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

We have been having a debate in this House this week about responsibility and the need for the government to take responsibility for the areas of public policy which matter in this nation. But there can scarcely be more striking and dramatic an example of this government’s failure to accept responsibility, its refusal to accept responsibility, than the way in which it has handled the AWB scandal. It has effectively suggested that nobody is to blame; we did nothing wrong. They are not going to chastise anybody. You hear nothing about action within the Public Service or anywhere else to seek to bring home any accountability for what is the greatest scandal in this nation’s history.

Hearing the contributions of some members opposite, it seems to me they are living in fantasy land, they are living in a dream world. This is the government which set up this debacle with its legislation to privatise AWB. We have the member for Gwydir in the chamber. For decades the single desk operated without controversy, but that was not good enough for this government. It brought in legislation which killed the goose that laid the golden egg. It set up a conflict of interest whereby AWB is obliged, under its legislation, to give its first loyalty to wheat growers and, under the companies legislation, to give its first loyalty to shareholders. It is said in the Christian Bible: ‘No man can serve two masters.’ That is indeed the case.

The government set up a conflict of interest. It has been an accident waiting to happen. The government now says, ‘We are taking the monopoly back from the AWB and we are giving it to the minister.’ The question I want to raise is: what is going to be the role of the Wheat Export Authority? It has emerged from this debacle as smug, complacent and clueless. Indeed, one of the options available to the government was to pass the monopoly powers to the Wheat Export Authority. The Prime Minister was asked about this and he said, ‘The Wheat Export Authority was commented on by the Cole inquiry’—and indeed it was, in very unfavourable terms. It is absolutely extraordinary that the Wheat Export Authority could have conducted an inquiry into how the AWB was performing at the time when all these kickbacks were occurring and yet have found no evidence of the payment of kickbacks—frankly incredible.

My question to the House and to the minister is: what is the Wheat Export Authority’s role now? Are its staff not effectively being paid to sit down and do nothing? It seems to me that that has been the case all along—it was either the ‘wheat export rubber-stamp authority’, so far as the AWB was concerned, or the ‘wheat export refusal authority’, so far as everyone else was concerned. It is now blindingly obvious that this is an authority which is lacking in any legitimate function or purpose.

The Wheat Marketing Amendment Bill 2006 is an admission by the government that they failed to get the structure of the AWB right in the first place and that, ever since then, they have failed to adequately monitor its performance. This debate ought to be accompanied by an abject apology from the Howard government to every Australian wheat grower. You have Minister Vaile saying, ‘We’ve been cleared by the Cole inquiry,’ utterly without shame. The fact is that the wheat market in Iraq has been lost. They are not even trying to go there anymore. Great damage has been done to Australia’s international trading reputation, but we have a government which is utterly without shame and refusing to accept responsibility.

Every wheat grower deserves an apology for the failure of a succession of National Party leaders and ministers to do the jobs that they were elected to do and have been paid to do. We had the member for Gwydir, who as agriculture minister devised that flawed structure for the AWB at the time it was privatised. We had the current National Party leader, who took this legislation for the flawed structure through the parliament. Then we had the now deputy National Party leader asleep at the wheel while the Wheat Export Authority failed time and time again to properly do its job and allowed the AWB to run amok. This has been a disgraceful failure on the part of the National Party representatives to look after the people whom you claim to represent and were elected to represent.

In 1999, your government privatised the Australian Wheat Board and the AWB became a grower owned company under Corporations Law.

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