Labor's Foreign Affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, says the Trade Minister, Mark Vaile, has been merely making excuses to the Cole inquiry.
The Trade Minister, Mark Vaile, has told the inquiry he wasn't told about warnings that AWB's wheat contracts with Iraq could have contained irregularities.
He says he didn't see a series of 21 confidential diplomatic cables about allegations of AWB kickbacks to the former Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein.
But Mr Rudd has dismissed Mr Vaile's evidence.
"In this 15 pages, the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia says on 41 separate occasions that he either can't remember or couldn't recall, or has no recollection, of key events in this saga.
"You begin to ask yourself the question: 'What does the Deputy Prime Minister draw his salary for?'
"This was one of Australia's major wheat markets involving a country which we were about to go to war with."