Defender you can't hold those views.... our corporations are totally trustworthy ... and if we strengthen their honesty with total self regulation nothing can ever go wrong... Hey why not get them to design their own codes of conduct ....This stuff works it's a proven fact. Ask the CEO's.

Defender, I totally agree with your last post the bids for the kickbacks would simply increase.... competition works that way sometimes.

Scroll down this page and see the answers Tim Besley from the Wheat Export Authority gave to the senate enquiry. Regulatory bodies should all be this ruthless and tough.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1570930.htm

If it wasn't so serious it would be laughable!

Re: Howard Government's Complicity in AWB Brides Scandal (Wheat for Weapons)

Dear Readers,

A review of facts uncovered by the 'Cole Enquiry' about the role of Senior Government Ministers leads to two conclusions.

1.Senior Ministers were gross negligent and incompetent in their public duty and/or

2. Senior Ministers were actively involved in a political cover-up to conceal their role in kick-backs to Saddam's regime.

Facts Summary:

1. Not knowing what was going after so many warnings and cables over all those years is gross negligence and incompetence.

2. As instigators of the affair driven by policy, means they lied under oath, and they have been involved in a political cover-up (e.g. Nixon's Water-Gate 1974) to save their political hides. This scandal is an outcome of Howard's trades policy to grab a greater share of Iraqi wheat market by kickbacks etc.

Why should we accept that negligent and incompetent Ministers remain in office? Why should politicians have rules of employment that put them above people who elected them.

The comments expressed by Howard, Vaile and Downer at the Cole Enquiry - I don't recall etc under oath parallels the comments expressed by Senior QLD Government Ministers at the Fitzgerald Enquiry in 1987.

This enquiry is purely an exercise in political control to deliver a conspired outcome to exonerate Howard & Co of any wrong doing. Sergeant Schultz strategy by Howard mirrors an old saying Something is Rotten in Nottingham.

We now see a clear pattern of behaviour of lies and sheer lack of public accountability by Howard and Co. Howard is PM who was responsible for kids overboard. PM who told the public we had to go to war with Iraq because Saddam had WMD. PM who said "Trust Me" at the last election. Now same PM who presides over an incompetent Admin which allowed $300m of public money in kick backs.

The complicity of Howard & Co in corruption, dishonesty and a political cover-up is beyond acceptable standards fitting of high public office. We deserve a federal election now on trust, public accountability, responsibility and rules of employment.