Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday the member for O’Connor, Wilson ‘Ironbar’ Tuckey, delivered a blast of truth on his way into this place. Fronting journalists at the entrance to the House of Representatives, the member for O’Connor outed a senior minister as a supporter of corruption. The member for O’Connor himself is a former minister in this government. He represents one of those great wheat-growing regions in this country. He knows how much damage the wheat for weapons scandal has done to Australia’s international reputation and the economic interests of our wheat growers. And he has a tendency—we all agree with this—to come into this place and tell it like it is. He does not care who is going to get up him later.

Yesterday, the member for O’Connor was asked by reporters whether he thought National Party MPs knew about the kickbacks paid by the AWB to the regime of Saddam Hussein. Rather than deliver one of those slippery responses that members of this government have turned into a real art form, the member for O’Connor told the truth. This is what he had to say, and I am going to quote it just as he said it. He said:

The dogs have been barking about corruption for years. A number of people, who were not Liberals, were constantly out in the marketplace saying it was the way you did business in the Middle East.

We have all heard it, and we have heard it time and time again: it is the way you did business in the Middle East.

Like the member himself, there was nothing complicated about his response. His statement of fact was not news to anyone on this side of the House. In fact, I do not think it was news to anyone in this country. It was not news to Australians who know that National Party ministers held the trade and agriculture portfolios while the AWB paid bribes to Saddam Hussein.

While ruminating on the member for O’Connor’s statement, I reflected on a defence of the AWB’s conduct that was mounted at a Queensland National Party conference in March this year. The defence was not mounted by a Young Nat or an ageing acolyte of Joh; it was mounted by a senior minister in the Howard government. The defence directly related to the conduct of the Cole inquiry and was made in these terms:

… deals are not done by gentlemen just sitting across the table, and some of the language that is being used in this inquiry reflects a total lack of understanding about the way in which business occurs around the world.

These shameful comments were made by the Deputy Leader of the National Party—a party whose numbers are diminishing at a rate bettered only by its diminishing integrity.

It is relevant to note that the Deputy Leader of the National Party served as minister for agriculture, with responsibility directly for the failings of the Wheat Export Authority for much of the period subject to scrutiny by Commissioner Cole. Soon after excusing the AWB’s payments of bribes, the Deputy Leader of the National Party was promoted to Minister for Trade—a sick joke played on not just the wheat exporters but all Australian exporters. The Minister for Trade has had this to say about AWB’s corruption:

... if you are paying commissions to an agent to sell wheat in another part of the world, there is hardly anything odd about that. When we sell our house, we pay commissions to a real estate agent. We may think he charges us far too much, but we don’t say that is corruption or a bribery payment, it is a fee for a service.

No denial about it actually taking place, just an explanation: ‘It’s not a bribe; it’s just a fee for service.’ Unfortunately for the minister, Cole found differently. The minister went on:

This idea that has become prevalent in some of the newspapers to cross out the word commission and write bribery or kickback is a reflection of the imbalance in the reporting there has been on this particular issue.

But even if, and I am not conceding it happened, somebody was told many, many years ago that the Australian Wheat Board was paying commissions for wheat sales in Iraq, that would not cause any great worry.

So if ever there were any kickbacks to the Iraqi grain [board], then I guess they would end up with the government. So that is not terribly unusual.

In January this year the Deputy Leader of the National Party pre-empted the findings of the Cole inquiry—by dismissing them. He said this:

I think that whilst we’ve all now got the benefit of hindsight and we can look back on who maybe should’ve known what, the reality is that even with the benefit of hindsight the things that were happening at the time were reasonable.

They ‘were reasonable’—that is what he said. The member for O’Connor is right to condemn those in the National Party who knew what was going on at AWB but did nothing about it. He is right to condemn those who make excuses about breaches of Australian and international law as ‘reasonable’.

The Deputy Leader of the National Party would not hold office in any government that had a skerrick of integrity or decency. He is a disgrace; so is this government. He knew about the kickbacks; they all knew about the kickbacks, because they have admitted to it. Even the Treasurer came in here and defended the $90 million— (Time expired)