Gavan O'Connor (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. The anger that I express on this floor tonight is an anger that is out there in regional Australia. If I apologise, I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I apologise to the parliament. But I will never apologise to this government, which has betrayed the wheat growers of Australia. I express this anger on their behalf, because they have placed their trust in the government and it has been broken. But I take your admonition, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Let me go through what it has cost AWB wheat grower shareholders of this nation. As we know, when this structure was set up by the coalition—this fatally flawed structure in the wheat industry that has led to this mess—many of those shareholders were the wheat growers of Australia. They have seen their shareholding halved in value. In addition to the $290 million of their income paid directly in bribes, they have now seen the value of their shares in AWB halved. Not only that, but in the most lucrative of markets in the Middle East—and, for this industry, in the world—they have lost $500 million. We are so far over the $1 billion mark it is not funny—lost to the wheat industry of Australia courtesy of the Howard government.

AWB is threatened with four lawsuits that I know of, and the conservative estimates say it will be hundreds of millions of dollars and the outside estimates say that, if they are successful, it will be in the region of $1 billion. If that were to occur, the cost of this fiasco at this point in time is some $2 billion. There is potential for further restrictions on AWB’s trade. This scandal has cast a shadow across the great trading reputation of this country.

I say this about some members opposite: they have finally stood on their two feet and told it like it is. Members opposite and members on this side know that the member for O’Connor and I have been bitter enemies in the past—him as a minister and me as a shadow minister in another portfolio. You could say from those exchanges that we have not been political friends, but I will say this for the honourable member for O’Connor: he tells it like it is and he is a fierce defender of the wheat growers in his electorate—not like the National Party political Judases who go around the countryside promising to the wheat growers and others that they are going to do this and they are going to do that, and then they lie like a pig in straw to the constituents.

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