March 24, 2006

AWB in context: This is the DIMA government

Michael Pascoe writes:

Another day, another truckload of embarrassment for the federal government over its cosy relationship with its AWB cronies and the whole septic tank of incompetence surrounding the Iraqi kickbacks.

However, for those calling for ministerial heads, the problem remains that this government is beyond being embarrassed. This is the DIMA government. There is no reason to expect that any other department is better run or less incompetent than the Vanstone gang that randomly locks up and deports Australians without any apparent punishment.

When DIMA heads are made ambassadors and the relevant minister gets away with mouthing platitudes disaster after disaster, why should anyone expect responsibility might be taken for not adding one and one together over AWB?

Yes, the evidence continues to mount that a competent government would have known that AWB was bankrolling Saddam long before Volcker made it official. But that remains the key plank of the Howard/Downer/Vaile defence — this is not a competent government.

Meanwhile, it’s nice to see the Prime Minister’s handlers taking their strategy leads from Crikey. Just as we first suggested that calling the Cole inquiry would be a major part of Howard’s early innocence plea, our suggestion that “national security” would be next has come to fruition.

As AAP reports this morning:

Prime Minister John Howard has defended Australia’s cooperation with the Volcker inquiry, saying the government could not just hand over classified intelligence to other countries.

The Cole inquiry into AWB’s $300 million kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime has heard Foreign Minister Alexander Downer tried to block UN investigators from interviewing key government witnesses about the scandal last year.

But Mr Howard defended Mr Downer’s actions.

“The basis on which he did that was quite valid,” Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

“The cooperation didn’t extend to just arbitrarily handing over classified documents which were the intelligence of foreign countries.”

Yep, saw that coming. And we can expect more of it. Something we don’t expect to see is Cole inquiring into how our spooks knew so much about the Jordanian trucking company AWB was using and exactly how the kickback racket worked.

Too much “national security” involved in that.