Saturday, 4th February, 2006

When the brash and breezy Daily Tele thinks it deserves page one, the AWB scandal is getting serious. When the responsible News Limited mother paper, The Australian, heads its editorial "A Crisis for Canberra - The Iraqi bribes affair could cripple the Government" then the Government really should start worrying. It is no longer just those bolshies from Fairfax and the ABC. Now it's for real. Take the conclusion of The Australian's editorial: "This wretched business is destined to go down as Mr Howard's version of the scandal that earned his hero, Bob Menzies, the moniker 'Pig Iron Bob'."

The Prime Minister's starting point when he set up Terence Cole's inquiry was that the AWB would carry the can for sanctions busting with perhaps some peripheral damage to the reputations of Foreign Affairs Department officers. (See The Mixed Political Consequences of Paying Bribes). It did not seem to occur to Mr Howard (and I admit it was not immediately obvious to me) that the inquiry into the food-for-oil scandal would produce so much evidence that suggests that the Government, in the words of The Australian editorial, "is gullible, duplicitous or worse."

Now that the inquiry has moved in that direction, Mr Howard will be battling to try and avoid this issue becoming a blight on his 10 years leading the country. The best way of doing that is to ensure that there can be no suggestion that he has something to hide. Someone else must carry the blame for not realising that something odd was going on with the AWB's dealings in Iraq. If this means a ministerial colleague or two suffering then so be it. The time has come when the Prime Minister has to revert to the practice of his first couple of years of tolerating not even slight transgressions of proper practice. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and past and present Trade and Primary Industry Ministers must be made to explain what they knew and why they didn't respond more vigorously when allegations were first raised about how AWB gained its contracts with Iraq.

The main casualty of the continuing drip, drip, drip of evidence that people in Government should have at least guessed that something crook was going on will not be an AWB employee, a public servant or even a Minister. A clear consequence of the Cole inquiry will be a marked increase in public cynicism about all politics and the involvement of BHP Billiton will see that.there is a growing sense that business and ethics should not be mentioned in the same sentence.

This the perfect climate for third parties which pretend not to be political parties to thrive. One Nation might have gone and the Democrats might be on their last legs, but the long term phenomenon of the two Coalition parties and Labor losing votes has not ended. (See Waiting for a New Minor Party from 27 September 2005).

Strong words from the PM's favourite paper,
the Daily Telegraph

"Mr Howard will be battling to try and avoid this issue becoming a blight on his 10 years leading the country. The best way of doing that is to ensure that there can be no suggestion that he has something to hide"

 

"A clear consequence of the Cole inquiry will be a marked increase in public cynicism about all politics and the involvement of BHP Billiton will see that.there is a growing sense that business and ethics should not be mentioned in the same sentence."