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

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to his statement on national television on Sunday, 12 February that the Cole inquiry had ‘all of the documents’. When did the government provide copies of these four cables to the Cole inquiry?

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

Mr Downer interjecting

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

When was it, Alexander? I will find out exactly when. I will take this question and go through it. When the Cole inquiry was established it sent a group of people to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. My understanding is that they were invited to look at everything. It was made an open book and large numbers of documents were made available. I understand that two very large cartons full of documents were copied and taken away by the Cole investigation. Whether the four cables were in it or not, I cannot tell you. I can find out and give the Leader of the Opposition the exact date, but the reality is that at every point this government has cooperated with the Cole inquiry. We established the Cole inquiry. When there were concerns expressed by the Volcker inquiry at the beginning of last year about AWB and its lack of cooperation, as I have indicated publicly before, I gave very clear instructions to the bureaucracy. I asked the Minister for Trade to write a letter in the strongest possible terms to AWB telling it to cooperate with the Volcker inquiry.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition that in all circumstances the government have cooperated with the established Cole inquiry. We have provided information to Cole and we have responded to requests for information from Cole. If in fact Cole wants anybody in the government to appear before the inquiry, those people so requested will appear before the inquiry. We are now into the fourth week of questions being asked entirely about this issue, and the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Griffith have not provided one iota of evidence. After all of this effort, they have forsaken time for questions on Medicare, industrial relations and tax. They have decided to ask question after question on this issue. I say to the Leader of the Opposition: I am like the Minister for Foreign Affairs; I like getting questions on this issue. He was jumping out of his skin today to get some questions on this issue because we as a government do not have anything to hide—so much so that we are happy to take these questions. We established the Cole inquiry, and it will go on and reach its own conclusions and then the Australian public will have the benefit of analysing those conclusions.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition: produce the evidence of the government deceit. It is worth reminding him that the original charge was that we were covering something up. They have moved away from that charge and have started to make allegations of deceit. They started to defame, under parliamentary privilege, the reputation of hardworking public servants. The Leader of the Opposition attacked the integrity of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the National Party, but not in an open question because he is not game to do it. He does not get up in question time and say that he is really to blame. He says it across the table. That is a measure of two things: the lack of evidence to support the opposition’s claim and a lack of straightforwardness on the part of the Leader of the Opposition. This government has been totally transparent on this issue, and this government is very happy to go on taking questions for as long as you like.