AWB-What A Downer!

Let's face it, if this mob are lying over so little, how could you trust them on anything major?


{From today's Australian]

The Howard Government has known for years that Australia's wheat exporter, AWB, was ordered by the UN to reduce the inflated prices on its wheat contracts by 10 per cent.

The UN told AWB to cut $28 million from two contracts worth $300 million in July 2003 because it correctly assumed the extra money was a kickback for the benefit of Saddam Hussein's regime.

AWB told the Howard Government, via the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's Iraq taskforce, that it had agreed to the price reduction, without saying the money was a bribe.

The taskforce -- which met daily, and reported directly to John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer -- had, by then, been warned that Saddam had ordered his suppliers under the oil-for-food program to include a 10 per cent kickback for his benefit

"There's a guarantee ... that this sort of corruption won't ever happen again with Saddam Hussein's regime, because the regime simply doesn't exist," said Mr Downer on Sunday. Not that it didn't happen, wasn't happenning anywhere else, but that it couldn't happen amid that same set of circumstances because the situation had changed.

This is closer to an admission than anything that Mr D has said so far.