Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

What I was saying before the noise got so loud that I could not be heard was that the ALP appears to be persisting in some sort of ‘Get Senator Joyce’ campaign, but they have framed their questions completely on a false premise. What in fact we know about the AWB wheat contracts is, first of all, that the Australian government was not a party to the AWB contracts. We certainly know that they were administered by the United Nations. We know that there is not a skerrick of evidence to suggest that any government minister was aware of any subsidies in the AWB wheat contracts, and there is certainly no conclusive evidence that any government department or government official was aware.

In any event, as previous answers have stressed, the matter is of course subject to the Cole inquiry. In a moment I will indicate that Justice Cole considers that he has adequate terms of reference to be able to make the findings of fact that need to be made to get to the truth of this matter. That is what the government intend should happen. That is why we have established the Cole commission. I must say that what is very interesting in relation to Senator Conroy’s question is the fact that Senator O’Brien and his colleague Craig Emerson back in 2003 put out a press release to this effect:

In the absence of evidence to support the allegations, Australian wheat growers are entitled to dismiss the claims as an attempt to promote the sale of United States subsidised wheat in the Iraq market.

I must say that that sounds very familiar, and in fact that is what happened.