PM - Wednesday, 1 September , 2004 18:10:00
Reporter: Louise Yaxley
MARK COLVIN: The controversy over the "children overboard" affair has taken another dramatic twist.
The Liberal Senator who last night denied having called John Howard a "lying rodent" today went in to bat for his leader.
Senator George Brandis put telephone records on the record at the Senate inquiry on children overboard, in a bid to discredit claims by a former senior government adviser at the centre of the controversy.
Mike Scrafton says he told John Howard, in a series of three phone calls just days before the last election, that there was no evidence to support the claims being made about asylum seekers throwing their children into the sea.
But at the Senate Committee inquiry in Canberra today, Senator Brandis said he'd obtained the Prime Minister's mobile phone records. He said Mr Howard had made only two calls to Mr Scrafton's number, not three as Mr Scrafton says.
And he's asked Mr Scrafton how he could have discussed the range of matters he says he did with the Prime Minister, including the view of people in the Defence Forces, a video and an intelligence report on the events, when that second call lasted only 51 seconds.
The Labor Senators on the Committee have questioned the accuracy of the records that Senator Brandis says he has, and Mr Scrafton is sticking to his story.
Louise Yaxley reports from Canberra.
LOUISE YAXLEY: This one-day Senate Committee hearing's been called because of the explosive nature of Mr Scrafton's claims that three days before the last election he told the Prime Minister no children were thrown overboard.
Those claims have added fuel to the Labor campaign attacking the Prime Minister's credibility.
Today Mr Scrafton told the Committee he stands by his version of events, and two senior Defence officers, Major General Roger Powell and Commander Mike Noonan, have given evidence that the version of events Mr Scrafton's presented publicly accords with what he told them when they inquired into the affair.
Major General Powell.
ROGER POWELL: I only recall a clear understanding of the fact that if what Mr Scrafton had told me was accurate, that the Prime Minister would have been in no doubt that children had not been thrown overboard. That was about the essence of what I remembered.
LOUISE YAXLEY: Late this afternoon Queensland Liberal Senator George Brandis claimed he had phone records from all the people who were in the lodge on the night of the 7th of November, that is three days before the last election. And he says it shows the only calls to Mr Scrafton were from the Prime Minister's own mobile.
GEORGE BRANDIS: The telephone records indicate that the first of those calls from the Prime Minister's mobile to your mobile was made at 8:41 pm. That sound right?
MIKE SCRAFTON: As I said, I have no direct recollection of the time.
LOUISE YAXLEY: That first phone call ran 9 minutes and 36 seconds - a little longer than Mr Scrafton had estimated that it would have taken.
Senator Brandis says the records showed there was a longer gap between calls than Mike Scrafton remembers. The second phone call came an hour and a half later.
GEORGE BRANDIS: Mr Scrafton, the second phone call in which the question of the photos you say was raised, the question
your observation that the people with whom you dealt in Defence didn't believe that children had been thrown overboard, and reiterated, and the question of the ONA Report was discussed. Those three topics you now accept must have all been discussed in the second phone call, if there wasn't a third phone call?
MIKE SCRAFTON: Yeah, it must have been discussed in the first two phone calls, yes.
GEORGE BRANDIS: That call lasted for 51 seconds. Those three topics, as you've discussed them, couldn't possibly have been discussed in 51 seconds, could they?
MIKE SCRAFTON: Um, I suspect you're right.
LOUISE YAXLEY: Mr Scrafton stood by the thrust of his claims - that he'd told the Prime Minister those four things by phone that night one, that the video was inconclusive, that the Office of National Assessments document was based only on media reports, that no one in Defence believed children were thrown overboard, and the photos of children in the water.
But Mr Scrafton says he might be wrong about the way it happened.
MIKE SCRAFTON: Um, I've been prepared all along to acknowledge that perhaps I had the sequence of, or the number of phone calls incorrect. What I am very clear about is what I discussed with the Prime Minister. It may have been the case that I discussed the first topics with him in the first phone call, and the last one was the one he rang me on the ONA Report about.
GEORGE BRANDIS: So you're changing your story again, Mr Scrafton?
MIKE SCRAFTON: I'm not changing the substance of my discussion, but I have always said that
GEORGE BRANDIS: But you were so emphatic about this. To give you your due, you allowed for the possibility there may have been two or three phone calls, but you were so emphatic when Senator Faulkner's asked you this morning, and when I asked you just before about what was discussed between the first and the subsequent phone calls in the sequence that it was the video in the first phone call, and then the Prime Minister rang you back and asked about the photos, and then you made the observation about the children in the water, and then repeated it
MIKE SCRAFTON: And that was my recollection.
GEORGE BRANDIS: And then, and then the Prime Minister rang and asked about the ONA Report. I think we're all in furious agreement
MIKE SCRAFTON: Yeah.
GEORGE BRANDIS:
that your story can't be right if that happened, if that second phone call happened in 51 seconds.
MIKE SCRAFTON: I think, quite clearly, I mis-recalled the order of the phone call.
LOUISE YAXLEY: Senator Brandis' quoting of the phone records angered the Labor Senator John Faulkner, who's questioned whether they're accurate, and the Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett is also sceptical.
ANDREW BARTLETT: We haven't seen these records. Even if we did see them we'd have no way of knowing if they were accurate or not.
LOUISE YAXLEY: Earlier today Mr Scrafton told the Committee he had not come forward earlier with his claims because he had previously been bullied by the former head of the Prime Minister's Department, Max Moore-Wilton.
MIKE SCRAFTON: I'm somebody who's been personally abused and threatened by Max Moore-Wilton for daring to provide frank and fearless advice to my minister, which was seen to be superior to the advice that Max was giving forward. And, let me say, was confronted in an abusive way in which he swore at me in quite derogatory terms, in front of witnesses.
MARK COLVIN: Former Defence adviser Mike Scrafton ending Louise Yaxley's report.
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2004/s1190076.htm
