How utterly unsurprising- The usual suspects out bashing John Howard. Can I ask where they were when Whitlam was busy deceiving the treasury and Keating was appeasing Suharto and making his huge extended family rich? Howard will go down as one of Australia's greatest PM's. If certain segments of the community don't like it tough. He's won 4 elections, will win a fifth and is popular!

Great to see Germany, Canada and America have picked up where AWB left off. Their inquiries are obviously on hold for the time being-but at least we can meet with the Mullahs in Iraq with a clear conscience. I doubt any charges will be laid as a result of Cole's investigations though and the left will again fail to land a decisive blow against JH. This is solely because most Australians see through the duplicity of its arguments and despise the ever present 'johnny bashing' which it seems is the only policy the left has.

dalma

You asked "One would hasten to ask where was the ONA (Office of National ASSessment) ASIO, DIO (Dept Intelligence Office) and myriad Organisations involved with security of our Nation".

I suggest you read a former spook's account that government departments (like DFAT) knew exactly what AWB was doing - and Howard introducing the issue of intelligence agencies is just a smokescreen (an effective one too).

Andrew Wilkie (formerly of ONA) wrote in the Age http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/spies-views-on-awb-unimportant/2006/02/16/1140064198210.html?page=1

"The discussion in the media about whether or not the intelligence agencies advised the Howard Government about AWB's misconduct is a red herring, evidence again that politicising intelligence can be fruitful for politicians.

...this time it is outsiders - former spooks and journalists - who are helping to take some of the heat off the Government by talking about intelligence agencies failing to warn of AWB's mischief in Iraq.

The Government must love this distraction...

My own observation during a trip for ONA in 2002 into Jordan was that the handful of Australian embassy officials in Amman were kept busy with wheat business. In fact so pre-occupied with facilitating AWB's business with Iraq were [DFAT] staff - they routinely accompanied AWB officials on their trips to Baghdad - that any suggestion AWB was able to conceal serious misconduct is implausible.

The official Australian assistance to AWB was well known in Canberra. At every step the Australian diplomats based in Jordan cabled Australia and copies were always sent to numerous people, including across the road in Parliament House.

In other words, the Government hardly needed input on AWB from spooks because it was already operating hand-in-glove with the wheat marketing company, just as it is now with Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile heading off to Iraq with the head of AWB.

The media are letting us down, again, on this matter. Intelligence stories excite people and it is unsurprising that journalists are always on the look-out for an angle..."

While Howard is a relatively honest PM he's fooling the lefties using the spook distraction.

Response to Yabby's post (20/2)

You are perfectly correct but the prize wasn’t worth the trouble at all, to the contrary. This is the cost of Howard’s unspeakable subservience to the US.

Here is a short excerpt from my new book AUSTRALIA - Republic or US Colony? <www.lulu.com/156234>. It is the start of a section on the Free Trade Agreement with the US:

The Free Trade Agreement with the United States

“The early drive for the FTA (2002) came from the Australian US Free Trade Agreement Business Group (AUSTA). AUSTA, the principal lobby group, stated on its website that it “seeks deep integration” with the US economy and argued that “the benefits would be felt especially in the areas of manufactures and investment”. At a time when the subservience of the Howard Government to the US’s military adventurism was already a growing concern to the nation did it make sense to foster further integration? AUSTA certainly thought so.

They claimed:

“The Points in favour: An FTA strengthens the long-term strategic relationship with the United States; Australia cannot afford to assume that the defence relationship will be enough to maintain strong ties with the US in the long term; the US is now using Free Trade Agreements as measures of special relationships”.

There seemed to be no notion at all that the defence relationship itself could be a liability. To the contrary. AUSTA encouraged holding on to and deepening that relationship by cementing its economic ties further with the US, no matter what. “

END of Excerpt

What kind of "real world"?

Dalma takes a cynical view of business ethics and that is not surprising here.
Business ethics has been on the skids in Australia in a big way as we all know. This situation endangers the trend still further.

Apologists for the Howard government claim that in the international wheat trade critics of the Howard Government have to understand the "real world". That "real world" is corrupt and unethical, they claim, and Australia has no option but too play along to survive and sell the wheat and whatever else. "Everybody is doing it like that", we are told. In this manner the huge bribe to Saddam is rationalised. Pardon me? This view must be challenged right here, and vigorously, because it could destroy this nation if it is accepted and spreads. It is Australia's call, through its ELECTED Government and its specialised controlling public agencies, to determine on what terms Australian wheat will be sold and to whom. Of course the Government had the option to say NO in Iraq. It could have looked for other markets or store the harvest. Australians must determine in what sort of "real world" they want to trade. It can help shape such that world for the better. The opposite happened. Surely, the responsibility rests squarely with the Howard Government.

Klaas Woldring,
Author of Business Ethics in Australia and New Zealand, Essays and Cases, Nelson ITP, 1996

everyone is discussing bribes surely this is really treason.
Australia was preparing to invade Iraq whilst AWB was funding the enemy. Some of the money ended up in Palestein paying the families of suicide bombers in breach of the anti terrorist laws.

This is more than just a bribery scandal.

As an old retired cockie going on 85, it can be seen you are not a politician, Tony, but a real honest to goodness insightly non-politico, from whom, we hope, our future tellers of our present rotten global history will be made.

As a very disgusted old bugger with overseas honours in international relations during the Cold War, there could be much more to tell about trade with non-Western countries. We were told by our American tutors, that trade with non-Western nations, was very prone to immoral bargaining and pay-offs, something our so-called honest Westerners will have to put up with. But better to make the deal, because it often proves beneficial to both sides.

To digress a little, regarding honesty in our present government, mixed farmers, and cattle-owners are still angry about a shipment of suspected foot and mouth infected Brazilian carcase meat landed in NSW last year. The report was graphically given by George Negus over SBS Dateline. But then the news of it, according to reports, was cleverly hidden from the public by we know who.

George C, WA - Bushbred