Selling us down the river

Crooks




By Michael Gawenda, Herald Correspondent in Washington and Marian Wilkinson
February 1, 2006

THE Australian ambassador to the United States lobbied Congress to drop an investigation into allegations that Australia's wheat exporter paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime.

The Federal Government confirmed last night that the then ambassador, Michael Thawley, met the chairman of a US Senate investigations committee in late 2004 to head off the planned inquiry.

The AWB investigation was ultimately dropped, despite the US Government having information that an AWB wheat contract might have been inflated to cover kickbacks to Iraq. This information included a report, seen by the Herald, from the US Defence Contract Audit Agency.

It is understood a Senate sub-committee did not pursue the AWB investigation in the face of the fierce resistance of AWB.

Mr Thawley met Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate permanent sub-committee on investigations, in the weeks before the Australian general election on October 9, 2004.

A statement to the Herald last night from the office of the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, confirmed Mr Thawley "argued strongly" to Senator Coleman for AWB's case, which was to block a US Senate inquiry.

"The Government was very concerned that because of the strong campaign by American wheat interests, the Senate committee would be used by those interests to damage Australia's wheat interests with Iraq," the statement said.

Mr Thawley had "expressed surprise" to Senator Coleman that his committee was focusing on AWB. The statement said the Government was "very concerned at the time that AWB Ltd would be unfairly treated". It added: "The Government had no reason to believe other than that the AWB Ltd was behaving properly."

Around the time of Mr Thawley's meeting it is understood there was also a meeting involving Australian government officials and the Senate committee staffers during which the US-Australia alliance and Australia's role in the "coalition of the willing" was raised.

The Government knew the AWB was paying bribes to Saddam and reacted by using its influence, haha, to try and make it go away. Incidentally our "role in the 'coalition of the willing' was raised." Not only is the government in this grubby scandal up to its eyeballs, but our foreign policy was used as a bargaining chip to get a crooked company and a crooked government off the hook. How many Australian soldiers did it cost to make all this go away? What else did they promise? This has the makings of a government destroying scandal if the stupid boob in charge of the opposition would get his act together.