Quotes of the Day

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has a wicked sense of humor. It's why men with pipes are attracted to him. He does a good line in self-deprecation as well. Just last week he told reporters, "I am but a humble laborer in the world of politics from the Adelaide Hills." Still, the Liberal Party's self-styled toiler gets around. Downer recently charmed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her short visit; Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and China's Premier Wen Jiabao are in for a treat, too. Downer's hyper-funny side is in its prime, frequently teased out by his hyperactive Opposition counterpart, Kevin Rudd. Far from the kiss-kiss world of diplomacy, political beasts Downer and Rudd often rumble in their very own hyperbolic chamber. While the prevailing contest is about Australia's participation in Saddam Hussein's corruption of the humanitarian aid program to Iraq, it would be wrong to see Downer vs. Rudd as mere rhetorical overkill.

Commissioner Terence Cole's inquiry into Australian involvement in the U.N. Oil-for-Food program is in its 11th week. The activities of executives from wheat marketer AWB were the initial focus of the inquiry. Lately, the questions have surrounded the actions of the Howard government; officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been warming the seat in the witness box. Every few days, Rudd points to a new "stunning revelation." Downer claims the public release of the same document Rudd has referred to "completely vindicates everything the government has said about this issue." At times, Downer has hidden behind his officials; Rudd, who may one day be their boss, has flung his missiles over their pointy heads - at Downer, John Howard and Trade Minister Mark Vaile. To be fair, many diplomatic posts are hard, especially in a place like Iraq - dangerous, fluid and with unreliable intelligence. A former Australian official who worked on Iraq says the atmosphere is like that of an emergency room: "You just go from one crisis to the next." Yet most of the bureaucratic handiwork on Iraqi Oil-for-Food was done from the comfort zones of Canberra and New York.

The impression of dfat emerging from the Cole Inquiry is remote from the way officials regard themselves or the way they have generally been seen by the public. The canapés-and-cocktails crowd whose mission is to protect and pursue Australia's interests is not superhuman. dfat officials who were watching events in prewar Iraq, acting as a "postbox" for AWB contracts under the U.N. aid program and keeping their ministers up to speed, are just like the rest of us - they forget where information comes from and the names of people they deal with on official business. dfat loses important letters, officials perform "back-of-the-envelope calculations" about commercial transactions worth millions of dollars, and junior officers (with inadequate security clearance) end up conducting seat-of-the-pants investigations about highly sensitive matters for their ministers. Like most people touched by the scandal that saw almost $A300 million in kickbacks diverted from AWB to Saddam, Australian bureaucrats trusted the company's executives - and ignored the allegations made by those countries (such as Canada) who wanted a larger slice of Iraq's wheat purchases as well as a more favorable free-trade deal (the U.S.).

Basic curiosity and gumption, abundant in less prestigious agencies such as Finance or Customs, eluded the dfat megastars. Cables, statements, e-mails and memos tumbling out of the Cole Inquiry do not inspire confidence in dfat; they certainly don't justify Downer's claim of "characteristic diligence" in performing his duties. Nor do they suggest open government. "I don't think any government in Australian corporate history has been more transparent and more determined to get to the truth than we've been," Downer said of the government's willingness to cooperate with the Cole Inquiry and a U.N. commission headed by Paul Volcker. That's strange. At first, Downer did not let Volcker's people interview dfat officers or have full access to documents. (Through Australia's U.N. Ambassador, Volcker complained early last year that the government's cooperation was "beyond reticent, even forbidding.") After Howard weighed in, investigators got proper access.

When the Prime Minister was prosecuting the case for war in Iraq in early 2003, he pointed to Saddam's cynical and cruel manipulation of the Oil-for-Food scheme. How did the P.M. know? In the background, in classified intelligence and diplomatic cables, a picture was emerging of fees and commissions paid to intermediaries - and then on to Baghdad's monster. When the dust began to settle after the invasion, a June 2003 memo from U.S. military Capt. Blake Puckett reported that every contract in the Oil-for-Food scheme contained a kickback to the regime of between 10-19%. As the Cole Inquiry is now hearing with disquieting regularity, key officials have very short memories; dfat's filing system is wretched; and, after writing to officials in March 2004 that he was worried, the Minister failed to crack the whip. Perhaps Downer wasn't kidding about being a humble laborer.

• Tom Dusevic
• Diplomats - and their boss - are being stripped bare by Australia's Cole Inquiry