Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. They are getting very touchy indeed. We are concerned about this matter. We have been asking questions. I happened to be listening to question time in the House of Representatives today. Minister Truss’s office said last night—he told the newspapers—that they got a report from the Wheat Export Authority which dealt with the issue of the trucking fees in Iraq—the allegations of the AWB’s payments, the kickbacks. Today in question time, Mr McGauran declined to say that he had that information. When Mr Truss was asked, he declined to address what was said last night. He did not contradict it but he took himself to Mr McGauran’s statement—another cover-up. Why are we so concerned about this? During estimates, Mr Besley was asked:

So the Wheat Export Authority was not aware of the arrangements made by AWB(I) for the transportation and delivery of wheat within Iraq.

Mr Besley’s answer, completely unequivocal, was one word—no. Yet he had the temerity to present a letter yesterday which said that his answer was factually incomplete. When you give the exact opposite of the truth as an answer during estimates, I can think of many words to categorise your answer but I certainly do not think ‘factually incomplete’ is the correct categorisation of something which has the appearance of a blatant, barefaced lie.

What did we have in question time today? We had Minister Abetz given the opportunity to say, ‘Yes, I had a brief on this matter yesterday’ or ‘No, I didn’t have a brief.’ Yet he assiduously avoided that matter because, it is my belief, the government knew full well that this material was coming out. Today I asked: when did the minister know that the evidence given by Besley was incorrect? Senator Abetz said he would take that on notice and get an answer. I think he should come in here today and give us that answer. No more skirting the facts, no more avoiding the truth. Let us know when Mr McGauran knew that Besley was going to correct his evidence.

I believe the department knew full well some time ago that Mr Besley gave incorrect evidence, and it is incomprehensible, given the material that is now on the public record, that the government did not know that Besley had misled the Senate. Clearly, if the Wheat Export Authority had given Mr Truss a report which talked about these trucking arrangements and Mr McGauran clearly knew about those, then they knew that the Wheat Export Authority had misled the Senate back in November.

Other questions were asked which were avoided as well, such as: what steps did the minister take to correct the record? There is no material before us on that. I look forward to an answer on that. Another question was: is the minister satisfied that the Wheat Export Authority did all that it could to correct the record? Clearly, if it takes you over three months to work out that you have actually told the committee the exact opposite of the truth, then there is something wrong. The chief executive officer of the Wheat Export Authority sat beside Mr Besley at the estimates hearing. Indeed, he is in the Hansard as answering some of the questions. If he did not know that Mr Besley was misleading the committee then that says something about the performance of his duties, because if the Wheat Export Authority’s report dealt with these matters then Mr Taylor would well have known about that. (Time expired)