Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Wheat Board’s $300 million of illegal bribes to the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was paid into general revenue for the Iraqi regime. It was the only source of discretionary money they had at that time. It was a deliberate policy of the United Nations to see that they did not have discretionary money. Of course, despite the argument of my friend Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of the Australian today, all of this money was fungible—it was paid into the Rafidain Bank, as we know, by Alia. This is not disputed by the Australian Wheat Board, a private company which enjoys the legal monopoly over Australian wheat exports. It paid $300 million to Alia Transport and General Trade, a company owned by the Khawams, a wealthy Iraqi family—as any minister would have found out if they had looked—with close connections to the Saddam regime. It was based in Amman—another legal fiction to preserve the blind eye to the telescope of this government. These payments were made despite the fact that Alia did not have any role in unloading or transporting the Australian wheat to Iraq but was purely a conduit for these corrupt payments, as AWB’s management would well have known: the trucking company with no trucks. I am sure, blind eye to the telescope, deaf ear to their ear trumpets, the ministers probably had the same understanding but legally did not know, as seems to be the implication of the Cole commission that the ministers are constantly referring to—they legally did not know.

Nor is it disputed that these funds were deposited by Alia in the Amman branch of the Rafidain Bank, an Iraqi state bank controlled by the Saddam regime. This is the same bank from which the Iraqi ambassador to Jordan withdrew funds to be passed to the Arab Liberation Front. The Arab Liberation Front is a longstanding 30-year Iraqi faction of the PLO. It handed out those $25,000 cheques. We had an infamous interview yesterday morning, and I congratulate Mark Willacy from the ABC for finding the man who handed out these cheques from the Rafidain Bank. He said—and the two members opposite should pay close attention to this—that he was not sure at all that the money did not come from Australia. He did not know.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s right, he didn’t know.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He did not know, but for your government to claim that it has done no investigations and can prove that the money did not come from Australia and all this feigned outrage that we had from the member for Sturt yesterday is deluded, frankly. These people gave money to deluded Palestinian youths, who blew themselves up on civilian targets, as we know. The money came from the Arab Liberation Front paid by Saddam Hussein—fungible money which came from the discretionary money that they had available, the biggest portion of which came from Australia, $300 million. All that is disputed in this matter is whether the Australian government, the Minister for Trade, the Minister for Foreign Affairs or the Prime Minister knew these payments by the AWB to the bogus transport company were being made. No doubt the truth about this will eventually come out of the Cole royal commission and from the forensic questioning of ministers in this place by the opposition.

My point today is simple: whether ministers did or did not know about these payments, they should have known, because plenty of people did and other people were able to deduce fairly readily, from differentials between the market price of wheat at the given time and the price Iraq was paying to the AWB, that there was a fraud going on for many years. At the very least, ministers were too ready to turn a blind eye to AWB’s pandering to the Iraqi regime during the period of the sanctions from 1997 to 2003. Of course we have to sell our wheat abroad and not to governments we always approve of, but at a time when, according to the government, Iraq was a dire threat to the peace of the world—we had to invade the country and overthrow its government—surely ministers should have been more curious about what the Wheat Board executives, most of them National Party mates, were up to in Baghdad.

Last night the member for Sturt made a very unfortunate speech where he tried to claim all good in issues of Middle East politics were on one side. He obviously does not remember the record of past governments, which have been very even-handed and of course have defended Israel’s right to exist very strongly under a very passionate Prime Minister, Bob Hawke. Any attempt to portray these issues as one-sided is an example of partisanship. You would have to be a blind partisan, thick or malicious to know that Australia does not run a dual foreign policy—a foreign policy where we say one thing to the Americans and to the commentariat here and another thing to people where we are running a secret National Party rort in foreign policy in the Arab Middle East. (Time expired)