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

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by opposition Senators today.

Again, we are seeing played out the slipperiness of this government when it comes to answering questions about a variety of matters. The matter that I particularly want to address is the scandal about the AWB kickbacks to Saddam Hussein. Today in question time, I asked Senator Abetz about his performance yesterday. Just before question time, a letter from the Wheat Export Authority’s chairman, Mr Besley, was handed to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee. Unfortunately, it was not available to me because I was not invited to the meeting, but it clearly was available to others. I asked Senator Abetz today in question time why he had not addressed that matter. I asked: did he not have a brief which dealt with the matter? Senator Abetz assiduously avoided that question. Indeed, he looked away. He looked shifty in relation to the answer to that matter. I believe he had the opportunity to say that he was not briefed on the matter but, in fact, he declined to give us that assurance.

Kay Patterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I do believe that the honourable senator reflected on a senator on this side. I think he should withdraw what he said.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

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

Ross Lightfoot (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to add some mitigation and rebuttal of the contribution made by Senator O’Brien today. I do not want to purposely go into those realms where there may be some conflict between the Cole royal commission—the inquiry that has been going on for some weeks now—and those findings that may or may not be in the interests of the Australian Wheat Board. The Australian Wheat Board is a company that is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and a lot of farmers have shares in the Australian Wheat Board. I do not have any shares in the Australian Wheat Board, incidentally. I do have shares in many other companies. When the Australian Wheat Board is dragged into this chamber with the privilege of parliament, which the Australian Wheat Board does not have, it damages the farmers. I would far prefer to wait—in fact, I will—for the decision to come down from Commissioner Cole, hopefully in a few weeks time.

But Labor argues that the government should have been alerted by the wheat prices that there was something wrong. When the Australian dollar falls, there is more return to our farmers because wheat prices are set in US dollars. When there is a bad season in the major wheat-growing countries of Europe and in Canada, the United States and Argentina—and there often is—wheat prices rise as a result. When there is a bad season in Australia with the droughts, wheat prices rise. To say that wheat prices rose and the government should have been alerted that something was wrong is to say clearly and unambiguously that you do not understand the world system.

I know there is a lack of business acumen on the other side, because most of the senators on the other side are drawn from the trade union movement. They do appalling damage to farmers, to small businesses, to small towns, to people who make a living out of the bush, and to Western Australians in particular—because in Western Australia we grow half of the nation’s wheat crop, notwithstanding that we have slightly less than 10 per cent of the nation’s population. Already the United States, the biggest exporters of wheat—subsidised wheat, I might say—are saying that they are not going to allow Australia to export wheat until this inquiry is finished or if an adverse finding is found. We do not know whether or not an adverse finding is going to be reached by the royal commission.

The Wheat Export Authority set up an investigation into the Australian Wheat Board and investigated 17 major overseas contracts without finding anything wrong or untoward. The Wheat Export Authority has provided all the relevant papers to the Cole royal commission. I do not suppose that all of those have yet come out, but when they do, and I hope they do, they will certainly be a mitigating factor for the Australian Wheat Board.

I have noted that wheat prices vary considerably from week to week. Between November 1994 and December 1995, when Labor was in government, Australian Wheat Board contracts to Iraq increased by $83 a tonne, or 33½ per cent. This was during Saddam Hussein’s regime, a regime that this government assisted in removing—one of the most heinous regimes in the Middle East, and there have been a few of them. Did the Labor Party say then that there was anything wrong with their own government for exporting to Iraq—to Saddam Hussein’s regime? We are not exporting now to that regime. That is a regime that we helped to remove.

My main point of concern is: I will wait for the Cole royal commission findings to come out, and I do not think there is going to be anything wrong. I hope that the people on the other side will apologise to Australian farmers for the damage they have done. I hope they will apologise to the shareholders of the Australian Wheat Board for the loss of equity in that listed Australian company on the Australian Stock Exchange. I hope that they will have the sensibility on that side, if there is some sensibility—and there are some people over there who are very decent people—to say that they were wrong and to repair the damage. (Time expired)

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

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Unlike everyone else in this chamber, I have actually been at the inquiry for several days. I have to say that I feel very sorry for Dominic Hogan. Dominic Hogan is a bloke that was an employee of AWB Ltd. Because of the things that he was being required to do and the conflicts that he thought they were producing, he had a nervous breakdown.

Today’s question surrounds a letter that was sent to me, so I think I am pretty qualified to talk about that. We dealt with that at a quarter to two yesterday. Unfortunately, Senator O’Brien, who was on my committee, was not there.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aged Care, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why wasn’t he invited?

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not know why he was not invited. Don’t blame me.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aged Care, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I’d like to know.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He is a participating member now, as I understand.

Jeannie Ferris (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was advised.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There you go. It came out in the inquiry that Dominic Hogan, who, as I say, had a nervous breakdown over concerns about what was going on at AWB, told the Cole inquiry it would have been impossible by looking at the contracts to determine how much the price represented the split-up of the price. With regard to the Volcker inquiry, there was much excitement earlier in the week about the idea that somehow DFAT knew all about it because the AWB had got permission from DFAT to use Alia. It turns out AWB had been using Alia for a year before they wrote the letter for permission.

I think the Cole inquiry is doing great work and certainly raising and lifting a lot of myths. If the outcome is that people have broken the law then, as I said earlier on radio, we have a wonderful institution in Junee. It is not a bad set-up. It is pretty hot at this time of the year, but that is where they will probably end up if they have done the wrong thing.

With respect to the inquiry—as I say, no-one here has been following it in person—a couple of interesting things have come out of it. One is the sale of wheat proposed through AWB Ltd from the Argentine to Iraq. Some of the greatest critics of the Wheat Export Authority in the last few years have been a couple of members of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee, and a mixture of politics is involved in that. We are determined on my committee not to play politics with people’s livelihoods. We are seriously fair dinkum. I think my committee and all the members on it do great credit to this place. One of our criticisms has been that we think the Wheat Export Authority have been, using my language, and I apologise for it, a bed of pansies where we need a cage full of gorillas. They have not been equipped to do the work. The discovery of events in the Cole inquiry cements two things in my mind: that we were right about the Wheat Export Authority—

Jeannie Ferris (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A toothless tiger.

Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A toothless tiger, as Senator Ferris said. We are not putting on an act here today; we have been saying this for three years. The conflict of interest that has existed between the growers’ interests and the shareholders’ interests has been intolerable. This inquiry in Sydney has cemented that proposition in concrete. The time is up on this.

I would love someone to explain to me how it was in Australian wheat growers’ interests to have a third-party sale from the Argentine to Iraq. I think something was mentioned in the inquiry about a potential $25 kickback in the arrangement. I would love to know what business it was of the pool to get involved with the repayment of a Tigris BHP payment, for God’s sake. If people here had taken the time, they could have been there, seen and learned. I have taken down the numbers of various bank accounts, such as the Gibraltar bank account. I would love to know what money has been funnelled through that. I would love to know what went on back in the nineties with the default payment. It seemed to me there was not enough energy put into collecting that default payment. Was that part of some sleazy deal? Guess who was in government in those days. I want to know the answer to a lot of these things.

That Tigris repayment was a fraud on the pool. It was a fraud of Australian grain growers’ money. With respect to the commission paid for the repayment, there is an argument about whether it was half a million dollars or $1.3 million. Some of these clowns say, ‘I can’t remember.’ It should not have gone to the pool; it should have gone to limited. Does the bulking up of these payments with the graft inserts—if that is what the Cole inquiry finds—add to their bonuses? (Time expired)

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aged Care, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In taking note of answers to questions today, I make the point that a theme has become evident in question time today. We had the extraordinary attempt to defend the misleading of the Senate through Senate estimates that Senator O’Brien and Senator Sherry have referred to, but we also saw the embarrassing display from Senator Santoro when he refused to correct the record, to come clean with the Senate and to tell the truth about what he said in answer to my question yesterday. Today he has only dug himself deeper into the mire.

Yesterday I asked a very clear question about the fire safety standards. I asked the minister to confirm that 31 December was the deadline for aged care providers to meet upgraded fire safety standards that were introduced in 1999—and that is significant. I asked him how many residential aged care facilities and how many beds were still not compliant with the fire safety standards. I asked him whether the government policy of ‘reviewing’—I need to put that in inverted commas—those non-compliant facilities was going to continue and whether any sanctions would be imposed because these places were not compliant with the 1999 fire safety standards. I was very clear.

His answer was somewhat bemusing to many people; I think it would have been to any person with even a modicum of understanding of how the aged care system works in this country. He said that he had been:

... reliably informed by my department that there are only 10 nursing homes in Australia that do not fall within the accreditation and certification processes that have been referred to by Senator McLucas.

I was a bit confused, because the website that Senator Santoro’s department produces shows us that there are some 700 homes that are still not compliant with the 1999 fire safety regulations, but I was prepared at that point to say, ‘Right. There has been a huge change. There are now only 10 homes that are not compliant with those fire safety standards.’ That is not the case, and Senator Santoro knew that very shortly after he misled the Senate. He was talking about 10 homes that are not compliant with the accreditation system at the moment because of a related fire safety issue. But he knew very shortly after he attempted to answer that question that he had misled the Senate. He was provided with a brief during question time.

The decent thing to do would have been to get up at one minute past three, when question time finished yesterday, and explain to the Senate. He has been in the job for a week; we do not expect him to be completely across a complex area of policy, as aged care is, but he should have done the decent thing and he did not. He missed that opportunity at one minute past three. The next opportunity was at 3.30 pm. He should have taken that but he did not. The next opportunity he had was at 9.30 this morning, and he was very well aware of that. He knew that he could have stood up in this place and said, ‘Yesterday, when I answered Senator McLucas’s question, I was talking about the accreditation scheme rather than the fire safety standards compliance.’ He could have come clean and that would have been the end of it.

I used to be a school teacher. We would tell little boys, ‘If you make a mistake, come clean and you won’t get any deeper into the mess.’ But Senator Santoro, I am afraid, is getting further into the mire, because today at question time he has made it even worse. Today at question time he tried to wriggle out of it by producing some confusing answer as to why he answered in the way he did yesterday. Any residential aged care provider reading the transcript of yesterday’s and today’s proceedings will know that this minister does not understand the difference between the accreditation scheme that is operational in his department and the fire standards compliance issue. Those are two fundamental issues. They are on the first page of the briefing notes given, Minister. It is obviously clear that you are not taking the time to get across this complex area of policy, and I urge you to do so. The industry needs a competent, knowledgeable minister to ensure that the issues that face them are progressed. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.