Shouts from the desert

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Downer, has denied accusations by the opposition that the Government was incompetent for not acting against AWB. As much as I like to put the boot into Downer, he is correct in this case - the circumstances were not sufficient to give rise to the kind of suspicion necessary to demand Government action at the time. Bearing in mind that the AWB, although established by Parliament, was and remains an independent company, you need to have the same standard of evidence to launch an investigation that you would need for investigating any other company.

The evidence on which the opposition relies to make their claim of incompetence is largely based on accusations made either directly or indirectly by competitors to AWB. Such accusations were always based on second-hand information or worse, and in the highly competitive environment in which the AWB operates accusations of this kind are expected whether there is any wrongdoing or not. Indeed if our Government were to start a full-scale investigation into AWB based on those accusations, not only would they have to hit us with a significant tax hike to cover the cost of many investigations into other exporters who are accused in similar circumstances, but they would encourage others to make ungrounded accusations against Australian exporters in order to tie those exporters up in red tape and reduce their ability to compete.

This is not a situation where there has been a huge failure attributable to the Government - this is a case where executives in an independent company have engaged in a pattern of dishonesty and the Government has not had evidence of a quality that would require them to take action.