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

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That this House censure the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Government for its gross hypocrisy in sending Australian armed forces to Iraq while turning a blind eye to 27 warnings that the Australian Wheat Board was giving $300 million of funds to the enemy for guns, bombs and bullets.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition moving immediately:That this House censure the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Government for its gross hypocrisy in sending Australian armed forces to Iraq while turning a blind eye to 27 warnings that the Australian Wheat Board was giving $300 million of funds to the enemy for guns, bombs and bullets.

This is the sixth attempt by the opposition to censure this government for its gross neglect, for its turning of a blind eye and for its culpability in what has been the most substantial scandal in years in this country. It keeps defending itself by saying that it has a fully transparent process investigating it now. I want to say at the outset that, while I trust the commissioner and his assistant, they have not been given the terms of reference that would enable them to test the foreign minister’s statement that he is innocent of all of this, as indeed they cannot test the Deputy Prime Minister’s statements or the Prime Minister’s statements in that regard. They cannot.

There is an unequal burden being placed here on those in the AWB who are under investigation, and those who were complicit in permitting them to do the things they did. There is an unequal burden in this entire royal commission on the two of them. This royal commission is at risk of not being able to get to the bottom of the foreign minister’s behaviour, the Deputy Prime Minister’s behaviour and the Prime Minister’s behaviour. They are continuing, through this Cole process, to try to slip-slide out of the accountability that they owe the Australian people, that they owe Australian allies and that they owe the troops whom they sent to war to fight against personnel armed by them. It is no wonder—and this is why we have to be able to get a censure motion in here, after six attempts—that an individual as essentially conservative as Neil James, the editor of the Defender, the journal of the Australian Defence Association, says this:

The deeper moral question is what kind of person would have no apparent ethical qualms or commonsense reservations about contravening the very UN sanctions that fellow Australians were enforcing under difficult and, at times, even dangerous conditions. Never again must any Australian government risk the well-being, safety and loyalty of the men and women of the Defence Force in such a manner.

Mr Speaker, it is important that you understand and it is important that the Australian people understand that the sanctions regime against Saddam Hussein was upheld by Australian defence personnel, British defence personnel, American defence personnel and others. At substantial risk to themselves, they have been operating in waters at the head of the Persian Gulf for the last decade and a half—waters which it has never been entirely certain are clear of mines and where death inevitably would stare them in the face if anything went seriously wrong. In that period they were boarding boat after boat that was engaging in sanctions-busting activity in the Persian Gulf, at risk to themselves, to British sailors, to Australian sailors and to American sailors. We are not just talking about the war here—the war that was fought three years ago. We are talking about the enforcement of a sanctions regime that has been going on for the best part of a decade and a bit. These are the people whom this government traduced and whom, with a sleight of hand, it flicks away.

We have just seen again, now, in his answer to the question asked by our spokesperson on foreign affairs, yet another piece of ‘due diligence’ from the foreign minister opposite. His statement attempted—as no doubt he has attempted throughout this issue—firstly to turn a blind eye to and then to excuse the behaviour when confronted with it. He has the hide—after all the intelligence reports on the character of Alia, after all the reports coming in to this government about the character of Jordanian trucking companies—to say that you, meaning AWB, were not to be expected to know how Alia might use the funds. Not expected to know—of a company half-owned by Saddam Hussein’s regime—how those funds might be spent and that he might spend it on research into weapons of mass destruction, that he might spend it on arming his troops, that he might spend it doing any of the various things that the sanctions regime was put in place to deal with?

You are culpable here, Mr Foreign Minister, and I am not surprised that you would slip-slide away from a censure motion. If you really believed in your case, you would allow a censure motion to proceed and be properly debated. Your attitude and the attitude of your colleagues to censure motions are just another part of the cover-up, just another reflection of what your true diligence is and just another reflection of the utter pomposity with which you seek to defend yourself.

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

Order! The Leader of the Opposition will direct his remarks through the chair.

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

Yes, I will direct my remarks to you here, Mr Speaker, about why it is absolutely necessary that we now look at this clearly through a censure motion. We have our British allies here with us at the moment. We have our American allies here with us frequently. This government owes them an explanation as to how we permitted $300 million to fall into Saddam Hussein’s hands to buy the guns, bombs and bullets used against British and Australian troops.

We have subexplanations within that general explanation, but they should go to this: this government has to explain how it got a report—an authoritative report—out of the authorities in Iraq, immediately after the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, who warned that every contract entered into by AWB involved a 10 to 19 per cent kickback that went into the pockets of the Saddam Hussein regime; and how the ‘due diligence’—the ‘diligent’ attitude—of the foreign minister permitted that report to stand inside his department without any proper detailed investigation.

As a direct result of that, for another 18 months the scam continued—to what effect we do not know. But it is at least possible that those resources that were being paid in bribes for 18 months after that report, following the conclusion of hostilities, went to funding the insurgency. There is at least a substantial possibility that that is the case, and the government can give no guarantees—to us, or those British and American troops who now daily face threats to their lives, or those Iraqi people who face bombs and bullets from people who wish to terrorise them—that the funds that went into buying the equipment to do that were not funds that came through a process that the foreign minister’s lack of due diligence permitted to occur.

Every time the foreign minister and the Prime Minister get up and talk about this, they say that no evidence has been presented. Evidence has been presented in detail that ought to have alerted anybody with half a brain and half the necessary skill as a foreign minister that something was required of him. It ought to have alerted him to do something on behalf of the service personnel already engaged in the Gulf, as they have been for the last decade and a half. Those service personnel in most recent times went in to fight the war and are now there engaged, with very great difficulty, in trying to enforce a peace. You would have thought that a halfway-decent foreign minister would have done something about that.

The problem for this foreign minister, and why he ducks and weaves on these censure motion debate requests, is that there is an example of another government handling these sorts of matters. As pointed out by Mr Steketee over the weekend, the difference is that of chalk and cheese between Foreign Minister Gareth Evans’ handling of these matters and the hard attitude to AWB he adopted, and the worthless, wet, wimpish, pompous, asinine, incompetent ratbaggery that went on with the foreign minister—

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

Mr Downer interjecting

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

I will tell you why I am so personal, Foreign Minister. Most of the sailors who have operated in the Gulf over the last decade and a half happen to be my constituents. If you wonder why I get a bit personal, it is that we have to deal with their families and those who have to, as a result of that, confront the consequences of your lack of administrative competence and effectiveness—

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

Mr Downer interjecting

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

If you let us debate it, Mr Foreign Minister—if you had the guts to take the censure motion—we could deal with this in much greater detail. But as it is now we will deal with it in the detail that we can, in the few minutes that are available to us.

This House ought to allow a censure debate in this place because for it not to debate this matter of great national importance is a blot on us, as much as it is a blot on this government. This is where accountability starts for this government. I am afraid the accountability of this government with respect to the Cole royal commission is flawed and only we can put the pressure on this government to give them the terms of reference they need. (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

Let me begin with a couple of observations. First of all, the way the Leader of the Opposition is increasingly slipping into personal abuse and denigration rather than debating an issue on its merits is, I think, a sad reflection of the decline in his standards. When he was the Leader of the Opposition before, in the earlier period of his leadership, he used to pride himself on his decency. Since he has resumed the role of Leader of the Opposition—no doubt out of a sense of some desperation—he has abandoned that strategy. Somebody has told him to be offensive and rude to people and to reduce standards to the level that they used to be when the Labor Party was last in government. Apparently, the Labor Party strategists think that is going to work. My assessment of the Australian public is that it has not got a hope in hell of working.

The second observation I would make is that the only reason we are able to debate this issue is that, with our allies, the British, whose Prime Minister is here today, and the United States, we were able to get rid of Saddam Hussein’s regime and bring an end to the sanctions regime. That, I would have thought, was quite a relevant issue, bearing in mind that the Labor Party opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein and his regime.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh!

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

They do not like to be reminded of it, but the truth is that, if the Labor Party had had its way, the oil for food program would have gone on indefinitely. There would have been no discovery of the widespread rorting of the oil for food program, because that was made possible as a result of the investigations that took place in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. What the opposition professes to be the one piece of convincing evidence it has is a cable from June 2003 which reports an officer from the American army in the Coalition Provisional Authority. The opposition says, ‘Look, there you are. This scheme was being rorted.’ But hang on, I say. If Saddam Hussein’s regime had remained in place, that American officer would not have been in Iraq. The Coalition Provisional Authority would never have been established. The investigation would never have taken place. I would have thought that the fact that the Labor Party seems to think that this is an issue and is trying to land punches on the government before the Cole commission has concluded its work is little more than an effort to cover up its own embarrassment about its policy in relation to Iraq.

The Leader of the Opposition says that anybody who had half a brain would have cracked this—in other words, officers of my department, other government departments and the Office of National Assessments. As a minister, I accept that personal abuse is a big part of the political game for the Labor Party, but apparently no-one in my department even had half a brain. That is the assertion. Sure, I accept that it is an assertion made about me, because the Labor Party has never had a polite thing to say about me in my 21 years in parliament. I accept that and I do not mind that. But to say that about the officers of my department is deeply offensive. Those officers have been before the Cole commission. Let me tell the House something. They have been very nervous about it. They have worried about it. It has been very difficult for them. These are good people. These are honourable people. These are not people who have been tutored by the government to push a particular line or to perjure themselves under oath before the Cole commission. If the government had been involved in corruption, officers of the department would have been involved in that corruption. It is perfectly obvious from what they said that they were not.

Let me also say this. Since the House last sat, those officers have been before the Cole commission. There is not a scintilla of evidence that those officers have been involved in a cover-up. For the government—that is, the Prime Minister and ministers—to have been involved in a cover-up, officers of the department would have had to be complicit in that cover-up. It would not have been possible otherwise. All of the relevant material would have had to be buried somehow. Whatever would have been done to execute a cover-up, officers of the department would have had to do it.

No matter how hard the government’s opponents and critics try to prosecute it in this case, the problem for them is that the officers from the department who have appeared before the Cole commission have made it perfectly clear that, if AWB Ltd was deliberately and knowingly paying kickbacks, it was doing so in defiance of and in deceit of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian government and the United Nations itself. Let us not be conclusive about this, but according to the evidence that has been put to the Cole commission, officers of AWB Ltd endeavoured to deceive their own board—I do not know if that is true or not, but that is certainly the claim that is being made. If there were a conspiracy, corruption or a cover-up, that would be pretty obvious.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about a blind eye?

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

The very determined member for Hotham interjects. By the way, he showed a lot of guts winning that preselection. I admire that.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about the blind eye?

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

He interjects ‘a blind eye’. For the government to have turned a blind eye, either officers of government departments would have had to turn a blind eye, and it is perfectly obvious from their evidence that they did not, or the government—that is, ministers and the Prime Minister—would have had to instruct them to turn a blind eye. Of course, there is no evidence to that effect either.

The fact is that all of this is being played out in an extremely transparent way. If the government wanted to turn a blind eye, if it wanted to brush this issue under the carpet or pretend that something had happened that had not happened, or if it wanted to deceive and be dishonest, presumably it would not have set up a commission with the powers of a royal commission. If people reflect on it, it simply defies commonsense.

Let me make it perfectly clear. We are happy to have a discussion about this every single day of the week. From recollection, I think the opposition asked 110 questions about this issue. Today is the day when the new industrial relations system comes into force. Mr Combet went on television yesterday and said that the Labor Party should get into the government over this. The member for Perth made a great song and dance—I saw it on the news last night—about how ‘we in the Labor Party are going to beat up the government on industrial relations’. We had four lazy questions about the blindingly obvious on industrial relations. We had a heap of the usual hysterical accusations against the government on AWB Ltd, when the government has already set up a commission of inquiry into it. I would have thought that those opposite would want to be just ever so slightly cautious about making too many conclusive allegations against the government on this issue before the Cole commission reports.

Maybe the Cole commission will find that the government was involved in corruption, had known all about it and so on. If I may say so, Mr Speaker, I would have thought that ever so slightly unlikely, but I do not know; we will have to wait and see. If it does not come up with those sorts of conclusions, it is going to be a very embarrassing day for the Australian Labor Party and other critics of the government—a very embarrassing day. I would have thought that the government had done absolutely the right thing. Far from trying to hide or cover anything up, it set up a commission of inquiry so that all of the facts could be put out on the table.

Let me conclude with something—and from time to time I will come back to this in question time.

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Crean interjecting

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

The member for Hotham interjects. Apparently, in an interview on a television program—the 7.30 Report last week or the week before last, from recollection—Mr Ingruber, who was a staffer for the member for Hotham when he was the Leader of the Opposition, said that he had met with AWB Ltd in 2002 and had some discussions—I am not sure—about this issue and about Iraq. We would like to know about that. We would like to know what questions the opposition asked. At one stage the member for Griffith said in the media that he had had only one meeting with AWB Ltd. The next day he said, ‘Actually, I had several meetings.’ We would like to know what happened at those meetings. Did the opposition ask questions about the oil for food program? Mr Cole said that members of parliament should provide all information to the commission of inquiry. We know from the commission of inquiry that the office of the member for Griffith had material. We also know that it has not provided that material to the Cole inquiry. So I do not think that the opposition comes to this issue with clean hands. How preposterous would it be for me to accuse the opposition of being involved in a cover-up? (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

What we have in this chamber is a foreign minister who is in total and absolute denial of everything that is going on around him, of every piece of evidence that has been presented—and he scuttles, without courage, from the chamber. The government, of which he is the Minister for Foreign Affairs, were warned repeatedly about this ‘wheat for weapons’ scandal, and what did they do? They chose to do nothing. They are in denial of the fact that there were 27 separate warnings. They are in denial of the fact that the foreign minister had a legal responsibility under Australian domestic law to enforce sanctions against Iraq. They are in denial of the fact that, because of his failure to do so, $300 million was paid over to the enemy.

This foreign minister says that other companies were involved worldwide as well. He is right. There were 2,200 companies from 65 different countries involved in this, and guess who got the gold medal performance? The AWB—first out of 2,200, with $300 million. Guess who got the silver medal? A company from India, by kicking in $40 million to $50 million. There is a big gap between gold and silver, and I do not even know who got the bronze, but this minister is responsible for the ultimate gold medal performance in producing corrupt contracts with Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The reason for this motion being urgent is that this exercise in denial is entirely delusional because this minister refuses to face and acknowledge some basic facts. He described himself boldly, grandly, in the media as a minister exhibiting ‘characteristic diligence’. What level of delusion do you have to be suffering from to describe your performance in this $300 million ‘wheat for weapons’ scandal as ‘characteristic diligence’?

Let us look at some of the excuses masquerading as defences which the foreign minister put up today. The first half of his great defence was: ‘You’ve hurt my feelings.’ He felt that the Leader of the Opposition had not shown good manners. The foreign minister was feeling sad, hurt and upset by that, and as a result Alex left the chamber feeling very cross. That was the first half of his defence. Then we got to the second half of his defence, which I think is the ultimate perversion of foreign policy logic. It runs like this: ‘I, Alexander Downer, had to invade Iraq, which was under Saddam Hussein’s regime, in order to discover that I, Alexander Downer, had approved a company which was sending $300 million to Saddam Hussein’s regime.’ The logic is this: ‘We had to go and invade Iraq to find out that Iraq was receiving corrupt payments from Australia.’ This is monumental nonsense—and Mr Hunt is about to get up and speak to us—

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

Order! The member for Griffith will refer to people by their title or by their seat.

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

As a consequence, I think that defence is not worth any further time. His next defence was that the opposition had been nasty to officials. The opposition is serious about this: holding this government accountable for the biggest corruption scandal in Australia’s history. It was the biggest single source of foreign funds illegally delivered to Saddam Hussein’s regime, and this minister can sit here and simply smirk about it.

We do not have a particular case to make against officials; we have a case to make against the ministers who received the officials’ advice. This minister and his fellow ministers received 27 separate warnings, including eight separate intelligence warnings—including three specific intelligence warnings about a Jordanian company called Alia—three specific warnings from the UN about what the AWB was up to and two cable reports from Baghdad on kickbacks on oil for food contracts, not to mention the minister himself receiving a ministerial submission specifically on this subject concerned about what AWB was up to; and this minister chose to do nothing.

The reason this motion has to be dealt with with urgency is that these are serious matters. We have had gross negligence on the part of this minister, but that was up until the Iraq war. In the period following the Iraq war, gross negligence was followed by the grossest attempts at a cover-up, and that has been going on ever since—gross negligence and gross cover-up, with grave damage being delivered to Australia’s national interests. Our national security interests, our economic interests and our export interests have been fundamentally undermined by this minister’s failure to do his job. He stands condemned. (Time expired)

Question put:

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