“We must sheet home the blame where it rightly belongs”,  opinion piece by Tony Kevin, Canberra Times, 9 February 2006

 

 

Australian wheat farmers can be rightly angry with the Australian Wheat Board for its commercial recklessness and cynical trade practices.

They have good reason to be angry with the Howard Government for still pretending it knew nothing, with the Labor Opposition for overblowing the issues in ways that could damage Australia's national interest, and with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for helping ministers evade responsibility.

This affair risks much damage to our hard-pressed rural export sector, on which depends the viability of regional Australia.

The AWB knowingly violated the rules of the oil-for-food program set up by the United Nations Security Council, in paying up to $300 million in concealed side payments that finished up in the hands of Saddam officials.

That $300 million should have paid for food and medicines for needy Iraqi civilians. Children would have died who might have lived had that money been spent where it should have been spent. That is fact.

Yes, everyone was doing it. AWB would say they had to do it, to hold on to their contracts. Especially while John Howard and Alexander Downer were ramping up aggressive threats towards Saddam in 2000-2003.

Had the AWB refused to pay the demanded side-payments, Australian wheat sales might have been lost to less scrupulous Canadian companies or even US companies selling through foreign front agencies.

That is why DFAT, on behalf of the Australian Government, had an obligation to vet the AWB contracts carefully, to ensure that they did not breach the UN Security Council rules for the oil-for-food program.

If DFAT had done its job properly and reported the side-payments to ministers, it would then have been the Government's duty to bring the matter before the Security Council to establish a level playing field for wheat sales to Iraq, ensuring that Saddam's officials could not play off one wheat exporting country against another. As it was, DFAT and Government negligence helped the AWB to breach the UN rules.

Howard's and Downer's defence in Parliament on Tuesday [7 February] that they did not know anything, and that there was no fault in this, is without merit. It was their duty to know about such an important matter and to act on that knowledge.

Especially so when we are now informed from media-reported intelligence sources that Australian intelligence agencies obtained information from AWB officials on conditions in Iraq before the coalition invasion.

It beggars belief that Australian intelligence agencies obtained such information from AWB, and yet knew nothing of the insider arrangements AWB had established with Saddam's officials.

Again, these agencies had an obligation to report to ministers what they learned about the side-payments in violation of the UN Security Council regime - did they do so ?

Labor is at fault for the misdirected nature of its attack on the Government in Parliament this week. It is not an Australian Opposition's job to canvass irresponsible and unprovable fantasy scenarios of Australian money perhaps paying for Palestinian suicide bombers or bullets to kill American soldiers. The money that AWB improperly gave to Saddam's officials was fungible, and could as easily have been spent on palaces, VIP planes, or foreign bank accounts. The only provable fact is that this money was taken from needy Iraqi children: but what is Labor saying on that?

The AWB is under enough of a cloud; it does not need to be saddled with mythical extra allegations by a self-righteous ALP on a blame trip. The Howard Government is taking the parliamentary attack calmly so far, because it seems confident that present and former public officials will hold the line in evidence before the Cole inquiry. On the basis of past Senate inquiries into children overboard, SIEV X, and pre-Bali terror intelligence, that is probably a safe assumption. Howard and his ministers are briefed on sensitive matters orally, and records of such conversations are not kept. It would take a brave official or former official to claim that ministers were briefed orally on what AWB was doing, when other officials could be found to make counter-claims. (Examples are the Scrafton evidence on children overboard, and the ONA evidence on pre-Bali intelligence to Downer.)

Australian rural exporters will know that Australia's international reputation as an ethical trader will be damaged by this affair.

If as a result of the Cole inquiry the AWB is disbanded or constrained in its commercial freedom to sell wheat abroad, Australian farmers will be the main losers. Blame for this should be focused where it rightly most belongs - on the Howard Government and on DFAT. Let's hope the inquiry turns up a conscientious whistleblower from inside government. Australian farmers and the national interest need the full truth to come out now.