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

My question is to Senator Ellison, the Minister for Justice and Customs. I refer the minister to the incident where the Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs used the term ‘biological agent’ to describe the white powder that was sent to the Indonesian Embassy on 1 June 2005. Does the minister recall Mr Downer telling parliament that afternoon that the powder had ‘tested positive as a biological agent’? Didn’t the Attorney-General go so far as to say the next day that the powder was ‘a biological agent and it comes from a particular family including anthrax’? Did the Australian Federal Police advise Mr Downer that the powder had tested positive as a biological agent? Was it the Australian Federal Police that advised Mr Ruddock that the powder was from the same family as anthrax?