Kim Wilkie (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to raise today the overwhelming amount of evidence that points to a systemic failing on the part of the foreign minister and trade minister to discharge their obligations under Australian and international law in the oil for food scandal. They should have known. There were a raft of warnings from Australia’s intelligence community. There were a raft of warnings from the United Nations. After the war, when the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia formed an interim body to administer Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority, there existed yet more information pointing to the abuse of the oil for food program by the AWB.

Let me first go to the intelligence received by the Australian government. We know from evidence presented in the Cole inquiry that on at least six occasions the Australian government received intelligence pointing to a serious breaching of the oil for food program, four of which specifically said that a Jordanian based trucking company named Alia was being used as a front company for Saddam Hussein’s regime. For example, in 1998 the AIC held intelligence indicating that Alia Corporation, based in Jordan, was part owned by the Iraqi government and that it was involved in circumventing United Nations sanctions on behalf of the Iraqi government.

Secondly, by September 2001, the AIC held intelligence indicating that inland transport fees for humanitarian goods, including fees paid through Alia, were proposed to be increased substantially by Iraq. This increase was on top of the 10 per cent commission already paid, and the fees were payable in advance of delivery. The proposed increase in transport fees was to apply to all humanitarian goods delivered under the oil for food program through the port of Umm Qasr. And if the warnings being received by Australia’s intelligence community and passed up the line to ministerial offices were not enough, let us not forget the warnings the Australian government, from the Prime Minister down, received in 2000 and 2001.

There are five cables tabled in the Cole inquiry that were sent to and from the Australian government in Canberra and the Australian Mission to the United Nations in New York—in January 2000, March 2000 and March 2001. These cables discussed warnings from the UN about the AWB’s activities in Iraq. After the war, it appears from evidence presented to the Cole inquiry that the warnings to the Howard government became sharper. The starkest of these warnings came in June 2003, when the Australian representation in Baghdad sent a cable to Canberra outlining the new Coalition Provisional Authority’s reprioritisation of contracts in the immediate postwar period. This cable stated:

Every contract since phase 9 included a kickback to the regime from between 10 and nineteen per cent. The CPA was advising ministries to tell companies with contracts that the “after sales service fee”, which was usually to be deposited in the offshore banks, would be remitted to them.

That cable, too, went to everybody, from the Prime Minister’s office down. This was a warning that carried no ambiguity whatsoever. Its message was clear. It informed the Howard government that AWB had been rorting the UN oil for food program. It must be remembered that during all this time AWB was the single largest user of the program.

I have only outlined today a small portion of the evidence provided to the Cole inquiry which underlines the gross incompetence of the Howard government in this scandal. But I want to raise one final thing today. On Monday, senior counsel for the Cole inquiry, Mr Agius, stated in the inquiry:

We have not been able to identify, amongst the many thousands of documents we have from AWB—so we may have missed it, but I think it is unlikely—any document at all which indicates, or records even, that AWB, or anybody on behalf of AWB, mentioned Alia to any representative of the Commonwealth of Australia at any level, at any time before the announcement of the Volcker inquiry.

I find this a most curious statement—not least having regard to the pieces of evidence that I have outlined today, but also because of the note we have seen in the inquiry from Michael Long, an AWB employee seconded to the Australian government after the war. Mr Long penned a document to DFAT in Canberra in June 2003 which carried a very similar message to that which I outlined and which was in the other June 2003 cable from Australia’s representatives in Baghdad back to the Australian government.

So I wonder what Mr Agius meant by his statement on Monday, in the face of the evidence that I have outlined today. I am puzzled as to how a senior lawyer such as Mr Agius could reach such a conclusion. The Prime Minister has promised a fair inquiry, but this statement worries me very much. Having been a pig farmer, I know that, if it squeals like a pig, walks like a pig and smells like a pig, chances are that two things are certain: one is that it stinks and the other is that it is a pig.