I love these inquiries or news stories where a scandal or some sort of misdeed is slowly unravelled, day by day. The Australian Wheat Board payments to the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq are a case in point, as were the events around the Canterbury Rapists football team cheating the salary cap a few years ago. In the AWB inquiry, clearly the AWB has taken a very bad decision, to obfuscate its way out of trouble, be dragged to the truth as slowly as possible and to share the blame around as much as they can. Their spin doctoring advice, assuming they had some, has served them poorly - lying is a very bad look, and you shouldn’t do it unless you’re totally confident you can bury the truth.

The AWB is obviously is place where it pays to forget everything you’ve ever seen, heard, said or done. Its executives appearing before the inquiry seem to be afflicted by serious memory problems. However, forgetfulness as a defence seems to be wearing thin, and now we have:

• attack the impartiality of the inquiry - its lawyers have questioned the inquiry’s fairness, and claimed that AWB witnesses are being ridiculed and ambushed with crucial evidence given at short notice, or withheld.
• outrageous indignation that anyone could suggest the AWB knew the payments were illegal - The head of international marketing at wheat exporter AWB says he is affronted by suggestions that $300 million in bribes was paid to the former Iraqi government. Michael Long has told the Cole inquiry that multi-million dollar payments to the Alia trucking company were for a genuine service.
• share the blame with DFAT - Mr Long (again) said he believed the department’s advice gave AWB permission to begin a relationship with “Jordan-based trucking companies” to move its wheat around Iraq. The Amman-based company involved, Alia, turned out to be a front company, part-owned by the Iraqi government, which sent the money straight back to the regime. DFAT gave AWB the go-ahead, but AWB’s vague request never mentioned that the exporter had already been paying money to Alia for about 10 months. Mr Long told the commission of inquiry into the affair that DFAT’s advice satisfied him the Alia arrangement had the department’s approval.

With other evidence about fixing the price of wheat to cover dodgy payments etc, its fairly obvious that the AWB had a pretty much “do anything” attitude to selling wheat, “whatever it takes”. I think its fairly clear that several AWB executives (**) are gone (maybe subject to criminal charges, perhaps there’ll need to be an AWB wing in whatever gaol they put white collar criminals in?) and I’d say the board too. What remains interesting is the degree to which government and ministers were involved or knew about the improper payments to Iraq.

PM John Howard has said he’d consider widening the terms of the inquiry if requested by the commissioner, however Trade Minister Mark Vaile and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer have dodged questions about the need for them to appear before the inquiry. Its a bit of a long bow to draw to say that letters from Howard to AWB are evidence that Howard knew of the dodgy dealings - they sound more like form letters, bureaucratic niceties. My suspicion is that AWB was deliberately vague in its dealings with government, and officials in DFAT and Trade weren’t cluey enough to pick up whatever signs there were in the information AWB fed them. Prime responsibility for the illicit payments lies with the AWB board and executives, secondary blame goes to the DFAT and Trade officials who weren’t diligent enough to pick up any warning signs that there must have been. Are any ministers responsible? Given the trivia about which ministers and advisors get paranoid about, I find it hard to believe they wouldn’t have been all over these payments if they had any hint that something was awry. I suspect they didn’t have these suspicions. Are they responsible? I’d say to some extent yes, they were presiding over the policy, processes and systems that allowed the payments to occur, and failed to be alert to the signs that dodgy dealings were happening.

(**) I reckon these executives at the moment would be thinking that a good arse reaming with a barbed wire dildo would be preferable to another day in the witness box. Who knows, it may be good preparation for some gaol time some might be getting.