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

My question is to the Prime Minister. Has the Prime Minister seen comments by decorated veteran SAS major and Iraq veteran Peter Tinley, who described the $300 million wheat for weapons scandal as ‘an absolute rort on the Australian Defence Force—the people that actually went into western Iraq and did all the work that was required and asked of them from this government’? When the Prime Minister let Australian money buy Saddam’s bullets, why didn’t he think of those who the bullets were being fired at—Peter Tinley and his mates in our armed forces?

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

The claim made in the question by the Leader of the Opposition that the government let Australian money buy Saddam’s bullets is quite untrue, and it has been demonstrated to be untrue. I know it has been the mantra of the Labor Party, and I know the Labor Party is intensely disappointed that Mr Cole did not find as the Labor Party wanted Mr Cole to find, but that claim is absolutely false. It has been demonstrated to be false by the findings of the Cole inquiry. If the advice of those opposite—more of others than of the Leader of the Opposition, and I at least concede that the Leader of the Opposition was a fence-sitter inside the Labor Party when it came—

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

Rubbish!

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

It is not rubbish at all. He is on the record as having said that every foreign ministry and defence department in the world believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. As for his erstwhile friend, the member for Griffith—

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

Mr Beazley interjecting

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

Order! The Leader of the Opposition!

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

He said it as an empirical fact. He said, ‘Don’t believe the intelligence; believe what the scientists have to say about it.’ So let me say, as I said yesterday, that the former officer is entitled, as is any Australian, to have his views about the Iraq war, but the claim made by the Leader of the Opposition that in some way we allowed our money to buy Saddam’s bullets is not only a slur on the government and a slur on many people associated with the government but it has been proved totally wrong, a complete falsehood, by the findings of the commissioner.