Friday, 31st March, 2006

Old habits die hard among farming industry leaders: talk about being a defender of free enterprise but at the first sign of trouble call on the Government for a subsidy. The National Farmers Federation president Peter Corish has been at his lobbying station in recent weeks talking up the need of a $1 billion guarantee to cover sales of this year's wheat harvest. Having reaped the benefit of paying bribes to Iraq to sell wheat, the farmers now want to pay no penalty for the failure to sell wheat caused by those very same bribes.

National Party ministers are sure to listen sympathetically to the entreaties. There are limits to their support for rational economic policy as aid for sugar growers proved a few years back, As Mr Corish told The Australian: "I am pleased that government ministers are starting to give this matter some serious thought."

Handing out a $100 million here and a $100 million there is easy enough for the Government at a time of a large budget surplus. More difficult is working out what to do about the whole future of export wheat sales now that AWB Limited is a thoroughly discredited company. It is hard for most farmers to contemplate an end to nearly 70 years of having their affairs dealt with by a cosy export monopoly. The single desk trading system has become an article of faith and the National Party will fight to preserve it.

But how to preserve it when at the end of the Cole Commission of Inquiry AWB is bound to face years in legal battles from shareholders misled by statements by AWB directors that the company was not involved in paying bribes to Iraq and Iraq, Australia's biggest customer, refuses to deal with it?