AWB Hushed Up to Protect US FTA?

It's impossible to throw a stone without hitting a newspaper with a new article about the AWB scandal at the moment. The Opposition's attacks on the government have been relentless, each day of the Oil for Food enquiry unearths a detail less savoury than the last. All serious current affairs shows have had nightly interviews and dissections. This makes it a pretty difficult topic to blog. What more can you say than `Boy, this whole thing stinks' and then, a few days later `More proof today that this whole thing stinks'?

An interesting exercise is to do what all good historians - and journalists - do: return to primary sources. The 7.30 Report has spent a good portion of its distinctive and distinguished AWB coverage doing just that, proving, for one thing, that what the government says now and what it said around the time of the initial invasion of Iraq are two different things. Consider such examples as this press release from US Wheat Associates in which US farmers - speaking in November 2003 - express concerns that Australian farmers appeared to be receiving a much larger slice of the Iraqi wheat market than they did.

Now, this touches on a very sore point. Does the aggressive targeting of the Australian Government's alleged role in kickbacks to the Hussein regime threaten the livelihoods of Australian farmers? By rights, it should not - many farmers have expressed dismay and outrage that their hard work has ultimately been for the benefit of Saddam Hussein. They had no choice but to act through AWB, given its monopoly status (no doubt, one of the recommendations of Commissioner Cole will be to introduce competition into the wheat export industry). In their representations, US senators have emphasised Australia's close trade and diplomatic ties with America and is unlikely to wish to alienate such a close ally. On the other hand, the US agricultural lobby is notoriously strident and powerful. But this in itself begs the question - how did this same powerful lobby group miss out on a slice of the lucrative postwar Iraqi wheat market to Australia, a comparative minnow, which was charging far higher prices? The possible - and, as the inquiry continues, perhaps the probable - answer is deeply troubling.

Also in this press release is something touched upon during tonight's 7.30 Report interview with one Jerry Hagstrom of CongressReport, who investigated the AWB deal in 2003. The then-Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, is amongst several senators from both parties to have written to George W. Bush demanding that the irregularities in prices being charged for Australian wheat in Iraq be examined prior to the US Free Trade Agreement being finalised.' Hagstrom suggested that Daschle - a highly respected senior Democrat (a sort of stateside John Faulkner, perhaps?) who is known to have been concerned about AWB for some years - was pushing for the FTA to be delayed or even scuttled altogether if the AWB issue was not cleared up. Clearly, this advice was not followed. The US FTA went through much as planned and expected, and AWB continued on its merry way.

Ah, things might have been so very different had an election not have been looming on the horizon, might they not?

Washington Senator Patty Murray went one step further and, in a letter of 31 October 2003, asked "U.S. taxpayers have a right to ask if Australia acted improperly in close cooperation with the former government of Saddam Hussein to manipulate wheat sales."

Now, mind - this document has been in the public domain for just over two years. Not only did George W. Bush ignore - or choose to ignore - these calls, but so did the Australian government. It will become extremely difficult for John Howard et al to continue running the old `I was not informed' line.