If the 3 Pinocchio ministers did admit to anything they would be...

If the 3 Pinocchio ministers did admit to anything they would be charged so The Schultz defence is understandable in these serious career-ending circum$tances. However, if a private firm received 20 + 20 + 20 cables alerting them to deceit, market sensitive material, and did nothing to alert authorities like, ASX or ASIC and a whistle blower spills the beans, I'm sure the government would see the situation differently and perhaps encourage a few action rather than try to dismiss and shift blame.

I forgot to add, using The Schultz defence only works if you don't contradict yourself.

Round two, ding!

news.com.au
It's all foreign to Downer
By Caroline Overington

April 12, 2006


ALEXANDER Downer has been forced to concede he did precisely nothing to prevent Australian companies funnelling money to Saddam Hussein's regime in the years leading up to the Iraq war.
The Foreign Minister admitted he had not established any mechanism for ensuring that Australia's rogue wheat trader AWB was not breaching UN sanctions in its dealings with Iraq.

His evidence to the Cole inquiry also directly contradicts a statement he made to parliament on February 28, when he said of several key cables: "Of course I would have read them."

Oppositon foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd leapt upon the apparent contradiction, saying: "There is only one of two alternatives here: either the Foreign Minister has misled the Australian parliament or he has misled the Cole commission of inquiry.

"Mr Downer must clarify this as a matter of urgency."

In his three hours of testimony, Mr Downer defended the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for acting as a "post box" for Australia's inflated wheat contracts, sending them on to the UN without noticing they were bloated by $290 million in bribes.

"I think they fulfilled their duty," Mr Downer said. "I have faith in their professionalism."

In a written statement to the inquiry, Mr Downer used the term "I have no recollection" 27 times.

In particular, he said he could not recall seeing any of the 21 top-secret diplomatic cables, although he suspected he might have seen one from Washington DC, since he made a point of reading mail from Washington.

The inquiry yesterday received a written statement from John Howard about his knowledge of the wheat sales scandal.

Lawyers have until 1pm today to make applications to examine the Prime Minister.

If granted, the examination of Mr Howard would happen on Thursday, the day before Good Friday and the long Easter break.

Mr Downer slipped quietly into the inquiry yesterday, using a quiet skywalk instead of the front door, which was crowded with photographers.

He left in a car that had been parked in the basement.

In the hours in between, Mr Downer conceded that, yes, as Foreign Minister, he "obviously" had an interest in whether Iraq was breaching sanctions, in part because Australia was considering a war with Iraq, because sanctions weren't working.

He agreed he heard allegations that AWB was engaged in corrupt business practices, and may have been funnelling money to Saddam's regime, but he said: "In my line of business, you hear allegations the whole time."

Pressed, he conceded: "I was certainly aware of the issue."

In a rigorous cross-examination by Terry Forrest, QC, who acts for a clutch of AWB executives, Mr Downer was reminded that the top-secret cables contained important information.

"The allegation (was) sanctions breaching not only by Australia but by Iraq as well," Mr Forrest said.

"There (was a claim) that AWB is party to this scheme and that money is flowing to an Iraqi-controlled account in Jordan (perhaps controlled by a son of Saddam)."

Around the same time - April 2000 - spies had alerted the Howard Government to Iraq's interest in busting sanctions.

A report on the matter, by the Office of National Assessments, went to the National Security Committee of cabinet, of which Mr Downer is a member.

"The timing coincides fairly neatly," Mr Forrest said.

"Yes," Mr Downer agreed, before adding: "There is so much intelligence. It's a very major challenge, to deal with intelligence."

Mr Forrest asked: "What is the point of sending your department a piece of unassessed intelligence if nobody is going to read it?"

Mr Downer: "It's physically impossible to read all of it."

Mr Forrest noted the fact that AWB was the largest single supplier under the UN oil for food program "would have been a fact well known in your department?"

Mr Downer: "Of course."

So, did Mr Downer have any specific criticisms of public servants in his department, relating to their performance over the scandal?

"I think they fulfilled their duty," he said. "I think they are very professional people."

Mr Forrest reminded Mr Downer that a relatively junior AWB executive told one of Australia's most experienced diplomats, Bob Bowker, that the allegations against AWB were "bull[s]hit", and that was apparently enough to satisfy DFAT the claims were false. Mr Forrest wanted to know if that was really good enough, but the question was overruled.

Counsel assisting the commission John Agius SC asked Mr Downer if he would have expected his staff to try to find out why the prices on AWB contracts were so high.

"As best they could," Mr Downer shrugged.

He agreed that Iraq was a "very good wheat market" for Australia. "I didn't want to lose too much of that market," Mr Downer said.