Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Australians beat the world, again
Not satisfied with whipping the British Empire in the Commonwealth Games, Australians have thrashed the entire world in competition for paying kick-backs to Saddam Hussein, during the Oil for Food program.

Indeed, the Australian competitors in question were so far ahead of anyone else, they ought to have been awarded the special “Uday Hussein Memorial Prize for Services to the Baathist Party”.

Silver medal went to a Thai rice trading company, Chaiyaporn, which, during the scandal, bunged Saddam a cool US$40 million.

But undisputed champions, head and shoulders above the rest – just like those Aussie athletes in Melbourne – was the Australian Wheat Board.

The Australian Wheat Board (now AWB Ltd) is the monopoly exporter of Australian wheat, at the time (in the mid 90s), a wholly-owned trading arm of the Federal Government.

AWB’s ‘cost of doing business in Iraq’, from just 17 separate contracts, amounted to a whopping US$220 million, nearly 5 times as much as anyone else. It represented over 14% of all the dirty money payed to the Iraqi government, uncovered by the UN inquiry.

$220m buys an awful lot of guns. But as the free market makes no value judgements, there is of course no irony that many of these guns would have been pointing straight back at Aussie diggers on the frontline.

Once the UN Volker Inquiry had fingered AWB, the Australian government quickly moved to set up the Cole Inquiry to investigate the illegal activities of ‘certain Australian companies’.

Inevitably Cole has raised questions about just how much the Howard government knew about the illegal kick-backs.

Now if this was simply the case of a small-time grain trader bunging the odd bent government commissar a few bucks to grease the wheels of a shipping contract, I wouldn’t expect anyone higher up the food chain than the Departmental cleaner to have been made aware of it.

But the scale of AWB’s corruption was really quite breathtaking. Over time, AWB began to act like shoplifters – getting increasingly drawn-in to ever bigger bribes by the ease of it all. Eventually it became ‘normalised’; its just how things get done in Iraq….

But as Cole delved deeper, it became clear that some people in the government knew about the bungs and did nothing. But then, why would you wish to jeopardise an export deal worth over $1 billion?

The big question is, did Ministers know? Would we get a government scalp from this inquiry?

So far, three Ministers have been asked to present statements, including the Prime Minister.

It appears that the Ministers were certainly sent cables by officials wich raised concerns about corruption. But did they read them? If they did, why didn’t they act on them?

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer’s defence rested on the “I don’t remember” routine.

And yesterday John Howard stated, "I believe that I did not receive or read any of the relevant cables at any time during the relevant period,"

"I believe that the contents of the relevant cables were not brought to my attention at any time during the relevant period."

Hummm.

But hang on a minute…. Being well versed in the Don Watson school of Weasel Words, I smell a rat. Read those two John Howard statements again.

Howard has chosen his words VERY carefully. By prefixing those sentances “I believe”, he has protected himself from perjuring the inquiry. Howard has used weasel words to provide wriggle room, should he be found out.

Howard’s strategy appears more watertight than Downer’s. It could be proved that Downer did remember (if for example someone came forward asserting that Downer had mentioned it to them at some point). However, it could not be disproved that Howard never believed that he saw the cables.

Even if there was irrefutable proof that Howard had seen them, if he didn’t believe he had, then at worst he is merely incompetent; but no a liar.

Alas, this government is dirty. It just doesn’t seem ludicrous that Howard et al could not have been made aware of corruption on such a scale. When a trading arm of your government is invoiced US$180 million for transport grain a few kilometres, does nobody raise an eyebrow?

Moreover, it seems the majority of Australians believe their government knew too. A recent survey showed that 70% believed the Government knew about the kickbacks.

Unfortunately, 55% of voters said this has not changed their opinion of the government. During the Cole Inquiry period, the Howard Government’s ratings have increased one point, while the Labor party has fallen by two points. How can it be that we assign such lowly standards to our government?

The Howard government appears to be untouchable. Incompetent liars, but untouchable.

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