Alan Eggleston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party is trying to trivialise and drag down what has been a very serious and important inquiry into one of the greatest scandals that has ever involved Australian business. It is a very sad thing that this has occurred, and I think that the Labor Party is behaving in a very irresponsible and quite disreputable manner in attacking the government in this way. The truth of the matter is that Labor has not been able to substantiate accusations of misdemeanour by the Prime Minister, other ministers, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, our ambassadors or anybody else in the Australian government.

The truth of the matter is that the full nature of the oil for food scandal only became apparent after the fall of Saddam Hussein 3½ years ago. The toppling of the Hussein regime gave the United Nations access to Iraqi government documents for the first time and led to the UN setting up the Volcker inquiry on 21 April 2004. It is a matter of record that the Australian government cooperated fully with Volcker and urged AWB to do likewise. The simple matter is that nobody believed that a great Australian business organisation like AWB—