States believe that, it having happened, it has to be brought to a conclusion that they would consider satisfactory. But think of the bitterness, the sorrow, in thousands of American households who have had their young men and young women returned to them either in a body bag or with limbs missing. The injuries that come from the bomb blasts alongside the roads these days are not a little pinprick in your left shoulder or the loss of a thumb. The people who survive the terrible bomb blasts are horribly maimed, and every town in the Midwest of the United States has such young men and women. So when they find that the Australian government has been responsible for 15 per cent of this and that funds from the biggest program that has gone to Saddam’s regime are now supporting the insurgency, they want the questions answered. They will not accept that Australian ministers and the government are irresponsible here; they will want performance.

There is a lot of goodwill in the United States towards this country. But this government has never cottoned on to this fact: Australia does not simply have an alliance with whatever administration is in place at any point in time—the Bush administration or whatever—Australia’s alliance is with the United States, and it is meant to be timeless. There are many more people who have a hand, a stake, a vote—as the American administration folk are wont to say—in what happens to that particular relationship. Whatever the attitudes of the people who support the Bush administration might be to this government, we need not only them—we need the members of Congress and ordinary decent Americans. They have had to carry so much over the last 50 years of world politics: in keeping the international community safe and secure, in taking upon themselves the serious possibility that they might be obliterated by nuclear weapons in order to preserve the central balance. And what does this lot opposite do? They sneakily go through the process of providing $300 million by their negligence to an enemy who at one point they believed was planning, with weapons of mass destruction, a similar fate for them as the Soviet Union once contemplated.

Do not think this is not serious. Do not let anybody out there think that this matter ends with whatever the debate is in this chamber, or with the question times of this chamber, or with the Cole commission. But I tell you this, and I put the government on notice here: if the United States found out that they had been lied to again, that the inquiry that was proceeding could not be an inquiry into the behaviours and responsibilities of ministers and officials, they would be completely unforgiving. If the United States believed that, however independent this inquiry, it had been circumscribed by the terms of reference that had been put onto it, do not think for one minute that they would take the view that this had been an adequate inquiry.

Let us get to why they should have known. The simple fact of the matter is that they had passed to them by the Canadians, through the United Nations, a statement that the Canadian wheat board equivalent had found that, when they had approached the Iraqis, they were invited to pay the same price—which was a bribe price—that the Australians had paid. They were directly told this. This was not a freebooter. This was not an international pirate. This was not a bunch of people who we would regard as ne’er-do-wells. This happened to be a respectable government, the government of Canada, which had every bit as much of an interest in the wheat market as the Australian government and Australian farmers. They put that through to the United Nations.

The government had that raised with them by the United Nations. They rang the Wheat Board. They asked, ‘Are you committing murder most foul, old son?’ ‘Oh, no, we’re not’ was the answer. ‘An investigation has been made, then. We can sign it off to the United Nations that there is no problem here. We have had it investigated, and they denied it absolutely.’ Remember that these are complaints that ended up in ministers’ offices; we know this. The ministers cannot claim they were not aware that all this was going on. The complaints ended up in ministers’ offices from officials who had close connections in the past with ministers and were no doubt following very closely what the Wheat Board had to say. That was it. The assurances were given and the UN ticked off on the Australian assurances. The UN may have had some degree of responsibility for this program, but it required the advice of Australians to know whether or not their rules and regulations were being offended.

Contemplate what that chap said yesterday at the royal commission about a $50 gap in the price of wheat—a huge gap, which had to be explained by something. There were other events—which our shadow spokesman on foreign affairs will talk in more detail about—such as the fact that all of a sudden the wheat contracts that the government ticks off on have the transport component removed from them and they just get the overall global amount. But, as Mr Hogan said, you would have thought that from the global amount they would have been able to draw their conclusions. You would have thought that the exclusion of the transport costs would be enough for them to draw their conclusions that something untoward was happening, but nothing happened with the administration of this program when those warning bells were flashing out before them.

The sheer, unmitigated hypocrisy of this government; the sheer reckless negligence of this government; the sheer arrogance, in turning a blind eye, of this government; the sheer worthlessness of this government, in the way it tries to point its finger now at everybody else. It was even blaming us! ‘You as an opposition did not do enough,’ it said, ‘to monitor us and make sure we were behaving ourselves. You are to blame for all this.’ Just in case it thinks we are to blame, I will go to a statement made by Senator Kerry O’Brien and Craig Emerson entitled ‘Iraq kickback claims must be investigated’, which they put out on 6 June 2003:

US Wheat Associates has told the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, that Australian wheat contracts under the UN Oil for Food program were inflated by millions of dollars per shipload and “the excess may have gone into accounts of Saddam Hussein’s family.”

While the claims appear bizarre, it is important they are properly investigated and disposed of as quickly as possible.

That was the extent that the opposition supported you, Mr Prime Minister. We thought you actually ought to do your job—which you absolutely, manifestly failed to do. Then you sent a good man, your Ambassador to the United States, to make sure that, during the election campaign—this was now way after the event—nothing embarrassing arose to haunt you. So you made a decent man say to another decent man, who happened to head up the US Senate’s investigation of all of this, that all those claims against the Wheat Board were bogus, they did not happen.

The minister tried to get up today and say somehow or other there had been a change of tune from the said senator. There was no change of tune; it is only that the poor old senator thinks that this is a thoroughgoing investigation. No doubt he will discover differently. When he discovers differently, do not think he is going to be very happy at all—but we will leave that to one side.

The simple fact of the matter is that these craven people thought this might be mildly embarrassing for them during the 2004 election, so what did they do? Even though, by now, ministers know they have a serious problem on their hands with the Volcker commission already under way, they say there was nothing wrong. You say to the Americans that there was nothing wrong with the Wheat Board. This government has lied, deceived, turned a blind eye, been recklessly indifferent—

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dishonest!

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

Utterly dishonest! And utterly incompetent. On this matter alone this government should fall. We are going to hold it accountable for the remainder of this parliament for this blot on our national reputation. (Time expired)

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First, let me respond on behalf of the government to this motion—which the Leader of the Opposition, having moved, is now not going to participate in any longer. Let me make this point first of all: a number of the allegations that are being made by the Leader of the Opposition are quite untrue. They are utterly false. Secondly, the Leader of the Opposition has moved his position very substantially as time has gone on. Ever since the Cole commission began its hearings, we have heard from the opposition hysteria, the likes of which I do not think I have heard before in this parliament—some of the most disgracefully dishonest allegations made against this government that I have heard in 10 years.

Last week, and the week before, the opposition was saying that ministers in this government and the Prime Minister were corrupt. That is a very serious allegation. The Leader of the Opposition stood up at the Press Club and on other occasions—on 2UE, I think it was. Even Mike Carlton, who is a Labor cheerleader on the radio, questioned this allegation by the Leader of the Opposition that ministers and the Prime Minister were corrupt—in other words, that somehow we were receiving money or deliberately supporting a breach of sanctions by an Australian company in order to assist Saddam Hussein.

The trouble with using that kind of completely dishonest hyperbole—in fact, it is utterly defamatory to suggest that ministers and the Prime Minister are corrupt—is that it simply undermines the credibility of the Leader of the Opposition’s case. That is why the general community in Australia does not believe the Leader of the Opposition. The proposition that the opposition is trying to convince the public to believe is that somehow we were supporters of Saddam Hussein and wanted to get rid of him at the same time. It is perfectly obvious that that is a nonsense. With the greatest of respect, I think the opposition has a bit of a cheek in the position it is taking on this issue, because the opposition passionately opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein: it was an outrage that the Australian government supported the British and American governments to join the coalition of the willing and get rid of Saddam Hussein.

Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Coalition of the killing!

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How graceful the member for Fowler is. She calls it the ‘coalition of the killing’—in other words, part of the opposition’s general approach that it was a simple outrage to get rid of Saddam Hussein. The opposition argues that the sanctions regime should have remained in place, that the oil for food program should still be in place today and that if there were rorts in the oil for food program that was just too bad. But of course the opposition knows that if it had not been for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein then no-one would have found out about the rorts of the oil for food program; they would not have found out about the nature of the corruption. It is because Volcker was able to get to the documents of the Iraqi regime that it was possible to find out about the background to this systemic corruption in Iraq. If Saddam Hussein were still there—which is the opposition’s policy—the rorting would continue, and that apparently would not be of any concern to the opposition.

During the life of the sanctions regime, this government—as was true of the previous government—always had a policy of supporting the sanctions regime. When the oil for food resolution was passed, the Australian government supported it in the context of sanctions on Iraq. Throughout the life of the sanctions regime on Iraq, there was never an instruction from any minister or from any Prime Minister of this country to waive that regime in relation to Australian companies nor any instruction to Australian public servants to go slow or soft on enforcing the rules—and there has not been a skerrick of evidence to suggest that. Indeed, there has not been a skerrick of evidence that anybody in this government, be it the Prime Minister, ministers or public servants, was in some way corrupt, as the Leader of the Opposition claims, in addressing this issue. So the allegations made by the opposition are extremely dishonest. At the end of the day, hysterical claims of corruption, like the one from the Leader of the Opposition’s speech a moment ago, undermine the credibility of the opposition. You do not win an argument through hysteria, and maximising hysteria is not going to get you anywhere.

In his speech, the Leader of the Opposition suggested that the Australian government was responsible for the death and injury of American soldiers in Iraq. I think that allegation stands on its own. It is a disgraceful and disgusting slur. Let me put it this way: if we made an allegation like that against the Labor Party there would be uproar and outrage. But the Labor Party, having supported the retention of Saddam Hussein’s regime, now suggests that the Australian government was quite happy to fund the death and maiming of American soldiers and of course support Palestinian suicide bombers.

No country, no government, has been more supportive than the Australian government of what the Americans have been doing in Iraq. The American government is probably the only government that has been as supportive of Israel as this government has been. We have been enormously supportive of Israel. The ‘reasonable person in the street test’ here is quite a simple one, and that is of course that they know the Australian government does not support the killing of American soldiers or support suicide bombers. Saddam Hussein is not financing suicide bombers anymore and has not been able to since March 2003. But if we had not got rid of Saddam Hussein, he still could. He cannot do it from a prison in Baghdad, but he could do it from one of his presidential palaces when he was President of Iraq. We got rid of him. Whatever vile allegations are made against the government—and the allegations made by the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Griffith—

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Rudd interjecting

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Griffith will have his turn.

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

have to be at pretty much the lowest level of allegation I have heard in my 21 years in parliament. I do not think the Labor Party have ever sunk quite as low as they have sunk on this issue. What has the government done? When we were given information, we have acted on it. In particular—

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh—

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition’s premise is that somehow we supported Saddam Hussein and we supported corruption—that in fact we were corrupt and we were supporting Palestinian suicide bombers and supporting the killing of American soldiers. That does not stand up to even a test of commonsense, let alone a test of common decency.

When the Volcker commission was set up, the Prime Minister, the trade minister and I—the three figures the subject of this censure motion—all insisted that not just our government departments, the Australian government, but also the AWB should fully cooperate with the Volcker inquiry. Our point is that we actually wanted to get to the heart of this issue, not escape from the heart of it. We do not want to cover anything up—quite the contrary. We were fully supportive of Volcker. If we wanted to cover things up we would not have been supportive of Volcker. We would not have made our officials available to Volcker. We would not have made documents available to Volcker. If we had not been fully supportive of disclosure on this issue, we would not have set up a judicial commission with, in effect, the powers of a royal commission.

The fact is that, as we have got information, we have followed up that information, culminating with a judicial commission which now has access not only to all of the relevant DFAT documents but also to the documentation of the AWB. That is something that the Cole commission has. That is something that we certainly did not have. That is something that Volcker, we hope, had, but we are not so sure, on the basis of some of the evidence that is coming forward in the commission.

I would have thought that this was a pretty simple case of the government repeatedly doing the right thing—a government that opposed Saddam Hussein and wanted him out of office, and that helped to get him out; a government that contributed to freeing the people of Iraq, who have turned out to vote in their millions; a government that has always opposed corruption in all of its manifestations; and a government which, on this issue, has acted not only with probity but with complete integrity.

Measure that against an opposition that accuses the government of corruption, which is a criminal offence. That is what the Leader of the Opposition has accused the government of—accusing the government of supporting the funding for the killing of American soldiers and the killing of Israelis through Palestinian suicide bombers. The opposition might wonder why it is not going very well. You have your cheer squad out there, but the reason the opposition is not going very well is that your arguments are not credible. This is a government which has full integrity on the issue of Iraq.

Let me conclude with one point. This was very interesting. Last night, the Leader of the Opposition went on the Lateline program. The House might recall that one of the previous arguments used against this government is that it lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Go on. Up you go. All roar. Yes, yes. That is what you said. There were questions here. We had resolutions. The Leader of the Opposition was thumping the table—‘the most disgraceful thing in the whole of the history of the world’, ‘this government has brought shame upon Australia’. This was because we got rid of Saddam Hussein.

But then, of course, the arguments changed. I noticed that last night on the Lateline program the opposition, having argued that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, said that actually Australian money—it was not Australian money, of course; as the Prime Minister explained; it was Iraqi money—

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Rudd interjecting

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The truth is important actually. You are always preaching about the truth. You are one of the most dishonest politicians who has ever been elected to this parliament, if not the most dishonest. But let me make this point: last night—

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The minister will withdraw that.

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I withdraw. The Leader of the Opposition said that this money may have been used for the procurement of research on weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein. When it suited, we were lying about weapons of mass destruction; last night on Lateline we were funding research into weapons of mass destruction! But still we should have kept Saddam Hussein in power! While we were funding his research into weapons of mass destruction, he was killing people in Israel by funding suicide bombers! All these terrible things were happening, but we should have kept him in power!

With the greatest of respect to the House, Mr Speaker, I do not think the opposition has a scintilla of credibility on this issue. We very much look forward to Mr Justice Cole completing his report. He will produce his report and we can all sit down and have a look at it. Mr Justice Cole is not a political player. He is not trying to make some childlike party political point to boost his support in the caucus room of the Labor Party or, as in the case of the member for Griffith, trying to undermine the Leader of the Opposition and become the Leader of the Opposition himself, which is obviously what part of the game is here. No, Mr Justice Cole is not playing that game. He is cautiously and thoughtfully looking through the documents. He is going to interview people from my department. I am very happy for them to go forward and talk to him, to give the details in a dispassionate way.

This campaign by the opposition is out there. It is pretty much the most dishonest and disgraceful I have seen in 21 years in parliament. The opposition should hang its head in shame.

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This government is led by a gutless Prime Minister who does not come into the chamber to defend himself against this most serious censure motion, against the credibility of his entire government. Instead, he despatches the minister for hyperventilation, the foreign minister. Today we have been exposed to the hyperventilating foreign minister at his hyperventilating best. He has advanced to us today the great Alex in Wonderland thesis, which is this. The central point of this entire wheat for weapons scandal is this: it validates the Howard government’s decision to invade Iraq. The thesis runs like this, and I quote the foreign minister: the Howard government wanted to invade Iraq. Why? So that the Howard government could find out that it was violating sanctions against Iraq. Had we not removed Saddam, we would not have found out that we have been bankrolling Saddam. Beauty, Alex; that actually takes the cake. Rhodes scholarship material! I have to say he leaves me speechless every time he gets to the despatch box.

What is our core charge against these ministers that forms the basis of this censure motion? It is this—that these three ministers had a national security responsibility under United Nations Security Council resolution 661 to prevent any Australian company from breaching financial sanctions against Saddam Hussein. They are not my words, but a Security Council resolution embraced by the government of Australia. Second, these three ministers failed spectacularly to discharge this most basic national security responsibility and allowed $300 million to be funnelled through to the enemy. These three ministers dismissed, at a minimum, seven sets of warnings that the AWB was up to no good in Iraq. The purpose of our debate in this parliament today—the proper place to have it—is to give these ministers the opportunity to explain to us why they chose not to act each time they were warned.

There were seven warnings, over a long period of time. We asked time and time again in question time: what was the reason that you did not act? The reason we have moved to a censure of these three ministers is simple. They did not have an answer. They turned a blind eye. As a result, this parliament can only conclude that they are guilty of gross incompetence on national security, of gross negligence on national security and of turning a blind eye to deep warnings, which threatened national security. These cases they have yet to answer.

The first point is that the government had a responsibility. It had powers. The trade minister was disputing this today. This is part of the core of the debate. We contend, and we are well fortified in this, that the government’s obligations are entrenched in its requirements under UN Security Council resolution 661. That is plain and transparent in terms of what is required on the part of the government. It is for those reasons that the government set up the elaborate approval processes within DFAT which went through each of the 41 contracts. The government has disputed this. Its dispute of this falls apart fundamentally.

The government say they were just a postbox. They say their job was to make sure that each contract form had the boxes filled in—that they put it in the post, put a stamp on it, off it went to New York and then the money came back. They say that any problems were all at the UN. The government are fundamentally hoisted with their own petard, because in October-November 2000 you have a critical exchange of letters. This is a very important point. The AWB writes off to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and says, ‘We’re about to engage a Jordanian trucking company. Any problems?’ DFAT writes back three days later and says, ‘What you are contemplating in terms of your contract arrangements with Iraq does not violate international law. It does not violate UN sanctions.’

Who provided that advice back to the AWB? Answer—the Australian government. The trade minister’s case today is based on the argument that DFAT and the Australian government were incompetent to answer any such substantive question, that that power lay exclusively in the United Nations in New York; that, if they got a letter from the AWB saying, ‘We are proposing a new structure for our contract arrangements with Iraq,’ how would they, the Australian government, approve that because, according to their logic, that executive power exclusively lay with the United Nations in New York. What did the government do? They did exactly the reverse. They did not consult the United Nations. They did not even take legal advice properly within their own department. They simply sent back a letter unilaterally saying, ‘Your proposed new contract arrangements conform with international law.’

The government’s argument is self-defeating. You cannot have it both ways. Either you have the power to approve contract arrangements or you do not. Their thesis in question time today is based on the proposition that they had none; that therefore all problems lay with the UN. But they got a letter from the AWB which proposed a radical new addition to the contract structure and what did they do? They answered it themselves and did not consult the UN. That fundamentally destroys their entire argument, not to mention the overarching legal responsibilities which lie with the UN Security Council resolution 661, which sets up the arrangements.

Establishing the fact that they had the power, the responsibility and the legal responsibility to act is one basis for the censure motion we move. The second basis of the censure motion we move is this. Systematically over the many years that these 41 contracts, which paid out this $300 million to Saddam Hussein, ran they dismissed one set of warnings after the other. They dismissed the United Nations warnings in January 2000. They dismissed the United Nations warnings when the UN warned again, in March 2000. In the exchange of letters which I have just referred to, in October and November of 2000 once again the department failed to take any comprehensive advice, dismissed the fact that they had already been given warnings by the United Nations only nine months before and sailed ahead and provided the green light to AWB, turning Alia into a funnel for money for Saddam Hussein. They dismissed the warnings which were inherent in the massive price escalation in the wheat contracts which ran through this period.

If you were a responsible officer in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and noted this happening to the price of wheat over the contract periods we are talking about, you would think that anyone worth their salt, anyone being paid money to make sure the AWB was not violating sanctions against Saddam, would raise a question. I am not saying you would bring the house down; just raise a question. But this mob opposite, in their negligence and incompetence and in their culture of turning a blind eye, ignored it in its entirety. They then did not stop turning a blind eye.

If you roll over to the period after the Iraq war, the situation gets much worse. In June 2003 in comes a memorandum from the coalition provisional authority saying, ‘What? There are 10 per cent kickbacks attached to contracts under the oil for food program.’ This mob dismissed that as well. They did not act. They took no action. They simply regarded that as a piece of fairy floss out there, once again dismissing the warnings that came. 

Roll the clock ahead further, later into the year 2003, and you have in fact seven US senators warning publicly in the United States of their concerns about the AWB’s irregular payments to Iraq. And still the scandal rolls on. Still the warnings are dismissed, culminating in the most scandalous of them all.

In the middle of the last federal election campaign, when we were out there on the hustings fighting for our respective political survivals, this mob were dispatching secretly our ambassador in Washington to head up to Capitol Hill to shut down a US Senate inquiry on this matter. Why? One reason: their political interests, not the national interest. They did not want a squeak of this out in the public domain while we had an election under way. There is no national interest argument which underpins what Ambassador Thawley was sent to do. By that stage they had seven sets of warnings in their possession—pre war and post war—that the AWB was up to no good. They failed Australia. They had powers and responsibilities, under international law, to act. Their own actions in the handling of the exchange of letters in October 2000 demonstrate that they knew that. We now know from the record that they dismissed arrogantly and turned a blind eye to the seven sets of warnings spread over several years while this scandal ran, and they failed their country. They failed their fellow countrymen.

We have asserted in the past that the money went to Saddam Hussein, that it went through Alia. The truth is—and we now know it from evidence presented—that this whole scheme was dictated from the central command council within Saddam’s regime down. The economic council of ministers under the central command council dictated the precise architecture of this kickback scheme. The 10 per cent impost, the $12 per metric tonne in the initial rort, the jack-up to $25 and the further jack-up to $50 per metric tonne were all dictated centrally. Why? This was central, not marginal, to the financial requirements of a cash-strapped regime getting ready for war.

But it does not stop there. What we have had revealed today, I am told, is that the AWB’s company of choice, Alia—that Jordanian trucking company approved by the Howard government in that exchange of letters in October-November 2000, despite the fact they did not have a truck to bless themselves with—were very well connected in Baghdad. What we have had revealed today, just now, in the commission of inquiry is a letter from within the AWB which refers to the head of Alia, AWB’s company of choice, meeting with—guess who?—President Saddam Hussein. It says:

Met President Saddam Hussein on Thursday in Baghdad. Mr Othman—

he is the guy from Alia—

raised the issue about the delayed discharge at Umm Qasr and the lengthy delay on the vessels. President ordered all outstanding vessels to be discharged. Situation to be fixed. The instruction was issued on Thursday for immediate action.

I bet he ordered immediate action. The AWB were Alia’s biggest clients worldwide. The biggest source of foreign funding going to Saddam personally was coming out of the good old AWB from Australia. So AWB’s representatives in the region, Alia, went and saw good old Uncle Saddam and said, ‘Mate, we’ve got a problem down there at the ports.’ And Saddam said, ‘I know which side my bread is buttered on. It’s with good old Aussie butter. What I’m going to do is make sure the problem down the port is fixed.’ Put yourself in the position of Saddam Hussein for a minute. There he is scratching his head saying, ‘These blokes want to come and invade me, but they’re bankrolling me at the same time.’ I mean this is a pretty puzzling set of circumstances. There you have an extraordinary situation whereby Alia, the AWB’s company in the region, the Jordanian trucking company without trucks, approved by this mob, are in there seeing Uncle Saddam Hussein and saying, ‘The clients have got a problem down there at the ports. Can you fix it?’ He says, ‘Bob’s your uncle. We’ll fix it quick smart.’ And guess what? They did.

The scandal in terms of where the money went does not stop there. There is the question of suicide bombers—and we had some hyperventilation from the foreign minister on this today. Can I just say that he should sit down quietly and look at some facts. Here is how the money trail went. The AWB paid their money to Alia. Alia, smart bunch of operators, kept a commission. They then forwarded the bulk of the funds—guess where?—to a little bank called the Rafidain Bank in Amman in Jordan. That is the bank account used by the government of Iraq. We know from US congressional testimony that that same bank is the bank which makes payments of $25,000 a hit to Palestinian suicide bombers. And he says we are making outrageous allegations! Say that to Congressman Hyde in the United States. He is the one who has drawn the dots on that one, brother, not me.

The money trail is quite clear. This government, up until now, has refused to provide any Australian with an assurance that no money went through that account to pay for suicide bombers who blew up Israelis day by day—and not only that. There was the purchase of weapons. We know that from the Iraq Survey Group. This government stands censured and condemned for its negligence on national security, its incompetence on national security and the fact that it has trashed this nation’s good name. (Time expired)

Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have listened to the censure motion today and I have listened to the huff and puff that has been outlined by the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Griffith. Despite all their best efforts, despite all their best rhetoric, they still have not provided the silver bullet that they so lust after for what they require in this House. What we have is an inquiry regarding corruption within a government organisation. It will not be the first time. I suspect it will not be the last. What they are trying to do in today’s confected rage and the outline of their speeches is provide the connection between the ministers—the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the foreign affairs minister—and these deals. The fact is that they have not been able to find it, despite the time allocated today at length for them to put everything they know on the table to provide that linkage, to provide the smoking gun and the silver bullet. They failed to do so.

What has been and is today progressing is an inquiry. It has been hearing from witnesses. The government has been providing it with extensive support and documents and making officials available to it. Yet what those opposite are after, of course, is the provision of a linkage. They say that we all knew about this and we allowed it to go on. However, in their process, they tend to go over the top. They move that bridge too far and start talking about linkages with suicide bombings.

In terms of the linkages they are trying to find, I will quote from the editorial of the Weekend Australian of 4 February. It states:

Certainly there is no evidence yet that any minister knew the Australian Wheat Board was paying off people in Iraq. To date, all the admissions by the AWB officers before Commissioner Cole’s inquiry indicate that this was something they kept from politicians and their most senior staff.

This is the editorial from the Weekend Australian. Those at the Weekend Australian have heard the rhetoric from the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Griffith and are saying that the evidence is not there—‘The smoking gun is not there; you haven’t found it.’ Although those opposite may wish it were there, the reality is quite different.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ignorance is bliss.

Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You might talk about ignorance being bliss but, if you are able to prove it, put it on the table. If you can provide a clear linkage, do so. Of course, we have had all this huff and puff about what should have happened.

I think Senators Faulkner and Ray were the ones who commented, ‘Let’s investigate this oil for food program and see what it involves,’ although I notice they did not actually talk about the AWB. Look through all the evidence that has been provided to date—the Hansard of all the committee inquiries and Senate estimates. If this were so important, you would expect members of the Labor Party to have gone through it forensically. You would have expected them to ask questions: ‘Did you review our contract with the UN to provide wheat to Iraq? Did you find any aberrations or abnormalities in this?’ You would have expected Senators Faulkner and Ray, in Senate estimates, to have quizzed the Wheat Board and the minister responsible on how the program was developed and whether there were any aberrations, but at no stage was that done.

It is very easy to be wise after the event, but those opposite cannot prove that at any time they actually pointed the finger and said, ‘What’s going on here?’ They never did that at all. They are exhibiting after-the-event, concocted rage about what they would have done and what they expected us to do. It comes back to the point that, if this government had not acted as part of the coalition of the willing, Saddam Hussein would still be in place. When those opposite go that bridge too far and say, ‘This actually provided money to pay off suicide bombers,’ that is an outrage, because it was the opposition who continued to oppose the attack on Saddam Hussein in Iraq and who would have allowed them to continue to fire their missiles into Israel—if I may make the point rather pointedly to the member who made that comment. Under Saddam Hussein’s leadership, as that member and I both know, 300,000 people lost their lives. Those opposite were prepared to allow him to continue in power. In addition, one million people lost their lives in the war between Iraq and Iran.

Those opposite are prepared to turn their backs on all of that and would have allowed Saddam Hussein to go on in his way.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You may comment all you want to, but that is the harsh reality. That is Saddam Hussein’s track record—one million people killed in the war with Iran, the constant threat of missiles going into Israel and at least 300,000 people losing their lives in Iraq alone as a result of that dictatorship. I have been to Iraq recently and seen the very large Ba’ath headquarters and how that place was administered, with Saddam Hussein and his very large palaces, while the rest of the population in many cases lived in semi-poverty. You would have allowed this to continue.

Now you come in and talk about this program. Those on this side of the chamber did not know about it. Clearly, in terms of the Cole inquiry, evidence of concern is coming through. However, it is self-evident that this government established the inquiry to come to the truth in this matter, to discover the facts, to look at the evidence provided and to find out what went wrong—who was responsible; how far did it go; were people in government involved as well; which officers within AWB were involved; and why weren’t there checks carried out?

But the opposition are not concerned about those things. They do not want to wait for the outcome of the inquiry with its recommendations of how things should be changed and its findings of who was responsible and whether charges should be laid. All we have in this House is an attempt to find a linkage with the government—and clearly that has not been demonstrated. They have had all the time of a censure motion to establish such a linkage and have failed to produce what they consider to be the key aspect.

The cooperation that has been provided to the inquiry to allow it to come to its own conclusion has been first rate. The Prime Minister, as recently as this morning, said:

Now, as to the conduct of the AWB people, findings in relation to the AWB, that is a matter for the commission of inquiry. AWB is entitled to its full day in court and we should not try and preempt what the commission will find.

So far as the government is concerned, it remains the case that we will continue to cooperate fully with the inquiry. Information sought will be provided. If I were asked to attend or any my ministerial colleagues, we would do so. Any officials of the government who are asked to attend will do so and my only request of everybody is that they tell the truth.

This was from the Prime Minister this morning. Clearly he was saying that, no matter the request and no matter who in government the request is made of, we are prepared to submit to the questioning. We are happy to provide whatever letters have been involved, any requests through DFAT for information they might have or any other government department and any letters in the offices of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister. He was saying clearly that these things are available to everybody.

The government have set up a full-ranging inquiry by an independent commissioner. We supported the Volcker inquiry, and now we are supporting the Cole inquiry. The opposition want to pre-empt this inquiry and simply come out with their quite spurious allegations of how the money was used and what it was used for. It is unfortunate that this led to the current situation. It is a serious matter, and the government take it seriously; that is why the inquiry was held. It was not as though we attempted simply to sweep matters under the carpet and deny that any inappropriate behaviour happened. You do that if you do not call an inquiry. This government called the inquiry and allowed officers to fully participate in the program. The government have indicated that all members of the government and members of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are able to be called to that inquiry. We have also indicated our willingness to widen the inquiry, wherever it may lead.

We seem to overlook the fact that the responsibility for the oil for food program comes under section 661 of the UN sanctions committee. It was their responsibility to look at the way the oil for food program was administered and to look for inadequacies, loopholes and corruption. That is undoubtedly one of the reasons the committee was set up—and we have the whole track record. For a long period of time it has been this government that has denounced the corruption that exists in Iraq. It was one of the reasons that this side of the House supported the coalition of the willing, whereas the other side of the House did not feel the need to remove Saddam Hussein and his corruption.

As I have said, one of the reasons this UN inquiry committee was set up was to administer the program and to look at possible areas of corruption and decide whether countries should be contacted to find out whether there were irregularities in the way the program was being administered. What happened? The UN raised one issue but never seemed to pursue it further and never seemed to raise it officially with the government, and it simply slid by. So the body responsible for allowing this program to continue as it did was simply the UN. The opposition say that it is all our responsibility, that they would have done it differently and that we should have known what was happening—but how? When did you ask the questions? Tell us where those questions were asked. Which committee were they raised in—which Senate inquiry? Where were the questions to the ministers? Where were the questions to the Minister for Trade, who is responsible for the AWB? You were involved in contact with the UN—every year, people from your side of the House have discussions with the UN or are assigned to the Australian embassy there. Why wasn’t this raised if it was so obvious to you that this should have been administered in a different way? The answer, of course, is that you had no idea it was going on.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member will address his comments through the chair, not to the chair.

Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I simply say to the members opposite that, if they have clear evidence of where all these issues were raised, I would like to see the evidence. I certainly have not seen any. But what is clearly evident is what happened when the vote came in after our involvement in Iraq to remove the corrupt regime of Saddam Hussein. It was clear that this side of the House wanted to see Saddam Hussein gone—and his corrupt practices, his human rights abuse and his torture of individuals. We wanted that to be over. Despite the problems that exist in Iraq at the moment, it is clear that the days of corruption that we had with Saddam Hussein have gone, and the days of cruelty administered by him in human rights abuses have also gone.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the opposition have produced no basis on which the government should be censured. They have not provided any evidence at all of any linkage to any government minister who knew about this program and failed to do anything. What they have simply done is to provide a whole number of slurs on individuals, on ministers and on DFAT officials which, at this stage, have proven to be totally without foundation. The opportunity has been given to them to provide this information and to provide some basis and substance to the allegations, but they have not done so. Of course, we know why: it is because they have no evidence. All they have is the rhetoric after the event. This censure motion is totally nonsensical. (Time expired)

Question put:

That the motion (That the motion () be agreed to.