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

I have made a series of freedom of information applications to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade concerning the AWB scandal. The minister’s response has made a mockery of the government’s claims, which we have just heard, to be open and transparent about the scandal. Requests for documents have been rejected on the basis that the workload would be too onerous, yet the government claims to have provided all of the documents to the Cole commission. If this claim is true then it has done the work already, and the documents it has provided to me have been heavily censored—blacked out so as to make them meaningless.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs and his colleague the Treasurer, as last week’s High Court decision showed, are the Boston stranglers of freedom of information. They have used conclusive certificates as chloroform, increased charges as a truncheon and delays in responding as a garrotte in order to strangle genuine efforts to obtain information.

But sometimes not everything goes according to plan. The copy they sent me of a briefing note prepared by the department of foreign affairs for a meeting scheduled with Andrew Lindberg, Managing Director of the AWB, on 20 January 2003, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, had most of the paragraphs blacked out, as usual, but the blacking out was—how shall I put it?—half-hearted or half-baked. It is in fact possible to read many of the words underneath the blacking out. The first paragraph, under the heading ‘Key issues’, reads:

Note that the nature of any post-Saddam transition arrangements in Iraq has yet to be determined. Australia favours significant UN involvement. This would inter alia help ensure the transparency of purchasing decisions. Australian personnel could be seconded to some of the UN branches, for example the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, involved in aid procurement and coordination.

The timing of this note—a meeting between the foreign affairs minister and the AWB CEO on 20 January 2003—is highly significant. At the time, Prime Minister Howard was insisting invasion was not inevitable and would only be a last resort. The notes they tried to black out show the government was planning to invade Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein even though the Prime Minister was still pretending to be giving peace a chance.

Minister Downer’s claim that we invaded Iraq to stop it using weapons of mass destruction is nowadays about as plausible as a man who says he buys Penthouse to read the articles. The notes they tried to black out also show the government was more prepared to be candid with AWB about its intentions than it was with the Australian people. The government and AWB were bosom buddies throughout this corrupt charade. The consequences of the Iraq invasion have been disastrous for the war on terrorism, providing an apparently endless supply of recruits for Osama bin Laden and his allies, and disastrous for Australians, leading to the Americans taking Australia’s wheat market in Iraq and being a major factor in the doubling of petrol prices.

It is hard to imagine a piece of greater Keystone Cops bungling and it would be comical if it were not so serious. On national security, the Prime Minister and the foreign affairs minister are driving in the way made famous by Laurel and Hardy: one foot flat on the accelerator but the steering wheel has come off in their hands. They are clueless as to where the war on terrorism is headed next. We have a foreign affairs minister who told the Cole commission that he does not have time to read diplomatic cables, but it turns out he has time to read the anonymous right-wing US website Zombietime.com and prefers to believe them than have his department check out matters with the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘zombie’ as ‘a lifeless, apathetic, or completely unresponsive person’. That is Minister Downer, all right: apathetic about the catastrophe that is Iraq, apathetic about the scandal that is AWB and unresponsive to the basic standards expected of a minister.

AWB is a union. It is a union of Australian wheat growers. It is not just a union, though—it is a compulsory union. AWB has a monopoly on Australian bulk wheat exports. Australian wheat growers can only export through AWB. They call it the single desk. Every time you hear someone talking about the single desk, it is worth remembering that what they mean is a compulsory union of wheat growers. Some wheat growers do not want to be in the union.

Over in Western Australia, most wheat growers do not want to be in the union. I notice another group of farmers, called the Eastern Grain Growers, are also calling for total deregulation of the export market. They do not want to be in the union either. We have wheat growers coming to us and asking, ‘Why should we have to pay this tax on our wheat to fund the Wheat Export Authority?’ The Cole inquiry has shown that this body was completely incapable of discovering the corrupt payments to Saddam and shown it to be as useful as breasts on a bull, if I might employ a little agricultural parlance. But the government says to these farmers: ‘No, you’ve got to be in the union. Everyone’s got to be in the union. The union makes us strong. It is a tough world out there and the single desk—the union—is the best way to go. Collective bargaining is how we will get the best result.’

The AWB is not just a union and not just a compulsory union; it is an affiliated union. It is affiliated with the Liberal and National parties. I respect farmers. They are decent, hardworking people and I support them in their struggle to get a mandatory code of conduct for fruit and vegetable growers—something they were promised before the last election. But farmers’ representative organisations like AWB have unfortunately become part of the career path for Liberal and National party personnel. This week the Eastern Grain Growers spokesman Mark Johns said:

Grower election of board members has provided a career path for agri-politicians encouraging inefficiencies aimed at political solutions.

Here are some of the names featuring prominently at the Cole commission: there is gun-toting Trevor Flugge, former Director and Chairman of the AWB, paid over $900,000 out of the AusAID budget for a few months work in Iraq—a former National Party candidate. There is Darryl Hockey, AWB’s Government Relations Manager, former adviser to the last National Party leader and member for Gwydir. There is Tom Harley, Liberal Party activist and author, Chair of the Menzies Research Centre and BHP executive, who was implicated in the Tigris affair: AWB’s scam to pass over $10 million BHP wanted for wheat it decided it had not really given Iraq.

Then there are the Liberal and National members of parliament, including the member for Gwydir, the former Leader of the National Party. As Minister for Primary Industries and Energy he ordered the privatisation of AWB, but it was a privatisation with a difference: he gave—not sold, gave—the 67½ thousand grain grower members of the Wheat Industry Fund A- and B-class shares in AWB, allowing these members 241 million shares or 90 per cent control of AWB. It turned out to be worth $800 million to them. Medibank Private fund members please take note. If the Howard government really believes a privatised Medibank Private will perform better and is not doing it for the money, why does it not hand over Medibank Private to the fund members the same way it did with AWB? Minister Anderson personally received shares in AWB.

There is the Minister for Community Services, Mr Cobb, National Party member for Parkes—former President of the New South Wales Farmers Association; he held AWB shares. There is the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, the Liberal member for Groom, Mr Macfarlane—former President of the Queensland Graingrowers Association; he held AWB shares. There is the National Party member for Maranoa—who is in the chamber now. His family trust had AWB shares. There is the Liberal member for Grey, Mr Wakelin; he held AWB shares. There is Senator Heffernan, Liberal senator; he had AWB shares. And it is the same deal for former Liberal Party President John Elliot, and the current National Party President, David Russell. There is now-disgraced Andrew Lindberg, who was appointed CEO of AWB by a National Party minister after working for a National Party minister in Victoria as head of the WorkCover Authority.

The jobs, the shares and the campaign donations all add up to one thing: AWB is an affiliated union of the Liberal and National parties. If one of Labor’s affiliated unions were to be involved in a $300 million corruption scandal with anyone—much less Saddam Hussein—heads would roll. We would never hear the end of it. But, here, no heads have rolled. We are told that everything is being taken care of by the Cole commission. But the truth is: the Cole commission will not make any adverse findings about ministers or their staff, because to do so would be outside their terms of reference. It is high time ministerial heads did roll and high time the Liberal and National parties took real action to deal with the corruption of one of their affiliates.

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