Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

That was one of the more extraordinary defences that we have heard from a Liberal senator, Senator Lightfoot. The Labor Party is quite rightly attempting to hold this government to account with respect to what ministers knew about the massive bribes paid by the Australian Wheat Board to the Iraqi government to purchase Australian wheat. Labor is determined to pursue the matter and find out what ministers knew about that sort of arrangement. What do we get from Senator Lightfoot? Talk about sending in someone who will talk about anything but the subject! Senator Lightfoot talked about his share ownership, international currency fluctuations, bad droughts, the trade union movement—anything but the issue at hand. The issue that is being debated and the issue which the Labor opposition is going to ask questions about is: what did ministers know about this bribery?

Senator Lightfoot has made the amazing claim that the Labor Party, by asking questions, is damaging the Australian wheat industry. The damage caused to the Australian wheat industry is a result of the bribery carried out by the AWB. That is the cause of the damage to the Australian wheat industry. With respect to the AWB and the fact that some of their officials have bribed the Iraqi government, we are fortunate to the extent that there is a government authority, known as the Wheat Export Authority, which is responsible for oversighting these arrangements of the AWB. The Wheat Export Authority is directly responsible to this parliament and to the Senate chamber through Senate estimates.

In November last year, a number of questions were asked at Senate estimates about what the Wheat Export Authority knew with respect to the bribery that had gone on. After all, part of the role of this government authority’s job—with Mr Besley at the helm—was to investigate the allegations concerning bribery by the Australian Wheat Board. That authority fronted up to Senate estimates, which is effectively the same as this chamber. So we are perfectly entitled to ask questions of ministers—in this case Senator Abetz, representing the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. He is the individual who will have to attend estimates next week. We are perfectly entitled to ask questions, as we were entitled in November last year to ask questions about what the Wheat Export Authority was doing: what checks it had carried out and what its findings were. We are perfectly entitled, and anyone in this chamber would be entitled to ask what the Wheat Export Authority was doing in terms of overseeing and checking these bribery allegations.

But what did we get today? We got Senator Abetz effectively hiding behind the Cole royal commission into this bribery scandal. That is not a defence. It is not a defence because the Wheat Export Authority is directly responsible to this parliament, and we have the right to ask questions of it, and we will continue to ask questions quite directly. The Senate, through the estimates committee, does have a direct investigative role in questioning that authority. So it is no excuse. Senator Abetz is just hiding from and dodging the questions. We have seen this throughout this week in the Senate and in the other place. We have seen them hiding and dodging behind the Cole royal commission. Senator Abetz, as the responsible minister, will not be able to dodge when he comes before estimates next week. He will not be able to say, ‘I’m not answering questions because of the Cole royal commission.’ He has a direct responsibility of accountability when he turns up to estimates to answer the questions and stop this cover-up. (Time expired)