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

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Brand proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The lack of accountability, declining standards of integrity, and the squandered opportunities of the Government’s ten years in office.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

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

First, I want to take out of question time lessons that we learnt on the question of lack of accountability and declining standards of integrity. The Cole royal commission will report either slightly before we return to this place or slightly after in what will be only a few days of sittings, some of which are likely to be taken up with hosting foreign guests. So we are now effectively at the conclusion of the period when this House, this chamber, can make a contribution to this government’s accountability on this, the worst scandal that there has been in living memory in federal history.

We had a further question time today. We established during the course of it that, firstly, the Deputy Prime Minister—contrary to what he had asserted previously in this place—had knowledge of the detail of the allegations about our involvement with subverting the oil for food program and financing Saddam Hussein. He acknowledged at last that he was briefed on that, in the same way as the foreign minister effectively owned up to it in this place.

The second thing we got in the process of the opposition seeking to render this government accountable was the joyous hubris of the foreign minister on the subject of people being able to wander around Iraq with very large sums of Australian money to be spent at their discretion, albeit in difficult circumstances. The problem is that we also know that, in the period of time that we are talking about, the corruption of that oil for food program persisted for some 18 months. Where the money went in that case we do not know. We know where it went before the war, but we do not know where it went after the war. There were substantial sums of money to be dealt with there. We know that very senior Baath Party officials were reappointed to the agricultural ministry on the basis of a relationship that they had had with Australia in the past. So we know those things, and we now know that the government was quite joyous about the fact that substantial sums of money were made available on a discretionary basis at that point in time. That is another thing we managed to establish here today during question time.

We have finally got a government—after 110 questions in this place, as the Prime Minister pointed out—with a completely different story now out there in the public domain from what there was at the beginning of the House of Representatives process. We had the Prime Minister stand up full of hubris, as he is on his 10th anniversary, proud of the fact that he renders himself accountable in this place. That is deceitful. He excluded the Senate estimates process, which is—or at least in the past has been—by far and a long way the most effective means of scrutiny of a government on the sorts of matters we have been dealing with here on the floor of the House. He managed to exclude them completely from the process, and he has spent most of those 110 questions stonewalling.

The problem for him has been that evidence that has been introduced principally by the member for Griffith and me at different points in time, combined with the evidence that has been coming forth from the Cole commission, has established a totally different picture of this government’s involvement in this scandal now than what we had towards the end of last year. And what is that picture? The picture is that this government has been culpably negligent in relation to its administration of our involvement in this critical program. This government has turned a blind eye to the subversion of the oil for food program. Whatever blah the foreign minister might like to go on with as he excuses the fact that this money may well have been used to fund suicide bombers, the money that was given to Saddam Hussein—we being the biggest contributors under the program—is still being utilised. It is still being utilised because those resources that came from the oil for food program were stolen at war’s conclusion by Saddam Hussein—that which was left after all the other things that he had spent it on—and subsequently funded the Baath component of the insurgency which is operating now in Iraq, placing Australian soldiers operating in Iraq under threat. More directly, because they operate more prominently in the Sunni areas than we do, it threatens the lives of American soldiers—our allies, about whom the foreign minister waxed lyrical.

The Prime Minister, during the course of these 110 questions, has been wont to defend himself from time to time by the implication that it was necessary for AWB to do these sorts of things because we were in bitter conflict and trade rivalry around the globe with American wheat producers and Canadian wheat producers, as though that justified this particular set of events—and seeking to justify it. The simple fact of the matter is that those two outfits did not participate in this crime and indeed one of them explicitly blew the whistle on this crime.

The government’s neglect of those facts has deeply, deeply dishonoured this country. And this scandal—which we on this side of this chamber of the parliament have used to effectively tease out the detail of the accountability and participation of ministers—dishonours this nation and dishonours the reputation of this government. They spent last night in an absolute orgy of self-congratulation. They began every speech with obeisance to the notion that there was more work to be done and ‘We mustn’t display hubris’—and then they went into it by the bushel. Hubris squared was the performance of our political opponents yesterday. They had their signs up there saying ‘Strong direction, mainstream values’; I say, after 10 years: wrong direction and, if it is anybody’s values, American values. What in fact this nation has needed over the last 10 years and what it needs now is nation building and Australian values—the Australian values which have been dealt with so cheaply by them in this scandal and in the way in which they have operated in their 10 years of government.

We need less backslapping from them and more attention to our skills crisis. We need from them less patting on the back, less self-congratulation and more attention to our crumbling infrastructure. We need some statement from them on our skyrocketing foreign debt and on the woefully limp export performance. If we are travelling so well, why aren’t average Australians sharing in it? If we are going so well, why have we turned away 300,000 young Australians from TAFE and brought in 270,000 foreigners?

What we have seen in these 10 long years is the threat of terrorism growing. We have seen, as I said, in these 10 long years 300,000 young Australians missing out on TAFE. We have seen in these 10 long years our dependence on foreign oil grow and grow. We have seen in these 10 long years our infrastructure crumble beneath us. We have seen in these 10 long years our children’s health get worse, not better. In 10 long years, with the globe getting hotter, we have seen a government doing nothing about it and in denial. In 10 long years we have seen the rights of working families being ripped away. In 10 long years our best and bravest have been sent to war only to confront an enemy funded by us. And 10 long years of nation building was what we needed, but nation building was not what we got.

I want to go to a couple of explicit features of this situation as I talk about the key squandered opportunities over the last 10 years. The first relates to skills and innovation amongst our people and in our industries—investing in our people. The fundamental philosophy of funding training and higher education in this country has changed from one of national investment to one of private opportunity. When every other country with whom we are competitive realised long ago that these are national investment issues, the consequence of this in the public tertiary education sector has seen funds spent at minus eight per cent over the 10 years when the next worst in the industrialised nations is plus 15 per cent. It has seen 300,000 kids turned away from TAFE and a substantial reduction in Commonwealth spending in training in a way that has now produced what all the employer organisations report as a massive shortfall—this is not a product of prosperity; it is a product of neglect—in the traditional trades.

We have seen the effect of this on innovation in our businesses, in the sort of product that attracts an overseas market. If we are to succeed as a nation, if our nation is to be built, it has to be built around an export culture. It has to be built around us making things and providing services that the rest of the world needs; instead, our industrial exports have stalled. The export of our services has stalled. The Deputy Prime Minister was up here, chuffed with himself about the global value of exports. What he did not mention was the value of imports and the fact that we have now had the longest period of trade deficit ever. We are the only major exporter of minerals in trade deficit. No-one else with our advantages—not the Brazilians, the Argentineans, the Russians or the Canadians—is in our position of a shortfall in relation to exports.

The problem with all of this is that chickens in the end come home to roost. If you do not invest in your skills, if you do not invest in your innovation, if you do not make an export culture a primary feature of your nation building and allow it to influence things like your attitude to infrastructure policy, education policy, the health of your community—assuring them that they can live healthy lives and work hard at the same time—if you do not reward a workforce for putting in that little bit extra, if you do not reward the long hours that they are prepared to work and if you strip away democracy from them in the workplace, what you have at the end of the day is a nation that will not succeed. If there is anything else going wrong with you, then you place your country in a very threatening situation indeed.

What else is going wrong? There is one thing, and that is the missing debt truck. I remember that debt truck very well. It had $180 billion attached to it when this government came to office, and it had sat there at about 40 per cent of GDP for the last decade before the Labor government fell at that point in time. That has got to $450 billion, and it looks like it is going to go to $500 billion by mid to late this year. It is heading rapidly to $500 billion. Almost all of it went into the housing boom, a little bit went to funding elements of the resources performance that we have put in place and hardly anything went into the manufacturing industry.

Unless we export our heads off over the next decade, the chickens that fly out of that huge burgeoning foreign debt will come home to roost big time on this economy, and that is when all the other injustices that we have been talking about will manifest themselves in unhappy lives for Australian people. The 10-year hubris of this government will never allow them to admit to any problem— (Time expired)

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Leader of the Opposition’s MPI is about the alleged squandered opportunities of the government’s 10 years in office. I intend to talk about the squandered opportunities of the Labor Party’s 10 years in opposition, and let me begin by saying that the Leader of the Opposition did at times in his ministerial career have a reputation as a decent human being and as a competent politician. But he is rapidly losing that and is rapidly squandering any public standing that he has. While he rails endlessly about alleged problems over which he has no responsibility, he singularly fails to fix the problems for which he does have responsibility. This is a man who talks endlessly about probity in government but is singularly incapable of establishing probity in opposition.

We know that very much today because, while he was speaking on this MPI, there were three significant absences. There was the absence of the shadow minister for overseas aid and Pacific island affairs, who has just lost his preselection and shows his contempt for the leader who did not protect him by absenting himself. Then there is the shadow minister for agriculture and fisheries, and the member for Hotham, both of whose preselections are under attack from the faceless branch stackers of the Victorian Labor Party thanks to the spineless, supine behaviour of the Leader of the Opposition. They are shoring up their preselections as best they can rather than supporting the Leader of the Opposition in this MPI.

Let me just make this point: every single question in parliament this year has been about the alleged wrongs of the Australian Wheat Board, AWB Ltd. This is a significant issue—there is no doubt about that—but out there in the cities, towns and country areas of Australia, is this the only thing on people’s minds? No, it is not. It is the only thing on the Leader of the Opposition’s mind, because a scandal a day keeps his own problems away. The longer that he can keep fulminating about AWB, the more he can avoid dealing with the problems that he really should be tackling.

Of course people are interested in corporate and institutional honesty. They want their officials to behave properly, but they know that all of this matter is now before the Cole inquiry and they trust Justice Cole to come up with the answers to this issue much more than they trust a self-interested and fulminating Leader of the Opposition. I simply put it, through you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to the House: does anyone really think that a government which thought so ill of the regime of Saddam Hussein that it committed the troops of the Commonwealth of Australia to invade that country would have tolerated for a second the bribing of that regime, had it known about it?

This MPI alleges squandered opportunities of the government’s 10 years in office. We have made our mistakes, I am sure. We have not got everything right—of course. We are only human. But net government debt in 1996 was almost $100 billion. It is now negative $1.3 billion. Average mortgage rates under the former government were 12.75 per cent; under this government, 7.15 per cent. There were 8.3 million Australians in work in March 1996; there were 10 million Australians in work in December last year. That is 1.7 million new jobs. The unemployment rate in March 1996 was 8.2 per cent. It is 5.1 per cent now. Average inflation: 5.2 per cent under the former Labor government, just 2.4 per cent under this government.

In 1995 the Australian standard of living ranked 13th in the OECD; last year we ranked eighth in the OECD. Real wages growth under the term of members opposite was 0.3 per cent. Under this government it has been 15.5 per cent. Total household wealth was $2,048 billion in March 1996 and $4,553 billion in December last year. It has more than doubled. I could go on and on about the comparative performance of this government and the former Labor government. I think it is pretty obvious that whatever mistakes we have made, whatever sins of omission there may have been, this has been a government which has taken its responsibilities seriously and which has delivered a better life to the overwhelming majority of the people of Australia.

Let us talk about squandered opportunities. I can make all sorts of criticisms about the Australian Labor Party and my criticisms will be discounted because I would say that, wouldn’t I? But someone who cannot be discounted, someone whose criticisms have to be taken seriously, is the member for Batman, Mr Martin Ferguson, who said of his own party in yesterday’s Australian:

The result is that after a decade in Opposition we have plenty of storytellers but not much of a story to tell. This will not be remedied by rubbing out sitting MPs in safe Labor seats in favour of party hacks with factional numbers on public office selection panels or through branch stacks.

They will bring nothing to the caucus except a further choke on the free development of an innovative policy agenda and a further weakening of the elected caucus in favour of the centralisation of power to a few trade union and party officials in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

So where are the declining standards of integrity? Where is the lack of accountability? Where are the squandered opportunities of the last 10 years? According to an opposition frontbencher, the member for Batman, they lie on that side of the parliament. We have seen a lot of huffing and puffing from the Leader of the Opposition against the government. If he were serious, if he were a man of strength, what he should be doing is lifting a finger to protect his own colleagues whose preselections are currently under threat.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Price interjecting

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I quote the member for Hotham: ‘I have been the victim of people breaking their word—

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Member for Chifley, the minister is entitled to be heard in silence.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

people not approaching this with integrity.’

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Leader of the House is talking about preselections—

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

There is no point of order.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘I am fighting this preselection as much as anything to uphold those values of integrity, honesty, upholding your word, because they are values that are important to society.’ We have the Leader of the Opposition here talking about declining standards of integrity and alleging that this is somehow the work of the Howard government, when he has his former friend—a frontbencher, the member for Hotham, a former party leader—saying that the lack of honesty and integrity is inside the Australian Labor Party itself. We have another Labor Party parliamentary secretary, the member for Lingiari, saying today—apropos of the declining standards of integrity that are the subject of this MPI—that we have standover merchants, thugs and sleazebags—

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This matter of public importance is about the standards and squandered opportunities of the Howard government. If the Leader of the House has lost the ability to put the case for the Howard government—

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

There is no point of order.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know the member for Lalor is bitterly disappointed at what is happening to the member for Hotham because she thought the member for Hotham would be her principal lieutenant in the leadership bid which will be occurring soon. That is what this Australian Story that she has been focusing on for the last couple of weeks is all about. Normally, we get one doorstop and one press release a day from the member for Lalor—

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. As the occupier of the chair, you are responsible for interpreting whether or not a speaker at this dispatch box is addressing their remarks in a manner relevant to the title of the matter of public importance, which reads—

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

There is no point of order. Matters of public importance discussions are free ranging. I also remind members of the opposition that the Leader of the Opposition was heard in silence, uninterrupted, and I expect the same courtesy to be given to all speakers during this MPI.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. If you are not going to interpret the standing orders, I draw your attention to the state of the House.

The bells being rung—

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

Mr Deputy Speaker, your rulings from the chair have been absolutely disgraceful and you know it.

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

Order!

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

Minister, you stand here and you make a racist remark from that dispatch box and you think you can lecture others on the subject. Go bag your head. You made a racist remark from the dispatch box.

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

Order! I remind members that disorderly behaviour will not be tolerated during the ringing of the bells.

(Quorum formed)

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this MPI, the opposition allege declining standards of integrity in the government, but they practise declining standards of integrity in their own party. The member for Lingiari, in talking about what was going on inside his own party, referred to standover merchants, thugs and other sleazebags undermining the good name of the Australian Labor Party, hard won over 100 years. He is not just talking about 10 years being squandered; he is talking about 100 years because of the thugs, sleazebags and standover merchants now attacking the preselections of decent frontbenchers in the Australian Labor Party. It was interesting to read in that same article which quoted the member for Lingiari: ‘Mr Beazley justified comments he made a year ago that Mr Crean should not be nudged from his seat of Hotham, saying he had made the statement while there was no preselection under way.’ What a great sort of person he is. He gives you support when you do not need it and, when you do need it, it is just not there. And now this pathetic weathervane—this sanctimonious windbag—is putting himself up as the alternative Prime Minister of Australia. (Time expired).

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

In this place the government has said that its defence on the $300 million wheat for weapons scandal is that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the minister had no substantive role to play in considering whether the proposed AWB exportations to Iraq complied with United Nations sanctions or not. The government’s continuing defence since day one of this $300 million scandal has been that the government was a postbox to the UN Office of the Iraq Program and that all—I repeat: all—substantive decision making lay with the United Nations. (Quorum formed) The government’s plea, therefore, is that any legal and moral responsibility for a breach of UN sanctions lies exclusively with the United Nations and the Australian Wheat Board.

My central purpose today is to establish that this defence on the part of the government is unsustainable in law—both international law and, crucially, Australian law. Under regulation 13CA of the Customs (Prohibited Exports) Regulations 1958, the Minister for Foreign Affairs had an obligation to consider whether or not to grant permission for the exportation of goods to Iraq. This regulation required the minister to actually consider—that is, actively pay regard to—whether the exportation in question would or would not cause Australia to be in breach of its international obligations. The relevant international obligations were clause 4 of UN Security Council resolution 661, which required Australia to prevent its nationals, and any person such as AWB, from making available to the government of Iraq any funds or from permitting any funds to persons or bodies within Iraq except payments for foodstuffs in humanitarian circumstances.

Regulation 13CA(2) was incorporated by this parliament into Australian law to provide a means by which Australia, through the minister, could carry out the decision of the Security Council embodied in UNSCR 661 and, in particular, the requirement in that decision that Australia prevent AWB and its officers or agents from remitting funds to the Iraqi government. The obligation imposed by the parliament of the Commonwealth on the minister or his delegates is to consider whether he is:

... satisfied that permitting the exportation will not infringe the international obligations of Australia.

Regulation 13CA(2) positively requires that the minister is ‘satisfied’ of the requisite state of affairs. As a matter of administrative law the minister cannot be satisfied by an unexamined assumption, let alone by a process which deliberately refrains from the minister addressing the question. The satisfaction of the minister as a decision maker needs to be based on ‘findings or inferences of fact which are supported by some probative material or logical grounds’. Applying this matter of administrative legal theory and principle to the Customs Regulations, the minister therefore must be satisfied that the exportation will not infringe the international obligations of Australia.

It is at this point that the government contends that the Minister for Foreign Affairs was satisfied that these exportations of wheat did not infringe UN sanctions on the basis of one thing and one thing alone: that the United Nations authorised the payment of the related wheat contracts. In other words, it was a decision made by foreigners in New York working for the United Nations, not a decision made by Australians. Furthermore, the nature of the issue to be determined—that is, the infringement of an obligation of an international character owed by Australia—is a decision left to one of the Queen’s ministers of state for the Commonwealth, as the minister is under section 64 the Constitution. It is not contemplated that, given the subject matter of a decision to be made for the purposes of the municipal law of Australia concerning the prohibition of exports, foreigners employed by or acting on behalf of the United Nations make such a decision.

This is particularly clear given that the decision of the Security Council could be given effect only by each member state, through its own national measures, taking steps to prevent the illicit remittance of funds for the benefit of the Iraqi government. The only way the decision that states prevent nationals within their territories from remitting illicit funds to Iraq may be carried out is for the governmental authorities of each member state to enact and execute means of monitoring and prevention. The terms of regulation 13CA(2) of the Australian Customs Regulations fit that description perfectly. This is a legal responsibility that cannot be subcontracted to the United Nations or any other entity.

Furthermore, if, as appears to be the case, UN practice also evolved during the five years that this $300 million scandal ran so as to become a system of approval by default—that is, where approval would be granted unless there was a contrary voice within the UN Sanctions Committee within a stipulated period—then as a matter of substance and as a matter of Australian administrative law it is difficult to see how the Australian minister could rely upon such a default process as demonstrating that the minister should be satisfied that permitting the AWB export would not involve permitting the illicit remittance of funds to Iraq. If DFAT were aware of the default process, having encouraged its adoption as a streamlining of UN approvals, it would be even clearer that its minister could not treat a UN default approval as enabling him to be satisfied of the requisite state of affairs.

Applying these legal requirements imposed on the Minister for Foreign Affairs to the circumstances of particular AWB exports would involve consideration of the material available to departmental advisers, ministers and departmental officials at the relevant times. If that material—say, protests, concerns or warnings voiced by other countries, rival traders or other individuals—fairly raised the possibility of kickbacks or other forms of illicit remittances of funds to the Iraqi government then the minister was legally obliged to consider that material in making the minister’s determination to issue an export permit on wheat contracts under regulation 13CA of the Customs Regulations.

Therefore the minister or his delegate under law cannot subcontract his decision-making responsibility to the United Nations. That is why the government’s contention that only the UN and not the Australian government has decision-making power in the approval of wheat contracts has no foundation whatsoever in law. That is the law and the legal considerations in this matter are paramount. But, beyond the law, let us look at the morality of the government’s position as well. The government has said once again that it has no decision-making power in this matter but that it has, in fact, been subdelegated to the United Nations. This comes from the government whose Prime Minister has said in other contexts dealing with the United Nations:

... all of these issues in the end are going to be resolved by the Australian parliaments elected by the Australian people and not by committees of foreigners. ... in the end, we make these decisions.

Furthermore, there is the Prime Minister’s statement:

But in the end of course Australia decides what happens in this country through the laws of the parliaments of Australia. ... in the end we are not told what to do by anybody. We make our own moral judgments.

The Prime Minister’s most outrageous statement in this context was when he said in the context of the 2001 election campaign, ‘We decide who comes into this country—nobody else.’

The entire contention advanced by the government in their multiple engagements with the United Nations over that period of time, including in the context of the Iraq war, was that this parliament and the laws of this country were sovereign and could not be subdelegated to the United Nations. In this matter, where they find themselves in enormous political difficulty, the argument is this: that this parliament, this minister and these laws do not apply; what does apply only is a decision by a committee of the UN officials. This is a gross and fundamental contradiction of every argument advanced by this Prime Minister in the past on the United Nations as well as being in breach of law. (Time expired)

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

I am interested that the member for Griffith should quote a legal opinion because I thought he would have understood quite clearly that our system of law in Australia is adversarial. I am pretty sure that you could go out and buy another opinion very quickly. There will be a great debate about the legal points that might be involved but I am sure that he cannot just stand here and quote and say: ‘This is absolute. I have a legal opinion and this is exactly how it stands.’

I am interested that the opposition are a little bit touchy about this. They have put forward a matter of public importance which talks about accountability, the declining standards of integrity and squandered opportunities. I would have thought it was quite legitimate therefore that this parliament could have a very open debate about those particular issues. Those who listened to the Leader of the Opposition here this afternoon would know that it is patently obvious why Bill Shorten has decided that he will never win the next election. It is patently obvious because he never articulated what I thought were reasonable arguments in any of these areas. As the Prime Minister has said before, for the last three or four weeks we have had question after question on the Australian Wheat Board, and not one iota of evidence has been raised by the Australian Labor Party that the government, its ministers or DFAT, for that matter, knew anything about this.

In fact, it is an exercise of trial by media using the ALP to do it: ‘We’re not prepared to wait for the Cole commission to come down with its findings. We want to come into this place and throw as much mud as we possibly can and try and impugn decent people.’ I think we should get to the real facts about this. It is fairly obvious, as I said earlier, that Bill Shorten has said, ‘This particular group over here will never win the next election, so we’ve got to do something about it.’ What I am interested in is the fact that the Leader of the Opposition will not defend the people on the front bench even though they must have voted for him at the particular time to become leader. As the member for Corio so rightly says, ‘If we’re going to sit back and let these people be crucified on the altar of the ALP left-wing factions or right-wing factions or whatever they might be, then obviously you cannot guarantee—(Quorum formed) The member for Corio was quite correct when he said that the Leader of the Opposition should not be so complacent about this because, if Mr Shorten is so good as to stack the numbers in Victorian branches, I can assure you he will stack the numbers here too. The Leader of the Opposition will not be the Prime Minister, I can guarantee you that. Let us consider that.

I also want to say a little bit about the member for Griffith because he has been deeply involved in this. The member for Griffith has been the advocate in this parliament for the American Wheat Associates. There is no doubt about that. I suspect he has been getting leaked information from the American Wheat Associates so as to use this forum to try to undermine our markets. The ALP have substantially undermined the Australian wheat market. There is no doubt about that. Not only does that affect hardworking wheat farmers but also it affects the Australian economy. I have news for the member for Griffith. He comes in here and defies the chair at times. He has ambitions. He thinks he might be the Leader of the Opposition very shortly. In fact, he is working on it quite hard. I have never yet seen anyone with a short fuse become a leader, and he has got a short fuse. He blows very easily. I have got news for the member for Griffith: he will never be the Leader of the Opposition because I am certain that the Labor Party will not elect a person like him who cannot handle the heat in this place.

There are some pretty hard heads in my electorate who have been involved in farming for a very long time and in selling as well. When I walk along the street they say to me: ‘What’s going on down there in Canberra? Don’t people know how you sell in the Middle East? Don’t they know how you sell in Asia? Are they stupid or something that they do not understand the methods of selling in those countries?’ Of course, there are always payments. We do not like it. We have been selling wheat to Iraq for 50 years. Can anybody in opposition put their hand up and say they did not know that there may have been some payments in the sale of wheat to Iraq over that 50-year period? Can the member for Brand stand up as a former Minister for Finance and say that he did not have any idea that that might go on in those countries? Of course it does. The only thing we are worried about—and I think we should all be worried about—is whether some of that money went to the Saddam Hussein regime. That is the point that we are really debating here. So far, there has been no concrete evidence of that before the Cole commission of inquiry. I wait with bated breath to hear what Justice Cole has to say because, from the evidence at the present time, I doubt whether the boards even knew what was going on. There has been a lot of huff and puff coming from the opposition on this issue, but at this stage there is absolutely no substance to it.

I want to make one more comment, which I do not suppose will surprise the media because I have been having an ongoing row with them for a long time. Some of the statements that have come out of the media on this subject have been reprehensible, to say the least. They have not been reporting the full story. (Time expired)

Phillip Barresi (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.