">My Big World Of Crap

Deputy PM, Mark Vaile appeared at the Cole inquiry today to give evidence about his knowledge of the AWB’s payment of kickbacks to Iraq. Once again, a witness finds himself having memory difficulties when questioned. Maybe there’s an opportunity for very mature age workers to gain new employment - Alzheimer’s Disease, senility and dementia seem to qualify you very well for senior jobs with the Federal Government, AWB Limited and plenty of other places it seems.

I watched 4 Corners tonight and it seems there were a lot of people who should have done better but instead relied on their personal impressions of AWB as “good chaps” and the company’s impeccable reputation. These failings happened both in the Australian Government departments responsible for overseeing AWB, especially DFAT, and also at the UN. I would expect Australia needs to be appointing a new Ambassador to Egypt anytime soon, as Bob Bowker came across very poorly, the way he effectively squashed DFAT’s inquiries about AWB’s dealings when alarm bells first started to be rung.

Clearly, AWB are liars …. no questions about that! What are DFAT - liars or incompetent fools? I lean towards the latter … they had a cosy relationship with AWB, could not believe that such good blokes could get up to the shonky dealings alleged, and turned a blind eye to it. What about the Ministers, Vaile and Downer? What assessment should we be making of them, their personal staff and departments - liars or fools?

Update 11/04/2006: Alexander Downer also seems to suffer memory problems. I actually do have some sympathy for these guys - once I was a witness in a court case and answered lots of questions with “I don’t recall the specifics” or similar. The respondent, acting for himself, accused me of conveniently forgetting, to which I answered that the matter he wanted to talk about was one small event out of many three or four years previously, and that while I was familiar with it at the time, I dealt with many other things and did not remember each and every one past when I needed to. It is hard to remember what you did on a busy day in a busy week in a busy year - I can hardly remember what I did last week, let alone years ago.

Technorati Tags: AWB, Iraq, kickbacks, Mark Vaile, Alexander Downer, DFAT, liars, fools, incompetent

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