Howard and Downer must have known

IN relation to the Iraq/AWB wheat scandal, The Australian of 3 February, 2006 reported Prime Minister John Howard as asserting on 30 January that “We were in no way involved with the payment of bribes … we didn’t have knowledge of them.”

A couple of days later Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said “I feel very relaxed about the whole thing in terms of DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) and the Australian Government.”

Being a simple and trusting chap who has always respected eminent personages and everything they say and do, my instinctive response would be to nod in agreement with these assertions of Messrs. Howard and Downer. On this occasion, however, I was overtaken by a rare flash of doubt and suspicion which led me to the considered conclusion that the aforementioned eminent politicians were possibly giving us a pile of poo.

But, to start at the beginning, I gather that AWB is a successor body to the Australian Wheat Board. The Wheat Board was a Commonwealth statutory body — like the Meat Board, Wool Board and sundry other such commodity/trade authorities of yesteryear — which managed international sales of wheat prior to its rebirth as a corporatised, publicly listed ”single desk seller” of Australian wheat with the government apparently having also retained some equity in the business or at least a very close interest given the geopolitical considerations involved.

The essence of the present brawl seems to revolve around the fact that, allegedly to win wheat sales to Iraq, AWB was involved in massive kickbacks and surcharges which ultimately found their way to the top of the Saddam Hussein regime.

Notwithstanding the denials of Messrs. Howard and Downer in relation to their knowledge or otherwise of massive kickbacks, there are some brave and seemingly knowledgeable people putting their hands up on the issue. For example, AWB employee Michael Long told the Cole inquiry that he personally passed information about kickbacks to DFAT in June 2003, more that two months after the Iraq war started. Long was at that stage on our Federal Government’s payroll and attached to the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture. Another senior DFAT officer was allegedly sent a similar report from another AWB employee in Iraq.

Playing with his toys at the time

Is Mr. Downer “relaxed” about those reports because he didn’t know about them or because he was given them but didn’t read them or because he was playing with his toys at the time?

The Australian comments further that DFAT established a taskforce on Iraq in September 2002 “… to bring together a range of departments and agencies including Prime Minister and Cabinet, Defence, AusAID, Austrade, and the Attorney-General’s Department. The task force held daily meetings during the war and produced more than 185 ‘concise situation reports for ministers’.”

Many decades ago I was a diplomat employed by the then Department of External Affairs after which I served in the Department of Trade and Industry which was in turn subsequently merged with External Affairs to form DFAT. It is against that background that I believe every relevant minister would have been kept fully informed of what the AWB was up to in Iraq, including any payment of bribes. These public servants are professionals in the best and broadest sense. They are well educated (many with multiple degrees), subject to rigorous appointment processes, well trained and very competent. There is no way in the world that public servants of this standard and at this level would not keep their ministers fully informed, especially of the kind of highly sensitive and important information that was coming out of Iraq at that time.

I simply do not believe that government ministers would not have received detailed briefings

Of course they would keep them informed and they would do so because — in addition to their training, backgrounds and professionalism — they know how to protect their own backsides. There are many more politicians in the bureaucracies of this nation than there are in the parliaments and they are immeasurably better at their kind of politics than the politicians are at theirs. If you think otherwise then little piggy wiggies are presently fluttering past your window.

I simply do not believe that government ministers would not have received detailed briefings on the AWB/Iraq issue, possibly even including references to the antics of AWB’s cowboy leaders whom we have all now seen in photographs cavorting semi-clad with firearms. It may be that some ministers did not read their briefings but, even then, the minister would normally be briefed verbally by a minder. The aforementioned cavorters may also have been among those AWB personnel who have received other well-paying part-time jobs from the Federal government, as reported in a more recent edition of The Australian.

Finally, the next question to arise will be the matter of ministerial responsibility, once a fundamental principal in Westminster democracies. A silly point to raise really because, given the constitutional morality of many recent state and federal governments in Australia, recourse to the notion of ministerial responsibility — that is, a minister falling on his or her sword when exercising responsibility over a portfolio area where a serious blunder has occurred — would doubtless be described in contemporary terms as a “no-brainer”. Amanda Vanstone is among many Federal and state ministers over recent years who should be thankful for the erosion of that hitherto important brick in the Westminster wall.

But back to Iraq. I think there is much more to come on this issue and it may well be the toughest mountain that John Howard and his team have yet had to climb. Inquiries of the kind headed by Commissioner Cole can take a long time to complete although he may well have the option of interim reports on specific issues but, either way, the government now has yet another reason to watch its rear. Indeed, recent events will remind the Prime Minister that a senate majority isn’t always what it is cracked to be.

Whenever and however it all evolves I have a feeling in my bones that we may see 2006 as a watershed year for the Howard government. The year perhaps when hubris turns to humus.

I think too that, as with the Americans themselves, the nature of our behaviour in this whole Iraqi business has been consistent with those recurrent sagas when we reveal the petticoat of our international immaturity.