John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My question is directed to Senator Minchin, the Minister representing the Prime Minister. I refer the minister to the 2006 survey which was published in the Lancet and which concluded that over 650,000 Iraqis have died, mostly from violence, since March 2003. Is the minister aware that documents assessing the survey have been released under the United Kingdom’s FOI system? Is the minister also aware that those documents indicate the British government was advised by the UK Ministry of Defence’s chief scientific adviser against publicly criticising the survey because the survey’s methods were considered ‘close to best practice’ and ‘robust’? On what basis did the Prime Minister, in October last year, criticise the survey as ‘out of whack’ and ‘not plausible’?