Australia's wheat trade is under the microscope and AWB's export monopoly is about to end following damning findings from the Cole inquiry into bribes paid to the Saddam Hussein regime using money improperly taken from the United Nations oil-for-food program.

The report, by Commissioner Terence Cole was scathing of the AWB board, slamming the company's "closed culture of superiority and impregnability, of dominance and self-importance".

Cole wrote: "The question posed within AWB was: 'What must be done to maintain sales to Iraq?' The answer given was: 'Do whatever is necessary to retain the trade. Pay the money required by Iraq. It will cost AWB nothing because the extra costs will be added into the wheat price and recovered the from the UN escrow account. But hide the making of those payments for they are in breach of sanctions'."

"No-one asked, 'What is the right thing to do'. Instead, much time and money was spent trying to determine if arrangements could be formulated in such a way as to avoid breaching the law or sanctions, whether conduct could be protected, by various subterfuges, from discovery or scrutiny, and whether actions were legal or illegal".

In the end, Cole delivered exactly what the Australian Government wanted - he cast AWB directors and managers as morally flawed.

But no-one is falling for the line that the parties around AWB were on the ball, or for that matter, more ethical. The Federal Government has hailed Mr Cole's findings that no minister was aware of AWB's wrongdoing. But the reality is that Cole's findings would have been very different if his terms of reference were wider. The commissioner, for example, was not free to criticise the Government for its mishandling of the scandal and he certainly wasn't allowed to raise questions as to why Foreign Affairs minister Alexander Downer failed to order an inquiry the moment he heard that AWB might be paying Saddam Hussein. And Cole accepted that hard copies of crucial cables were not necessarily put on Downer's desk or that he actually read them.

Come to think of it, Downer's situation is very different from that of AWB ex-chief executive Andrew Lindberg. Cole accepted that the corruption was there before Lindberg joined the company and he said Lindberg had shown good faith by resigning when the inquiry revealed how far the rot had set in. In other words, Lindberg had resigned because stuff was happening on his watch. By way of contrast, Downer and Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile, who was Trade Minister for a large part of the period that AWB was paying bribes to Saddam Hussein, still have their jobs. Go figure!

The bottom line is that the Australian Government should be condemned for failing to join the dots. And we should not forget that AWB was very much a creature established by Canberra.


AWB was a disaster waiting to happen because of the way the Government had set it up, Melbourne Business School academic Paul Kerin told me.

And it's not about to get better for AWB either. Australian law firm Maurice Blackburn Cashman has announced in this press release that it's about to launch a $A60 million class action against AWB. Basically, the case comes down to AWB's failure to disclose material information to the market.

As Maurice Blackburn Cashman principal Ben Slade told me, that includes information like the fact AWB stood to lose its Iraqi trade if it didn't make the illicit payments. That is material and would have needed to be disclosed.

Also, the US wheat industry is considering legal action against the agency, reports Reuters.

And that's on top of the racketeering claim launched by US farmers.