

MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

HON ALEXANDER DOWNER, MP



TRANSCRIPTION: PROOF COPY E & OE

DATE:   5 February 2006

TITLE:   Doorstop Interview, Adelaide Airport



ALEXANDER DOWNER:  I just want to take the opportunity to say something about Iran.   As you know there was a vote by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy  Agency to refer Iran to the United Nations Security Council.  Australia is one of those  members of the Board of Governors; we voted for the resolution.

The Australian Government believes that the strong support there was for the resolution to  refer Iran to the Security Council reinforces the international commitment to the Nuclear Non  Proliferation Regime.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported from time to time breaches by Iran of  its undertakings to the United Nations, and as a consequence it’s entirely appropriate that Iran  be referred to the Security Council, and that the Security Council reinforce the authority of the  International Atomic Energy Agency.

We hope that Iran will reconsider now its plans to continue with its research program into  uranium enrichment.  We want the assurances that the IAEA has so far not been able to get,  that Iran has no intention to develop a nuclear weapons program.

If Iran is to become a nuclear weapons country then the consequences of that for regional  international security will be very dire.  So I’m delighted that the international community is  as united as it is in dealing with this issue.

Australia’s played an important part in this, and I participated in a discussion in London on  Tuesday night with some of my fellow foreign ministers, including the British foreign  minister, and I think we’ve been able to make a good contribution to getting a successful  outcome to this resolution.

QUESTION: On Iraq, Kevin Rudd has challenged you to guarantee that no AWB money has  gone towards funding Palestinian suicide bombers.  What’s your reading on that?

MR DOWNER:  Well I don’t think Mr Rudd actually even remotely understands the  situation.  This was of course a pool of funds.  The Iraqi - the Australian Wheat Board  weren’t buying wheat, they were selling wheat, so what has happened here is that they were

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selling wheat to the United Nations, or through the United Nations to Iraq, and it was being  paid for by a pool of funds which came from the sale of Iraq by - the sale in Iraq of its oil.

But I make this point.  I am delighted, I am very pleased that Mr Rudd has now come to the  same conclusion that we came to years ago, and that is that Saddam Hussein’s regime was an  evil regime.  And Saddam Hussein’s regime doesn’t fund suicide bombers at all anymore  because it doesn’t exist.  And it doesn’t exist because countries like the United States, Britain  and Australia showed a determination to get rid of that regime.

We’ve got to the heart of the, or we are getting to the heart of corruption within the oil for  food program, and we’ve only been able to do that because we got rid of Saddam Hussein’s  regime, and we’ve been able to get access to the documentation which has been the  foundation of finding out what has been going on under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

If Mr Rudd and Mr Beazley had had their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power,  suicide bombers would still be financed by Saddam Hussein in Israel and in the Palestinian  territories, and of course the corruption of the oil for food program would still be going on.

QUESTION:  But still, there’s no guarantee that money wasn’t used in the past.

MR DOWNER:  There’s a guarantee, there’s a guarantee that it won’t ever happen, that this  sort of corruption won’t ever happen again with Saddam Hussein’s regime because Saddam  Hussein’s regime just simply doesn’t exist.

Now Mr Rudd was opposed to - and Mr Beazley, they were opposed to the overthrow of  Saddam Hussein’s regime.

You see, it’s all very well for the anti-coalition of the willing mob to jump on this corruption  scandal and think that this is a great issue for them and that it somehow embarrasses countries  like Britain and Australia and the United States in dealing with Iraq.

But the argument is the complete reverse.  If the anti-coalition of the willing mob like Mr  Beazley and Mr Rudd and so on had their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, the  rorts and the corruption would still be taking place, the Palestinian suicide bombers would  still be financed by Saddam Hussein.  All of that’s come to an end.

QUESTION:  But doesn’t it appear that the AWB has been, sort of been a part of that rort  and…

MR DOWNER:  Well let me put it this way - the Volker inquiry produced its report and it  fingered the AWB.  We were very concerned first to hear about that and then finally to read  about it in the final publication of the Volker report, and that’s there for all to read.

And more than that, I mean, the Prime Minister and I in particular felt we just had to get to the  heart of this and what had happened, and the best way to do that was to set up what’s now  called the Cole Commission.  We’ll have to wait and see what conclusions the Cole  Commission draws.

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I mean you can’t, you know, draw conclusions before all the evidence has been heard, and  Justice Cole’s a distinguished former supreme court judge of New South Wales, and he has a  long record of impartiality, so lets see what he says about the AWB and government officials.

QUESTION:  Well the board of AWB are looking at a pay rise at the next AGM…

MR DOWNER:  Very bad timing I would have thought on the part of the AWB to be  thinking of pay rises when the Cole Commission is looking into this whole question of  kickbacks in Iraq.  Very bad timing, and I think the AWB should just sit still and wait until  the Cole Commission produces its final report.  But it’s a private company, it’s not for the  Government to determine the levels of pay at the AWB.

QUESTION: Mr Downer, there’s been…

QUESTION: [Indistinct] some DFAT officials may be called upon for evidence in the Cole  Inquiry?

MR DOWNER:  Look, they’re all ready to go and very happy to give evidence, and I’ve read  through - I spent a bit of time yesterday after I’d been to a young Liberal conference and to  Bond University at their graduation ceremony I spent some time reading, yet again, through  all of the documentation that I’ve been able to get from my department, and I think they’ve  got a perfectly - my departmental officers have got a perfectly good story to tell on the basis  of the information I’ve seen.

QUESTION:  Mr Downer, there’s been calls by the President of the US Wheat Associates  that the AWB should be prosecuted for their role.  What do you have to say about that?

MR DOWNER:  Well we’ve got a process underway here in Australia and we’ll see what  happens.  But of course the President of the United States Wheat Associates is a sworn enemy  of Australian wheat growers, and you can rest assured - I don’t know about the opposition,  but the Australian Government is on the side of Australian wheat growers, and we’ll thank  you very much conduct our own investigation and deal with this in our own way without the  gratuitous advice of the American wheat industry which is - they and the Canadians are our  main competitors.

So you can - I was going to say you can take what he says with a pinch of salt, but anyway,  by the grain.

QUESTION:  On another matter, what’s your position on the anti-abortion private members  bill on [indistinct]?

MR DOWNER:  Well look, I’ll have a look at the legislation.  I haven’t - as you can imagine  I haven’t really had time to focus very much on that.  But I’ll make up my own mind once  I’ve had a good look at it.  I want to hear what people have to say as well.

I mean my own view is that the abortion laws that we have in Australia as they currently stand  are adequate; I don’t have any feeling that they should be changed.  And as to methods of

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abortion, that’s something where a doctor determines that an abortion is legitimate and the  method of abortion is something that I’d move to adopt.

QUESTION: So just to be clear - having reviewed the documentation, you don’t think  DFAT have got anything to fear in terms of evidence that will come out?

MR DOWNER:  Not from anything I’ve looked at, and not from anything I’ve heard.  I  mean this sort of - is DFAT a corrupt organisation?  Well I think DFAT has served successive  Australian governments with enormous distinction over many years.

I’ve been the Foreign Minister for 10 years.  I can imagine how many people I know in  DFAT.  Look, some of them are brilliant, some of them are good, most of them do an  excellent job, but I haven’t come across corruption in DFAT, and I don’t think people in  DFAT are corrupt at all.

But obviously anybody who’s corrupt, they deserve to be prosecuted.  But there’s no evidence  of that…

QUESTION:  [indistinct]

MR DOWNER:  …or inadvertently corrupt, no.  Inadvertently - you can’t be inadvertently  corrupt.

QUESTION: Inadvertently having no - no, but inadvertently having known that these bribes  were being paid.

MR DOWNER:  I’ve seen no evidence of that.  Seen no evidence of it at all.

QUESTION: Just quickly on the airport delays…

MR DOWNER:  The airport.

QUESTION:  What’s  [indistinct]?

MR DOWNER:  Well I think it’s a real embarrassment for South Australia that here we are  again at Adelaide Airport, it’s - we’re into February and the opening of the new terminal was  in October.  I understand the technical problems - I’ve raised it with the Federal Transport  Minister and I’ve explained to him that this is embarrassing for Adelaide and embarrassing  for South Australia.

We have a very big series of events coming up soon, and we need to ensure that, you know,  through the festival and with the V8 Supercar race and so on that we have our airport open,  new terminal open.

And so I hope that every effort is being made to get it open as quickly as possible.  I know  there are technical issues, I know they have to be dealt with, you can’t tell the airlines they  should use polluted fuel, and nobody wants that.  So they’ve got to clean out the pipes, but of  course it should have been done before, and we hope that they will use every effort to do it as  quickly as possible.

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