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

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I refer the foreign minister to page 83 of volume 4 of the Cole inquiry’s report, which states:

By June 2004 DFAT was aware that AWB’s prices had included ... transportation, that AWB ... paid money to a Jordanian trucking company ... and that AWB had conceded that the Jordanian company might of its own volition have provided kickbacks to the regime.

Minister, given that Commissioner Cole has concluded that your department knew these facts by June 2004, why in September 2004 did you direct our acting ambassador in Washington to ‘reject the allegations entirely that the AWB had paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime’? Minister, why did you seek to deceive the Americans just prior to our own Australian elections?

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

I did not in any way seek to deceive the Americans in the first place. In the second place, as is made perfectly clear if you read the whole of the Cole commission report, that report will explain to you the emergence of my knowledge, ministerial knowledge and the department’s knowledge of whether AWB Ltd was paying kickbacks. The fact is that I totally reject the proposition put by the Leader of the Opposition.