Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I can draw Senator Ronaldson’s attention to the Age as well. Michelle Grattan’s column talks about an incident which occurred between Senators Heffernan and Nash as they prepared to board an early morning flight from Canberra to Sydney. The article purports to quote the nature of the exchange, and it purports to quote Senator Nash, who confirmed the exchange and described it as ‘Bill being Bill’. She said, ‘I certainly wouldn’t expect quite such ill manners at 6.30 in the morning.’ When this matter was raised in question time a number of government senators asked, ‘Were you there?’ as though, unless senators on this side of the chamber were personally present they could not rely on the report in the paper, which quotes a senator who was involved and assures us that what is purported to have taken place did take place.

That is pretty typical of this government. When they said, ‘We weren’t told about children overboard,’ that was their excuse. Now we are hearing in relation to the AWB, ‘No-one told us that AWB was giving money to Saddam Hussein’—a typical hollow defence. I heard the answer of the Prime Minister in question time today when he was asked whether he thought to investigate the claims that AWB were paying money to the Iraqis. He referred to a press release of mine and quoted selectively from the last paragraph, which says: ‘In the absence of evidence to support allegations, Australian wheat growers are entitled to dismiss the claims as an attempt to promote the sale of US subsidised wheat in the Iraq market,’ and he used that as a justification for saying, ‘Therefore I had no reason to investigate the claims that AWB were diverting money to Saddam Hussein.’

What the Prime Minister failed to do in question time today, and Minister Vaile has also failed to do this, was to deal with the other eight or so paragraphs of the press release and the heading, which says: ‘Iraq kickback claims must be investigated.’ That is the dishonesty of this government’s approach to questions being raised about their actions: they did not know, they had not heard, they were not there to hear the exchange—and then they misrepresent what the opposition said in 2003 in relation to this in order to justify the Prime Minister not investigating what was clearly known to the government at that time.

We heard Mr Vaile in question time today in relation to the same matter. He said that he asked AWB and they said that nothing was wrong, so he did not take it any further. That is the sort of approach this government takes, and it is the same approach that Senator Minchin now takes to the behaviour of Senator Heffernan—behaviour revealed on the radio and in the Age today and not contradicted by Senator Nash in the report in the Age today. But the government is prepared to say, ‘Well, it is one of ours. We can’t have a casualty. We can’t apply to our own the standards that we expect everyone else to maintain. So we are going to say, “You don’t know what happened because you weren’t there.”’ That was the despicable standard of senators opposite in question time today. It is despicable, because the government and the Prime Minister have asked Australians to adopt a higher standard in their behaviour towards others. But when it comes to members of the government, when it comes to them trying to intimidate members of the National Party—that poor, sliding-into-oblivion party—then there is a double standard.

I can understand the National Party being upset. The Labor Party has had people rat on it and vote against it in this chamber. When former Leader of the Democrats Cheryl Kernot left the Democrats, she resigned from the Senate and ultimately contested a House of Representatives seat, which she won, on behalf of the Labor Party. Do we see that integrity from Senator McGauran when he rats on his party, joins the Liberal Party and takes a National Party seat into another party room? No, we do not. That is why the National Party is so upset, and I can understand it, but that is a standard that this government is prepared to accept, just as all their other double standards are acceptable when they seek to impose other standards on the Australian people. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.