Senator BRANDIS (3:23 PM) —Let us ask ourselves this question: who is politicising the role of the intelligence agencies and the chiefs of the intelligence agencies? The person who gave a briefing? No. The person who accurately and faithfully corrected the public record, the Prime Minister, or the person who misrepresented to the parliament and to the public what the content of that briefing was? I think that most sensible people would think that the actor in that sequence, who dragged the intelligence chiefs into political controversy, was the person who misrepresented what had been said in a confidential briefing. It was not the intelligence chiefs and it was not the Prime Minister, who put the public record straight.

Let me take the Senate through it. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Latham, made a claim that the Deputy Secretary of Intelligence and Security at the Department of Defence, Mr Bonighton—a respected senior nonpartisan public servant—had, in the course of a briefing, attacked the government's policy on Iraq. That claim was made by Mr Latham—I cannot say it was a lie because that would be unparliamentary, but it was at variance with the truth. Mr Bonighton prepared a memorandum shortly after that briefing was given last year—not in the heat of this political controversy of the past few days, but last year.

Senator Hill —It was in January, I think.

Senator BRANDIS —It was shortly after the briefing was given in January this year—thank you, Senator Hill—well before the heat of this political controversy. The memorandum of the briefing—the content of which, because of its security classification, cannot be put into the public domain but the substance of which the Prime Minister summarised in the House of Representatives yesterday and offered to show on a confidential basis to the Leader of the Opposition, consistent with document-handling procedures for documents of such security classification—confirms there was no discussion of any operational matters in relation to the Australian military forces in Iraq during that briefing. That is what Mr Bonighton said: not this week when it had become controversial, but two months ago before there was any suggestion of controversy about this, before the fact of the briefing was even public knowledge. That is the evidence, the best evidence, of what Mr Bonighton said and, more importantly, what he did not say. That has now been confirmed by Mr Bonighton, whose integrity in this matter is beyond question and is beyond a shadow of a doubt, in a letter which was put into the public domain by the Prime Minister yesterday and corroborated by Mr Irvine, the Director-General of ASIS.

Mr Deputy President, ask yourself who is more likely to be telling the truth—Mr Latham or Mr Bonighton. Ask yourself what is more likely to be the reliable record of the meeting that happened in January—a near contemporaneous memorandum prepared in the absence of any political heat or the wild claims of the Leader of the Opposition, lately made in order to get himself off the hook. Which do you think would be the more reliable evidence of what was said by Mr Bonighton to Mr Latham and, more importantly, of what was not said by Mr Bonighton to Mr Latham? I believe we can trust Mr Bonighton. He has no motive; his reputation for integrity is unimpeachable. He prepared the note at a time in which there was no political heat generated by this meeting whatsoever, and the note speaks for itself. I would trust Mr Bonighton, and I think most Australians would prefer his version of events over those of the Leader of the Opposition, who is trying to get himself out of a political hole.