Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Ministers of State Amendment Bill 2005 amends the Ministers of State Act 1952 to increase the limit on the sum appropriated from the Commonwealth consolidated fund in 2005-06 and beyond in respect of the salaries of ministers of state. The increase is necessary following a determination of the Remuneration Tribunal with effect from 1 July 2005 that increased the base salaries of all senators and members. The additional salaries of ministers of state are set as a percentage of the base salaries of senators and members, so when the base reference point increases for senators and members, so too do the salaries of ministers.

Labor supports the bill, in line with its position that issues to do with MPs and ministerial entitlements should be determined by a body independent of MPs themselves, that is to say, the Remuneration Tribunal. But I wish to move a second reading amendment as follows:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for allowing Ministerial standards and accountability to decline at the same time as Ministerial salaries are increasing”.

It is all very well for ministerial salaries to rise, but what is happening to ministerial standards? There has been no more striking example of the appalling standards of ministerial conduct and accountability than the government’s decision to go to war with Iraq and the AWB scandal which has emerged in its wake.

There can be no more serious decision a government can take than the decision to go to war. The decision to go to war in Iraq was even more serious as it was made without the support, the authority or the mandate of the United Nations. We took it on ourselves to join the coalition of the willing—to act like cowboys, to throw out the international rule of law, to send a message to everyone else in the world that we believe that might is right.

The Howard government told us that we had to do this, because Iraq was a threat to us—that we were in danger from Iraq, which possessed weapons of mass destruction. Never mind the fact that the United Nations inspectors had not found any such weapons, and were asking for more time to continue the search. The government told us that there was no time to waste—we had to act now.

Were there any weapons of mass destruction? No. In fact there were none at all. Not one! The governments of the United States and Australia sent us to war based on a lie. You would think there would be repercussions. You would think there would be consequences. You would think there would be recriminations. You would think heads would roll. You would be wrong. No heads rolled. The Prime Minister and his ministers claimed they were acting on advice from their security chiefs, so they could not be held to account. This advice never materialised, and no security chiefs, if any of them really did provide this false advice, were ever brought to account. No-one was responsible for this debacle. Perhaps society was to blame. Responsibility just sat out there in the murky netherworld between departmental officials and ministers, as it so often does with this government.

The war in Iraq inexorably and inevitably turned into another Vietnam, weakening and undermining Australia’s moral authority in the war on terror and giving aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden and fundamentalist terrorists. Foreign Minister Downer said that the war would be over in months, not years. Less than six weeks away, on 20 March, is the third anniversary of the invasion—with no end in sight and no exit strategy; an utter mess.

As the debacle unfolded, a second, largely retrospective, justification for the war emerged: the need to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I say ‘largely retrospective’ because, before the war, Prime Minister Howard expressly rejected the idea of regime change as a reason for going to war. But over the last three years there has been no shortage of rhetorical puffery from those opposite about the evils of the Saddam regime and the need to destroy it. And so it is that I have been absolutely astonished by the revelation from the Cole commission that the AWB deliberately sabotaged the United Nations oil for food program and paid $300 million in corrupt payments to Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq.

I find the Howard government’s double standards on this matter absolutely breathtaking. On the one hand, the government told us the Saddam Hussein regime was so evil that we had to go to war to overthrow it, at the cost of at least 30,000 lives of Iraqi men, women and children. We were sucked into a debilitating war that has no end in sight. It is producing a whole new wave of recruits for Osama bin Laden’s cause, and those recruits are becoming highly skilled and trained in the black arts of bombing, kidnapping and murder. On the other hand, through the AWB, the Australian government were so anxious to do business with Saddam Hussein that we did everything we could to sneak our way around the United Nations sanctions and pay him $300 million. The foreign minister kept telling us that Saddam was so evil but, at the same time, we were his biggest benefactors. As the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are being pieced together, it is increasingly evident that the AWB payments provided Saddam with the largest access to discretionary cash.

There are two very serious consequences from this. Firstly, money we gave the Iraqi government ended up as rewards and incentives for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers—blood money. Secondly, it is increasingly clear that it was these bribes that kept Saddam on his feet and enabled him to behave in a way that made the US administration determined to remove him. You have to wonder whether the war in Iraq might have been avoided altogether and regime change achieved without invasion had AWB kickbacks not been propping up Saddam.

But now the real story is coming out. The government is being dragged, kicking and screaming, to the truth. First, there was the cover-up by AWB itself. They claimed that they were the innocent victims of the deceit of Saddam Hussein. Even after the Volcker inquiry, AWB claimed: ‘The AWB was an unwitting participant in an elaborate scheme of deception,’ and ‘The AWB never acted in a manner suggesting complicity in a wrongful endeavour,’ and, ‘The AWB never acted secretively.’ However, the Cole commission has uncovered emails between AWB officers, which stated: ‘We need to find a way to implement the payments as Iraq’s account’s frozen,’ and, ‘Discretion is required here,’ and ‘We could probably bypass the account in Jordan and transfer directly to the special nominated account as long as the link was not apparent that the funds were going into Iraq.’

Blind Freddie could see what was going on here. AWB was trying to get around the UN sanctions, which said that no money was to go to Saddam. AWB was trying to deceive the UN. Certainly counsel assisting the Cole commission is in no doubt about these matters. In his opening statement to the commission, Mr Cole made five points, notwithstanding AWB claims and denials: firstly, that AWB always knew that Alia was a conduit for the payment of money to Iraq; secondly, the fees, whether described as trucking fees, inland transportation fees or after-sales service fees, were always known to be fees payable to Iraq; thirdly, these matters were always known to AWB to be in breach of UN sanctions; fourthly, fees were paid to Alia directly or through third parties in the knowledge that they would be transmitted to Iraq; and, fifthly, these matters were known at a high level within the AWB.

This situation is absolutely unacceptable. We lecture other countries about standards of governance and corruption. We cannot tolerate such corruption in our own ranks. The head of AWB, Andrew Lindberg, has put himself in an absolutely untenable position. He told the Cole inquiry that he had done nothing after he learned that AWB employees had deceived the United Nations. He said, ‘There was no basis, I believe, to do anything.’ This is incredible. There was no advice to the federal government about a major diplomatic embarrassment—Australia bankrolling Saddam Hussein? No disciplinary action was taken against those responsible? Furthermore, Mr Lindberg conceded that evidence he gave last year to the United Nations inquiry into the oil for food scandal might have been wrong. Just when was he going to tell the United Nations?

The next day, AWB gave advice to the Australian Stock Exchange about its role in the oil for food scandal—advice which was immediately attacked by the Cole commission as misleading and was withdrawn before the day was out. Mr Lindberg was unable to be clear with the commission about whether or not he approved this advice. Has the Howard government done anything about this? No, it has done absolutely nothing. Mr Lindberg has also told the inquiry that he did not necessarily read every memo that was prepared for him and that he knew ‘very little’ about AWB’s dealings with Iraq, despite having visited the country just months before the US invasion to secure new wheat contracts. Such a performance from a managing director with regard to the biggest corruption scandal in Australian history is simply unacceptable. That the Howard government has not already given a message to Mr Lindberg to resign says volumes about its standards of accountability.

First we had AWB saying they were the innocent victims of the deceit of Saddam Hussein. This has been exposed for all the world to see. We had the Prime Minister saying, when the United Nations first implicated AWB in the oil for food scandal, that he had always found the people in AWB to be:

... a very straight up and down group of people, and I can’t on my knowledge and understanding of the people involved, imagine for a moment that they would have ... been involved in anything improper.

That was an extraordinary statement. On just what did he base it? Inevitably we will hear a different tune, and the foreign minister is now out there suggesting that his department were the innocent victims of the deceit of AWB. Just to make sure the government does not get caught by the Cole commission, the Prime Minister has rorted the terms of reference of the commission to expressly exclude it from making findings—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Wills will withdraw the word ‘rort’.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, the Prime Minister has produced terms of reference for the commission to expressly exclude it from making findings about the government’s own conduct. Of course the government must be held accountable for the conduct of AWB. It was a publicly owned enterprise until 1999, when the Howard government sold it off. It continues to have a legal monopoly over wheat exports. No-one else is allowed to export wheat unless AWB agrees to it, which of course it does not. When the Minister for Trade says the single desk is not on trial here, he is talking rubbish. The potential for private sector monopolies to become corrupt is well known, and the conduct of AWB is of course relevant as to whether it should continue to have a legal monopoly over wheat exports.

But over and above that, important as it is, there are two distinct incidents where the government profited politically from AWB’s cover-up of the kickbacks. In each of these incidents the role of the government must be thoroughly explored, given they had a vested interest in the cover-up. First, in 2002, as Prime Minister Howard embraced George Bush’s decision to plan to invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein responded by threatening to cancel Australian wheat contracts with Iraq. Had those sales stopped, it would have been very embarrassing for the Prime Minister. Labor opposed the proposed invasion and so too did a majority of the Australian public. If Australian wheat farmers had lost this important market as a result of the Prime Minister’s actions, the pressure on the Howard government not to ignore the United Nations on this issue would have been massive.

AWB personnel went to Iraq in 2002 to save the day. We now know how they did it. They greatly increased the size of the kickbacks they were paying to Saddam. But the Australian people and the Labor opposition were kept in the dark about this. We were never told that there was a price to be paid for being able to have our cake and eat it too—that is, to attack Saddam mercilessly in public and still be his preferred salesman in private.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Wills, this bill is about ministerial salaries. Your amendment talks about the accountability of ministers. Your speech is fairly well away from the bill. I would like you to tie it back to the responsibility of ministers.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The whole point of my speech goes to the declining standards of ministerial accountability under this government, and the most classic example of that is precisely the matter I am speaking about—that is, the government’s handling of AWB and the United Nations oil for food program. I am speaking directly—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But where are the standards of ministers involved in that particular argument? That is what I want to hear.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am happy to speak to the conduct of ministers and the role that ministers have played, and that is indeed what I am doing. We have a situation where Australian farmers were threatened with a price to be paid for the consequences of this government’s foreign policy, and we ended up with the size of the kickbacks being paid to Saddam Hussein increasing. This was all covered up. This was not something which ministers found out or made any attempt to find out and to let the Australian people know—

John Forrest (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The point of order is on relevance. Mr Deputy Speaker, you have already made the point about the nature of the bill we are discussing now. The member currently speaking has made reference to a commission that is in place, an inquiry, and there is no proved connection—

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Mallee, I think I have the point of order. I have already told the member for Wills that I wish him to speak to the bill before the House and to his amendment. If he cannot do that then I will have no alternative but to sit him down.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am certainly speaking to my amendment, which concerns ministerial standards. Some honourable members may not wish to hear about the conduct of their government in this matter, but this is a matter of great public interest and public importance and I intend to speak to it. The sorts of questions that the Australian public is entitled to answers to concerning the role of Howard government ministers in this matter are as follows. I believe that the terms of reference of the Cole commission need to be widened so that we can get some proper answers to our questions. First, did any of the ministers—that is, the foreign affairs minister, the trade minister, the agriculture minister or the Prime Minister—at any stage ever tell AWB not to pay bribes to Saddam Hussein in order to preserve Australia’s wheat sales? Then we have the Prime Minister’s statement of 31 January:

There were no alarm bells, there was no suggestion, there was no evidence before us that AWB was paying any bribes ...

…     …         …

... the whole focus in 2002 was preserving Australia’s wheat sales—

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is claptrap. It is completely irrelevant. We are not speaking on a bill on AWB.

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Wills is talking about the Prime Minister and ministers at the present time, and he has moved an amendment about ministerial standards.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. My query is: can the Prime Minister tell us what would constitute an alarm bell for him? We had the issue raised with us by the United Nations in 2002, after the Canadians raised it with them for the very good reason that the Iraqis had asked them to pay the same sorts of bribes they were getting from AWB. How was this not an alarm bell? Then in 2003 the American lobby group US Wheat Associates made a formal complaint to US Secretary of State Colin Powell. How was this not an alarm bell? Then there was the Washington state Senator Patty Murray’s 2003 statement urging the Bush administration to investigate the issue, stressing:

... U.S. taxpayers have a right to ask if Australia acted improperly in close cooperation with the former government of Saddam Hussein to manipulate wheat sales.

In what way was this not an alarm bell?

When the Prime Minister had his attention drawn to a letter from him to the AWB suggesting the AWB maintain close contact with his government, he denied that this suggested he would have known anything about the bribes. He said the letter just proved he was doing his job. Surely if we had ministerial standards in this country, doing his job would have meant knowing, would have meant finding out about the AWB bribes to Saddam Hussein and finding out about the breaching of UN sanctions.

There are many questions for Ministers Downer and Vaile to answer as well. Just who told Ambassador Thawley to tell the United States congressional committee chair, Senator Coleman, that there was no basis for investigating whether the AWB had paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq? Just what inquiries did they make before providing assurances to the United States, which have turned out to be utterly baseless and utterly misleading? And even earlier, in November 2003, a number of United States senators wrote to the then Secretary of State, Colin Powell, expressing grave concern that the AWB had been paid inflated prices for wheat by the Iraqi regime. Did any of these ministers even know this had happened? If they did, what investigations did they undertake into the accuracy of the United States senators’ grave concerns?

We had Minister Vaile describe concerns expressed in the US Senate that Australia had:

… acted improperly in close co-operation with the former government of Saddam Hussein to manipulate wheat sales …

as ‘quite insulting’. The question is: what inquiries did Minister Vaile make before making such a cavalier dismissal? When Senate minority leader Tom Daschle wrote to President George Bush in October 2003 asking him to raise allegations about the AWB paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime with Prime Minister Howard, the Australian embassy wrote to Senator Daschle saying the allegations against the AWB were ‘reprehensible’. What the public needs to know is who approved that letter? Was it the foreign affairs minister? If it was the foreign affairs minister, what investigations did he make prior to making such a bold assertion?

There is the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. We want Minister McGauran to tell us whether the AWB, prior to paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the Jordanian trucking company, Alia, ever bothered to find out whether this trucking company actually owned any trucks. We cannot have our reputation made an international laughing-stock while these ministers—the foreign minister, the trade minister, the agriculture minister—revel in their incompetence and make a virtue of their incompetence. ‘We never knew what was going on,’ they say, even though it was raining allegations. The US, the UN, Canada, the Iraqi provisional authority, the Wheat Export Authority—the stories were coming from everywhere.

I do not have a lot in the way of religious convictions, but some of these ministers are strong evidence for the theory of ‘reintarnation’—that is, that some of us after death come back to life as hillbillies. This has been a hillbilly performance from start to finish. The Prime Minister—the Kirribilli hillbilly—has long since thrown out his code of conduct and allowed ministerial standards and Australia’s reputation to sink lower and lower. Those photos of AWB officials posing with guns in Iraq speak volumes about a cowboy outfit with a frontier mentality and a contempt for the international rule of law.

The fact is that prime ministerial and ministerial standards of accountability have been steadily eroding in this country for the past decade, and it has got to stop. Does anyone seriously doubt that the strenuous lobbying efforts by the Australian embassy against the United States’ investigation into the AWB’s deals with the Saddam Hussein regime were motivated by a desire to avoid these issues coming to light prior to the 2004 election and, therefore, save the government from political embarrassment? Does anyone seriously doubt that the government turned a blind eye to the fact that in 2002 the Wheat Board was able to go to Iraq and secure continued wheat contracts from Australia, continued wheat sales into Iraq, at a time when the Prime Minister’s bellicose rhetoric had caused Saddam Hussein to threaten an end to those wheat contracts?

On what basis was the Wheat Board able to achieve this? It was able to achieve this by upping the kickbacks that were being paid. The Australian government turned a blind eye to that; it made no attempt to find that out, because it was happy for the wheat contracts to continue. It certainly did not want to see Australian wheat farmers paying the price for this Prime Minister’s foreign policy.

It is time for the lies to stop. It is time for the cover-ups to stop. It is time to extend the Cole commission’s terms of reference to cover the conduct of government ministers and officials. And it is time for ministers who either do not understand ethics and integrity in trade and foreign policy or who are too incompetent to see that honesty prevails throughout their areas of portfolio responsibility to make way for ministers who can. This has been a scandalous and shameful affair, and the Howard government’s double standards on this matter have been absolutely breathtaking. It is quite clear as the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle get pieced together that AWB payments were the largest discretionary cash payments that Saddam had access to, and so we ended up sending money off to the Iraqi government, which ended up as rewards and incentives for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

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

Order! The member will link his remarks back to the amendment.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have moved as an amendment to this bill:

“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for allowing Ministerial standards and accountability to decline at the same time as Ministerial salaries are increasing”.

It is all very well for ministerial salaries to rise, but what is happening to ministerial standards? They are on the decline. That is what I am pointing out to this House. And the biggest and most serious scandal before this House and before this country is the AWB oil for food scandal and the way in which this government while on the one hand was saying that the Saddam regime was an evil regime on the other hand was propping him up and was his biggest single benefactor to the tune of $300 million.

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

Order! It being 2.00 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.