Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of all answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by opposition senators today, relating to the oil for food program.

Let me state at the outset that the $300 million wheat-for-weapons scandal has revealed a pattern of negligence on the part of Howard government and its ministers and several attempts to cover up the outcome. The result has been a financial cost to Australia’s wheat industry and farmers—and a cost to its international trading reputation. That is what is put at the feet of the Howard government. They have to accept that that is the outcome.

What they have done, though, is to ensure that the commissioner’s findings have been straitjacketed by his terms of reference. We now have a position where, even despite the straitjacket they placed on the commissioner, the inquiry still concluded that DFAT did very little in relation to the allegations or other information it received. It also found that DFAT did not have in place any systems or procedures in relation to how its staff should proceed in response to allegations relating to the breach of sanctions. When you look at the terms of reference, they were confined or straitjacketed in such a way that Commissioner Cole only examined criminal breaches. He made it clear, though, that he was not required to consider whether there had been more general failings on the part of the government. He said:

It is immaterial that the Commonwealth may have had the means or ability to find out that the information was misleading, or that it ought reasonably to have known that the information was misleading.

This government has not only trashed our international trading reputation but also damaged the reputation of wheat farmers themselves. Regarding our international standing, the argument is simple: did Australia have an obligation under international law to implement the UN sanction regime against Iraq? That is the primary question: did Australia have an obligation? The answer is: yes, we did have an obligation. On 6 August 1990, the United Nations Security Council, responding to the armed conflict after Iraq invaded Kuwait, implemented resolution 661, reaffirming earlier demands for a withdrawal of Iraqi troops.

Under article 25 of the charter, all member states of the UN are obliged to carry out the recommendations of the United Nations Security Council. So adherence to both resolution 661 and resolution 986 was required. Did the Australian government implement the resolutions into domestic law? The answer again is yes. According to a joint legal opinion sought by Commissioner Cole, the Australian government made attempts to implement the United Nations Security Council resolutions into Australian domestic law. But the full details of the resolutions were not expressly placed in primary legislation and were instead given effect through regulation.

So the short answer is that the government did seek to implement the sanctions regime and to implement the resolution into domestic law. But did the Australian government properly fulfil its obligations to implement the sanctions regime? This is a more difficult question. The answer to that is no, the Australian government did not properly fulfil its international obligations to implement the sanctions regime—on three grounds. Firstly, the international binding sanctions regime as outlined in paragraph 4 of resolution 661 requires, in part, that member states:

... shall prevent their nationals and any persons within their territories ... from remitting any other funds to persons or bodies within Iraq or Kuwait ...

It was not done. Further, if you consider that the Australian government failed to prevent the corrupt transfer of some $US320 million of aid from the UN escrow account, you can then say prima facie that it did not implement that resolution. Secondly, AWB was, prior to privatisation in 1998, an Australian government entity. This means that the Australian government failed not only in the second instance as a regulator but also, in the primary instance, it wilfully breached the sanctions as a member state and party to the UN charter. (Time expired)