Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, the Prime Minister has produced terms of reference for the commission to expressly exclude it from making findings about the government’s own conduct. Of course the government must be held accountable for the conduct of AWB. It was a publicly owned enterprise until 1999, when the Howard government sold it off. It continues to have a legal monopoly over wheat exports. No-one else is allowed to export wheat unless AWB agrees to it, which of course it does not. When the Minister for Trade says the single desk is not on trial here, he is talking rubbish. The potential for private sector monopolies to become corrupt is well known, and the conduct of AWB is of course relevant as to whether it should continue to have a legal monopoly over wheat exports.

But over and above that, important as it is, there are two distinct incidents where the government profited politically from AWB’s cover-up of the kickbacks. In each of these incidents the role of the government must be thoroughly explored, given they had a vested interest in the cover-up. First, in 2002, as Prime Minister Howard embraced George Bush’s decision to plan to invade Iraq, Saddam Hussein responded by threatening to cancel Australian wheat contracts with Iraq. Had those sales stopped, it would have been very embarrassing for the Prime Minister. Labor opposed the proposed invasion and so too did a majority of the Australian public. If Australian wheat farmers had lost this important market as a result of the Prime Minister’s actions, the pressure on the Howard government not to ignore the United Nations on this issue would have been massive.

AWB personnel went to Iraq in 2002 to save the day. We now know how they did it. They greatly increased the size of the kickbacks they were paying to Saddam. But the Australian people and the Labor opposition were kept in the dark about this. We were never told that there was a price to be paid for being able to have our cake and eat it too—that is, to attack Saddam mercilessly in public and still be his preferred salesman in private.

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