John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for the question and I ask him to listen carefully to the response. It does not prove anything of the kind, and the reason that it does not prove anything of the kind is that the emails which form the basis of the Leader of the Opposition’s question, and which form the basis of an erroneous report in the Australian newspaper this morning, were in fact exchanged in February 2005, not in September or October 2004. They were exchanged a week after I had received a memorandum from my department drawing my attention to the displeasure of the Volcker inquiry with the lack of cooperation from AWB and a week after I had given clear written instructions that there had to be total cooperation and disclosure. Everything I have said on this has been totally truthful and consistent, and once again the Leader of the Opposition has been caught out misrepresenting the truth.

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