Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of answers by Senator Minchin, Minister representing the Prime Minister. How Senator Minchin—and, just now, Senator Scullion—can stand in this place and pretend that the government and its ministers have come out of the Cole commission process squeaky clean is extraordinary. We have witnessed one of the biggest scandals in Australia’s federal history, and the behaviour of the government is just testament to the incredible deception and incompetence that it continues to foist on the Australian people. This government lied about ‘children overboard’, lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, committed us to a disastrous war and then, when they knew that the dirty dealings in Iraq were going to become public, they ensured that the terms of reference for the Cole commission were framed to protect ministers—Ministers Downer, Vaile, Truss and the rest—who knew, or should have known, what was going on in Iraq. As we know, Commissioner Cole himself has said in writing that, under the terms of reference set by the government, he had no power to make determinations on whether ministers breached their legal obligations under Australia’s prohibited export regulations.

The government is engaging in its usual arrogant trickery, saying that the government did not get its hands dirty, when the issue of ministerial culpability was not even looked at by the commission the government set up. But the Australian people, I am pleased to say, will not be duped by this piece of trickery and they will not believe Senator Minchin’s weasel words today. They know it was Minister Downer who was merrily signing off and approving the 41 dodgy contracts that Australia entered into with the Iraqi government over a period of five years. The Australian people will not be duped. They have seen the monumental expose of corruption, the paying of $300 million of Australian money in bribes to Saddam Hussein—a mass murderer—and the breaching of international sanctions. All of this occurred on this government’s watch and this government did everything it could to cover up an appalling breach of international obligations. It did everything it could to cover up the shameful, disgraceful corruption and incompetence that has now placed in jeopardy our $3.3 billion worth of wheat exports. At a time when Australia’s wheat growers are facing the worst drought in our history, this government’s incompetence has compounded their troubles and destroyed Australia’s reputation in international trade.

The government, when it privatised the Australian Wheat Board, gave AWB a monopoly power and then failed to hold AWB accountable. It failed to ensure that it did not abuse its monopoly power and failed to put in place any measures in any government department or relevant authority to make sure that AWB was doing the right thing by Australia’s farmers. Not only did it fail in that regard but, when the smell of corruption and bribe-paying started to emanate from AWB, the government also ignored the 35 separate warnings its officers and departments received about AWB’s activities in Iraq. There were 35 warnings from 1998 to 2003. Ten of those warnings occurred in the period after we sent our troops into Iraq to support the Americans’ war. When we were sending our men and women to a war that we cannot win, we were funding the enemy against whom we were fighting. When rorting of the UN’s oil for food program was happening, Australia was the biggest rorter of them all.

This was not some one-off aberration; this was a long-term, systematic abuse of our international obligations. The failure of the government to be accountable and the reckless way in which it failed to act because it was afraid of upsetting its doormat friends in the National Party has made Australia subject to international scrutiny for all the wrong reasons. How humiliating to read in the Cole report the results of this government’s reckless failure to manage our participation in international affairs. As Commissioner Cole, in his opening remarks, said:

The consequences of AWB’s actions ... have been immense ... Shareholders have lost half the value of their investment. Trade with Iraq worth more than A$500 million per annum has been forfeited ... Some entities will not deal with the company. Some wheat farmers do so unwillingly but are, at present, compelled by law to do so. AWB is threatened by law suits both in Australia and overseas—

lawsuits that we believe to be to the value of around $1 billion. All of this was on this government’s watch. (Time expired)