John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I certainly know Mr Trevor Flugge; as indeed do those opposite. Mr Flugge was appointed to the Australian Wheat Board in 1984 by the Hawke government. He was Deputy Chairman of the Australian Wheat Board from 1990 to 1995, presumably an appointment made during the terms of office of both the Hawke and the Keating governments, and he was a director and chairman of the Australian Wheat Board, as it was then known, from 1995—that would have been under the Keating government—until 2002. I do not disguise for a moment the fact that the government sought the involvement of Mr Flugge in post-Saddam Iraq. I will tell you why we sought his involvement: it was because our principal concern at that time was to stop American wheat growers from getting our markets.

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