House debates Questions without Notice

Iraq

Monday, 16 October 2006 House of Representatives

Kim Beazley

Kim Beazley Brand, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition

2:41 pm

My question is to the Prime Minister. Didn’t the government have intelligence before the war warning that invading Iraq would increase the global terrorist threat?

John Howard

John Howard Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister

There were a range of views available to the government, and those views were exposed by the inquiries that were conducted, and those inquiries demonstrated a number of things. They demonstrated that there had been no massaging of the intelligence by the government and they also found that the public comments made by spokesmen for the government in relation to the intelligence available were restrained and moderate.