Ross Lightfoot (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to correct something quite reprehensible that the previous speaker, Senator Forshaw, said. He said that AWB would be wound up. That is totally incorrect. Let me put it into some perspective, because it is very important that this sort of information about Australian companies is not given any sort of credibility. The AWB wheat arm—the selling arm, the overseas export arm—is small by comparison with the rest of the assets and businesses of AWB. For instance, Landmark in AWB is by far its biggest employer. AWB is also concerned with finance, with the large retail sector, with farming and with other industries.

Senator Forshaw’s erroneous comment only adds to the misinformation that the Labor Party has been peddling over this very important issue. It seems to be an integral part of the Labor Party that it does not matter what you say as long as you say something that some people are going to believe. I think the only people who will believe the words that Senator Forshaw uttered this afternoon will be the Labor Party people who are going to vote for him anyway. The other people are going dismiss and find quite abhorrent the comments that Senator Forshaw made here today.

We must remember that the most decent, moral and hardworking people in the world are Australian farmers. No group of people in any other industry have the moral backbone that Australian farmers have. All those words that have been spoken here this afternoon on the other side, trying to bring down AWB as a company, only have a bad effect, a negative effect, a disastrous effect, on farmers in Australia—and significantly, I must say, in Western Australia. The biggest shareholders in AWB are farmers.

There is something else I want to say in the very short period I have left—the time always seems too short in these debates on motions to take note of answers to questions. Labor said that there is no joy with the ministers or the Prime Minister. What Commissioner Cole found is that no blame whatsoever can be pointed at the Prime Minister or at any of the Prime Minister’s ministers, either cabinet ministers or outer ministry ministers. No blame can be pointed at them. There is no question that I would rather take Commissioner Cole’s words—his printed words, the words of an eminent judge, a man who has given his life to the law—over the words of those people on the other side who have given their lives to the trade union movement, as commendable as they think that might be. You cannot speak against someone who has that authority and respect and who is an integral part of the system of Australia, which props the whole of Australia up.

Do you know that Mr Beazley actually had briefings on AWB sometime ago, Mr Deputy President? Did the opposition blow the whistle then? Of course they did not. Mr Beazley had the same briefing as the government had on this. Was the whistle blown then by anyone in the Labor Party? No, it was not. They sat on it. They as an opposition sat on their hands, and now we are suffering because they failed as an alternative government. They failed the people of Australia. They failed abysmally.

I think back to those days in the late eighties of the piggery. Remember the piggery scandal? What about that? What was that? The Prime Minister of the time was mixed up in one with of the greatest scandals leading to self-profit of any Prime Minister of Australia. That was absolutely disgusting. I think again of Centenary House. You ripped $43 million above what the rental value was—