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CANBERRA - Prime Minister John Howard has cause to feel righteously relaxed over the royal commission into the payment by Australia's monopoly wheat trader of almost A$300 million ($351 million) in illegal kickbacks to the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The inquiry led by former judge
Terence Cole did, after all, clear his senior ministers and officials of any form of complicity in the breaking of UN sanctions by the Australian Wheat Board in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Howard also has a fistful of scapegoats: the 12 men to be investigated for possible criminal offences by a special taskforce, and a wheat trader whose role as a single-desk seller is now seriously in question.
The end of that arrangement would be welcomed by a significant element of his Government. His rural-based Coalition partners, the Nationals, may now be forced to swallow their long-standing opposition to the loss of monopoly powers.
And his main rival, Labor leader Kim Beazley, is in danger of being hobbled in a planned blitz on the Cole findings by treachery within his own ranks, with speculation high that a leadership coup is being plotted, fuelled by polls showing Australians would like to see him replaced.
Further, the scandal has never gripped Australian suburbia. Despite its international significance and the implications of political and bureaucratic incompetence, skulduggery in the wheat trade has never inspired passions around the barbecue.
But the AWB's kickbacks to a regime that the Australian Government was determined should fall have caused great damage to the nation.
Australia's A$500 million-a-year wheat trade with Iraq has evaporated, AWB's reputation has been shattered, shareholders have lost half the value of their investment, some entities refuse to deal with the company, and lawsuits are threatening at home and abroad.
The United States Senate is planning to use the Cole Report to nail AWB in a further investigation.
This will be of no minor embarrassment to Canberra. Cole said of AWB and its corporate culture, when considering how sales to Iraq should be maintained: "Do whatever is necessary to retain the trade. Pay the money required by Iraq. It will cost the AWB nothing because the extra costs will be added into the wheat price and recovered from the UN escrow account. But hide the making of those payments for they are in breach of sanctions."
Labor and other critics are hammering the line that senior ministers and officials were appallingly negligent and incompetent. At a personal level, the highest ranks of AWB had close links with the Government, and especially the Nationals.
Former chairman Trevor Flugge, who will almost certainly face criminal charges, was once a National Party candidate, enjoyed continued close associations with its leadership, and led Australia's post-war reconstruction team after Saddam's fall.
Labor has also pointed to 35 warnings of AWB misdeeds, beginning in 1998 with intelligence naming the Jordanian trucking company through which the company was funnelling kickbacks to Saddam as a sanctions-busting Iraq front. Ultimately, AWB was named as a major sinner by the UN investigation led by former US Federal Reserve head Paul Volker.
How, Howard's critics are asking, did the Government and the bureaucracy charged with overseeing trade with Iraq miss all this?
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer answered simply on ABC television's 7.30 Report: "What you don't know, you don't know."
Cole could give no answer, because his terms of reference did not include the competence and diligence of the bureaucracy and ministers.
But in a series of observations throughout the 2000-page, five-volume report, the commissioner gave a fairly clear indication of what he was thinking - and that, generally, tended to reflect Labor's view that, at best, Canberra's watchdogs were sleeping on the job.
Cole notes that Foreign Affairs and Trade officials failed to pursue suggestions and allegations of AWB misdeeds, conducting no inquiries other than seeking responses from AWB - and accepting its assurances without question - and in turn strenuously defending the company.
He said the officials took extensive diplomatic action to rebut the allegations. This was not turning a blind eye to wrongdoing, because this would mean officials already knew what any further investigations or inquiries would reveal, he said. Instead, he found there was no evidence officials had knowledge of the kickbacks.
But he said the critical fact was that the Foreign Affairs and Trade Department did very little in relation to the allegations or other information it received about possible kickbacks, nor did it have any system in place to respond to such allegations.
For the Government, serious questions remain unanswered.
The Cole report's dirty dozen ...
These are the men the Australian media have dubbed "The Dirty Dozen" - the AWB executives allegedly responsible for the oil-for-food scandal that has hammered Australia's international reputation and cost the nation its A$500 million-a-year wheat trade with Iraq. Cole recommended criminal investigations, and said of each: