In May 1987, Mr Jones and Mr Gaddafi’s henchmen romped around Libya on behalf of the great Jamahariya workers revolution. Mr Jones was there to explore revolutionary strategy courtesy of the Libyan-based World Centre against Zionism, Racism and Imperialism - whose patron and sole benefactor was Colonel Gaddafi.

When he returned from the great Jamahariya, Jones revealed all in an article in the Australian magazine Simply Living - edited by his colleague, the strange Duncan Roads (who now edits the bizarre conspiratorial magazine Nexus, which the Review revealed in 1995 as Australia’s main outlet for the rantings of US militia leaders). Jones claimed to Simply Living that in Pakistan his passport was "no doubt photostated by Mossad" .

Then a member of the Australian Democrats, Jones waxed lyrical in the story about his revolutionary comrades’ struggle at the Tripoli conference for "revolutionaries of the Pacific Ocean to the collective armed struggle of the Third World War for the land of the first Jamahariya." According to Jones, whilst at the conference they "greeted each other as brother and sister swapping address cards and written information on their particular struggle... That evening the mood at the conference changed. There was an air of excitement and expectation. We weren’t told but we understood that Colonel Gaddafi was coming to address the revolutionaries... the Filipinos started singing revolutionary songs in the side room." Jones then offers this appalling piece of apologia for Gaddafi: "The Colonel talked for an hour without raising his voice, and then quickly disappeared. I had expected a much more aggressive man, who would bang the table and shout and harangue. But he spoke more like a lecturer than the leader of world revolution... There’s no doubt in my mind that Gaddafi’s revolution has improved the lot of many Libyans ...people seem happy and relaxed - they treated us in a very friendly and open manner... One does receive the impression that the people are better off in many ways and certainly seem ‘free’... The Libyans point out that the Americans accuse them of terrorism, yet the Americans are the real terrorists for killing innocent civilians at Tripoli." It’s a bit tiresome to remind Mr Jones that Colonel Gaddafi has bank-rolled some of the world’s most shocking international terrorist operations, including the blowing up of the Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie Scotland, and the bombing of a Berlin Disco in 1986 to name but two.

Gaddafi provides financial and open political support for suicide bombings against Israel, Egypt and Europe and has the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad drop in to Tripoli every month or so, to rearm, retrain and pick up some cash. His terrorist operations over the past decade have killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians. And now he is hard at work on a new chemical/biological weapons plant at Tarhunah.

Mr Jones enjoyed Mr Gaddafi’s largesse courtesy of the charming Robert Pash, (a made-to-measure lunatic if Australia ever produced one) who operated the Australian People’s Congress and the Libyan-Arab Cultural Association and who courted Australian politicians on these Libyan junkets. In May 1987 the Hawke government shut down Libya’s operation in Australia, and so Pash took over their interests, fully funded by the Libyan Ministry of Information. But not before then Hawke Minister Clyde Holding revealed to Parliament that Pash’s outfit advocated the "biological integrity of the white race through a complete geographic and political separation of the races and thus the maintenance of international white unity".

Holding told Parliament that Pash was an "anti-Semitic right wing racist political loony in the tradition of Goebbels and Hitler," and then tabled Queensland Police reports which showed that Mr Pash had been under investigation following death threats to Queensland’s Jewish community by the organisation, The Sword of Islam, for which of course Mr Pash was the spokesman.

Not only was the revolutionary delegation to Tripoli that Jones joined led by Mr Pash and financed by the Libyans, but Mr Pash handpicked Mr Jones to join the delegation. It seems that Mr Jones wasn’t too careful about the company he kept, which was rather silly of him really.

In 1987 the Review’s contributing editor David Greason revealed correspondence between the neo-Nazi British National Front and Mr Pash’s operation in Australia which confirmed that the two groups were establishing a fraternal brotherhood. Mr Jones said the purpose of his visit to Tripoli was to "try and resolve conflict. My motivation is to be involved in the peace process." Looks like Mr Jones will have plenty of time to resolve conflict on Wednesday 8 April in the Strangers dining room at Parliament House, NSW. At 6.30 pm the Inaugural dinner and meeting of the NSW Parliamentary Friends of Palestine will have as its guest of honour "His excellency Mr Ali Kazak, Head of the General Palestinian Delegation to Australia and Ambassador of Palestine to Vanuatu." Other convenors of the group include Ian McDonald (Secretary of the ALP Socialist Left faction), James Samios (Deputy leader of the Liberal Party in the Legislative Council), Paul Lynch (ALP) and Chris Hartcher (Liberal Opposition Whip).

Mr Said Meshal, 64, a Palestinian who has lived most of his life in the gulf state of Qatar before emigrating to Australia is understood to be financing the delegation of Federal MPs. His son Yasir Meshal will also be accompanying the MPs to be led by Mr Kazak.

The Review has learnt that participants in the delegation will include Anthony Albanese (ALP NSW), former Government Whip and Speaker of the House Leo McLeay (ALP NSW), as well as Government members Peter Nugent (Liberal Vic.), Peter McGuaran (NP Vic.) and Joe Hockey (Liberal NSW).

Mr Meshal is currently overseas and was unavailable for comment. But the Review has learned that he was born in 1933 in the Palestine Mandate and graduated in Petroleum Engineering from Cairo University. He has held a number of senior positions in Qatar and Saudi Arabia including: head of the Engineering Division and Petroleum Technical Department at the Ministry of Petroleum and Mining, Saudi Arabia; head of the Petroleum Department, Ministry of Finance and Petroleum, Qatar (1972); Chairman, Qatar Fertiliser Company (since 1969); Director General, Industrial Development Technical Centre (since 1972) and Director, Qatar General Petroleum Corporation (since 1977).

Meshal played a major role in reorganising the Petroleum Industry in Qatar, establishing the Qatar General Petroleum Corporation, nationalising the country’s oil industry and organising industrial joint ventures with foreign firms.

The delegation will travel business class on Gulf Air and spend three days in Egypt. According to the groups’ draft travel plans they will arrive in Gaza and the West Bank on April 30 and then spend six days in the Palestinian territory, meeting Palestinian leaders before travelling to Jordan. According to the draft itinerary the group will visit a number of politically sensitive locations in Arab East Jerusalem and Hebron.

The visit comes at a delicate time in the Middle East as negotiations between the US Administration, Israel and the Palestinian Authority are currently underway, with US envoy Dennis Ross in the region working on a possible breakthrough. Liberal MP Chris Pyne, Chairman of the Australia/Israel Parliamentary group warned this week that "the delegation should be careful not to create uncertainty about Australia’s position in the Middle East." "The recent trip by the Foreign Secretary of the UK, Robin Cook, demonstrated how delicate the Middle East situation currently is. Australia has been a good friend of Israel at the UN and in international fora. It would be unhelpful if a trip of this nature were to affect that relationship," Pyne said. We’ll be watching.