Widen The Scope, PM

by Kevin Rudd - The Australian

It is nearly 2 1/2 decades since commonwealth government ministers, let alone any as senior as the foreign minister and trade minister, have been hauled before a royal commission. Despite this, the cold, hard truth is that John Howard has placed grave limitations on this royal commission when it comes to commissioner Terence Cole's powers to determine whether or not these ministers did their job in defending Australia's national interests.

The truth in this $300million wheat-for-weapons scandal is that Howard has behaved like the emperor with no clothes. He asserts that he took this country to war with Iraq because UN sanctions had failed and that Saddam Hussein was rorting the UN oil-for-food program. Yet the truth was that his own Government was responsible for gross violations of those UN sanctions by allowing Australia to become the largest source of kickbacks to the former Iraqi dictator under the same oil-for-food program that was the subject of Howard's public moralising.

Howard asserts that his Government was never warned AWB was paying kickbacks to Saddam's regime. But Cole inquiry evidence and other evidence has produced a list of 27 separate warnings to the Howard Government over the five years that this scandal ran.

Howard asserts that even after the Iraq war began in March 2003, when, in his own words, the "dam wall" of information burst about what the Iraqi regime was up to with illicit international financing, there was still no way the Government could have prevented AWB's abuse of the oil-for-food program for the further 18 months that it ran.

The Howard Government knew definitively from June 2003 through a cable from their own diplomat in Baghdad that all (not some) of AWB's contracts with Saddam had kickbacks attached.

Howard asserts that his Government co-operated fully with and provided full documentation to the Volcker inquiry in 2004-05. The truth is that Paul Volcker had to complain directly in February 2005 that the Government was not co-operating with the inquiry, and as late as June 2005 we now have evidence that the Prime Minister's own office was still actively coaching AWB to provide minimal information to Volcker.

Howard asserts that the Volcker inquiry gave his Government a clean bill of health when it reported in October 2005. The truth is that the Volcker inquiry had no terms of reference to make any conclusions about the actions of national governments but rather only to make findings about UN suppliers (such as AWB) and UN agencies themselves.

Howard asserts that the Cole inquiry has the full powers of a royal commission to make determinations about whether or not his ministers have done their job under Australian law to enforce sanctions against Saddam's regime.

But Cole has only powers to make determinations on whether AWB should be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions on criminal charges - a fact that the Cole inquiry confirmed with crystal-clear clarity in a letter dated March 13, 2006.

Howard asserts that none of the $300million paid to Saddam's regime was used to pay for guns, bombs and bullets for later use against Australian troops in Iraq, or for payments by Saddam to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Whereas the CIA has concluded that it was precisely for these purposes that Saddam used the kickbacks he derived from the UN oil-for-food program. And AWB was Saddam's largest source of kickbacks worldwide of the 2600 companies investigated by Volcker.

And yet Howard continues to assert that his Government has no legal or moral responsibility for allowing Australia to become the biggest sanction-busting country in the world for the reason that he argues his Government was no more than a postbox between AWB, the UN and Saddam's regime.

The wheat-for-weapons scandal represents gross negligence on matters of national security because it provided massive illegal funding to the enemy; a gross attempt at cover-up because Howard feared the political damage that would be done to his Government if the full dimensions of his negligence were demonstrated; and with grave damage to the national interest.

This scandal has involved three principal players: the UN, AWB and the Howard Government. There has been a full inquiry into the first: the Volcker inquiry. We now have an inquiry into the second: the Cole inquiry. But there has been no inquiry whatsoever into the Government itself. Howard has not given Cole powers to make determinations on whether his ministers did their job. But Howard has also prevented parliament from making any such determination because the existence of the Cole inquiry has been used as a justification for closing down any inquiry by the Senate (including Senate Estimates) aimed at determining the precise degree of Government culpability.

Howard's greatest single cover-up is the Cole inquiry itself, because he has rorted the terms of reference. Cole's only power is to determine whether or not AWB should face criminal charges.

Cole has said he can make determinations of fact concerning only the knowledge of commonwealth ministers, advisers and officials in so far as it sheds light on whether or not AWB should be charged.

The only possible extension of his powers that Cole has indicated he might ask for is if he comes across information in this process which causes him to conclude that someone from the commonwealth may have committed a criminal offence - by bribing a foreign official, for example. And that in a nutshell is the total extent of Cole's power.

There is one reason why Howard refuses to grant Cole an extension of powers. And that is that Howard has much to fear as to what Cole would then conclude about the incompetence, negligence and plain recklessness for which Howard's Government has been responsible in this, the largest corruption scandal in Australian history.