Although I note that in the Sydney Morning Herald at the weekend the executive producer of this program still swears to its veracity, it is very unusual that the program was not told that the two principals of this firm have severe credibility problems: Legault, of Dickens and Madson, defrauded 300 elderly people of their life savings, worth $13 million, and the two principals were involved with a Canadian based corporation, the Carlington Sales Company, which last year was at the centre of a scandal in Zambia in which maize destined for hungry people was paid for but not delivered. About $6 million went missing. I think that would have been of interest to the viewers of that program.

Zimbabwe’s poor people are starving. Their freedom, their very existence and their one hope of a democratically-elected government replacing their erratic leader have been placed in jeopardy by this diversion.

Morgan Tsvangirai’s future, indeed his life, is at serious risk as a result of Ben-Menashe’s claims in the SBS program. I do not doubt that Sydney barrister Stuart Littlemore, who is now suing Davis and SBS on behalf of Tsvangirai, will do a very good job. I want to draw the House’s attention to the reason why it was known that Mr Ben-Menashe should be not taken seriously even before this fracas on Zimbabwe.

Last year, at a hearing of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, Senator Andrew Murray insisted that the Australian parliament bring this character to Canberra to testify to the JSCEM. Murray also pressured the immigration minister, Mr Ruddock, to grant Ben-Menashe a visa to Australia.

In January 1993, the United States Congress produced a joint report into the allegations about the American hostages in Iran in 1980. The report of the group known as the "October Surprise Taskforce" investigated a series of claims, including those made by Ben-Menashe, who asserted he was a senior intelligence officer in the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. Like Woody Allen’s chameleon in the famous film Zelig, Ben-Menashe claims to be at the centre of every covert operation that has taken place in the world since the early 1980s.

Post-Reagan, the US Democrats had every reason to prove illicit involvement of the previous Republican administration. Yet the investigation chaired by senior US Congressman Lee Hamilton (Democrat Indiana) states:

At a public hearing of the JSCEM, I presented Congressman Hamilton’s definitive report. Unfortunately, Mark Davis of SBS TV did an earlier program in September where he interviewed me in my Canberra office. "Dateline" was putting together a story on Ben-Menashe’s claims about Australia–a link to Senator Murray’s campaign.

In a largely unscreened interview, I questioned Ben-Menashe’s veracity. I introduced all of the facts that were logically set out in Congressman Lee Hamilton’s report, but Davis was determined to use this evidence regardless of the facts. He was not interested in the conclusions of the "October Surprise Taskforce". Not surprisingly, my remarks were almost entirely eliminated. An incredibly long and turgid tale appeared on SBS on 31 October and, as I said, nearly all of my views were spiked.

Now it emerges that Ben-Menashe was a paid agent of Zimbabwe’s Mugabe. I wonder if Senator Murray will continue to support this campaign. Ben-Menashe is an identifiable type described by Sholem Aleichem and I.B. Singer as a ‘luft-mensch’–an air man.

It is a sad day when political conspiracies both here and abroad are based on testimonies of such obvious frauds. What a sad reflection it is on our multicultural television station that a man like this could put the Zimbabwean election in such jeopardy. Come to think of it, the fact that Ben-Menashe was taken seriously by an Australian television network is worthy of the gentle mockery of Woody Allen or I.B. Singer.