It was is shaping up to be the court even of the decade, the Cole Inquiry into the AWB Kickback scandal is going from strength to strength, and I am hanging on every new development. I had been almost certain that J’Ho’s Teflon coated government was going to continue to side step the shit storm is behaviour has created but perhaps this time something might actually get through.
For those of you not following this antipodean drama Australias’ monopoly wheat exporter AWB , formally known as the Australian Wheat Board, has been caught very red faced with its hand in the pocket of the UN. It appears that they were knowingly inflating their wheat prices when selling to Iraq and used that overrun to pay over $300M in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime. It looks like they were not the only company involved in all of this, but to date no formed stools have clung to any of the other players including BHP , Australias’ landmark oil and gas exploration company.
The most significant thing that has come out to date however is that it appears that a number of senior Ministers in the Howard government had close dealings with AWB at the time this was going on. Those potentially involved include Mark Vale; Deputy PM, Leader of the Nationals and Trade Minister; and J’Ho himself.
Now the Cole enquiry had originally had its terms limited to exclude investigating government involvement, but some clever clogs had engineered things so that its well nigh impossible for J’Ho not to open things up without looking like he is covering something up. The next few weeks should be REALLY interesting.
John Howard is one of the smoothest political operators to emerge on the scene in the last few decades, and I suspect faster than you can say “plausible deniability” he is going to wiggle his way out of this, so I am not jigging for joy just yet. But it is going to take some political capital to do so and it will leave him injured.
Now if the Labor party just had a spine, or even a recognisable policy framework they might be able to capitalise on this and keep up the momentum. But somehow I doubt it. The days of labor “Maintaining the rage” seem, for the nonce, to have passed. I may just have to settle for watching J’Ho squirm.
2 Responses to Smooth Operator
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Unfortunately I cannot share your optimism about this shit sticking to him, Robert. Ultimately, as with all the other scandals this government has been involved in, all Howard has to do is cry “prove it!”. A few senior bureaucrats might be shafted but he’ll live to see another day.
And even if it were proven true do people really care? They don’t pay attention or they read the Herald Sun – which did not even publish this story yesterday, probably under instruction from Liberal HQ – it doesn’t directly relate to their mortgage and hey, we know John’s a bit lax with the truth on occasion but he keeps our interest rates down and our shores safe from all the boat people/terrorists, right?
Know I sound jaded and cynical but having seen Howard survive what probably would have ended previous governments or PMs for 10 years, I have no doubt he can survive 10 more. Turns a man to drink, really.