A senior Defence Department adviser says she lost her job because she refused to write a briefing paper, which she says would have lied about the threat posed by Iraq's weapons programs. Jane Errey was a senior adviser with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation until she was sacked last week.
"No, no! I shan't write it!"
"Then pack it up and get out! Yer fired!" |
She has previously stood as a candidate for the Australian Democrats in the ACT.
| ... but has no ax to grind. |
Ms Errey says the Defence Department asked her to write a briefing paper claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but that was not backed up by intelligence material she had seen. "I believe I was being asked, as was the rest of the department at that time, to perpetuate the lie that the Government was putting forward in so far as the weapons of mass destruction existed and that they were a grave threat to the rest of the world," Ms Errey said.
| "I could not do that, because I am pure! And simple!" |
But the acting secretary of the Defence Department, Alan Henderson, says Ms Errey was sacked because she did not return to work after taking leave. Mr Henderson rejects her claim that she lost her job because of her views on the Iraq war. "It is a coincidence," he said. "We have shown consideration towards her position in relation to Iraq but at the end of the day you have to turn up and do a day's work or account for the reasons why you won't turn up."
| That's the way it works at my job, but then I don't work for the gummint anymore... |
Yesterday, Defence Minister Robert Hill has rejected the claims. "Basically it's a management issue, it's got nothing to do with any briefs that she may have written or was going to write in the past," Senator Hill said. Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett says it is a very serious claim and he is calling the wounded to be shot for an investigation. |