Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question again is to the Prime Minister. I ask whether the Prime Minister recalls stating about the Iraq war three years ago in this parliament:

The reality is that the Leader of the Opposition has allowed his tribal dislike, because of the politics of the current American President, to overwhelm his concern for the national interest.  Irrespective of who the President may be, it is never in the interests of this country to have that kind of generic criticism made.

Prime Minister, if that criticism was valid in relation to Mr Latham, why is it not also valid in relation to you?

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

I do remember making that statement and I also remember that the current Leader of the Opposition regarded a statement made by Mr Latham not as something to condemn but rather as something to be supported as a robust exercise in free speech.

While I am on my feet, I also remember some things said by the Leader of the Opposition way back in 2002 in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Let me remind you what he said to the State Zionist Council of Victoria:

Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. That is a matter of empirical fact.

Absolutely. Chemical and biological weapons have always been possessed by him. Also:

... we’ve said from the beginning that Saddam Hussein does possess weapons of mass destruction.

I am very happy to go back three years ago to the lead-up to the Iraq war. I am very happy to remind the Leader of the Opposition that he, along with his immediate predecessor, the member for Brand, was very lukewarm in his support of the position taken by the member for Hotham. The member for Hotham at least was forthright about his position. You were in no doubt as to where the member for Hotham stood. But the current and the former leaders of the opposition were both having two bob each way three years ago and, if the outcome over the past three years had been different, they would have been running away from the position that the Labor Party took three years ago as fast as you can imagine it, and the member for Hotham knows that what I am saying is dead right.