Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and International Security) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I refer to the minister’s advice to AWB last year that AWB ‘can’t be responsible for what happened to the money after it was paid to Alia’. I also refer to Australian government intelligence reports of 1998, the first quarter of 2000, November 2000 and September 2001 that confirmed that Alia was a front for Saddam Hussein’s regime. Why did the minister tell AWB last year that it did not matter where AWB payments to Alia were going when the government already knew that Alia was a fully-fledged front company for the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein?

See this speech in context