The NEXT coming Oz election thread!

Yep, $300 million is not to be sneezed at! It's a huge, embarrassing scandal.

Betcha JH is madly trying to come up with something terribly diversionary ... like involvement in a fresh war, or something ......

Oz political cartoonists are in great form today!:

Here's the one that didn't work earlier ... Any predictions of Malcom's likely portfolio? He's hot!

Should've posted this yesterday - Australia Day. John Howard just reshuffled his cabinet. Not much is different from the last one, though ... :

And today's Leunig :

Ah, I could almost feel sorry, for Peter. Waiting, waiting, waiting ...... :

Shared values cement of our nation/John Howard:

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/shared-values-the-cement-of-our-nation/2006/01/25/1138066857391.html

& AGE readers respond to Howard's call for Australians to celebrate their tradional, white heritage. This is but two of many letters to the editor on the subject :

Australia seen through a white blindfold

SO DRUNK on power and so out of touch with reality is John Howard that he believes that simply by saying something it becomes true. Without conducting any research on the matter, he believes he can tell trained historians what really happened in our national past and how they should be narrating it to students today. Howard's hubris puts Paul Keating to shame.

The irony is that Howard's white blindfold version of history evinces the "postmodern relativism" he rebukes. Ignoring the mass of historical fact, he thinks anything he says is true, no matter how unfounded. His new political correctness would simply impose his preferred version of Australian history on schoolchildren.

And in the ultimate sign of his postmodern relativism, Howard tells us that the anti-democratic, medieval anachronism of monarchy is still relevant in the 21st century - at the same time as innocent lives are lost in Iraq for the prize of a democratic republic!

Howard represents the worst in Australia: an unwillingness to face the truth of our past and a refusal to make a reasoned, fact-based argument. The result is an ideologically driven, willfully distorted view of our national identity.

Richard Devetak,
Fairfield, Qld

The 2006 version

IN 1788, the highly trained British Peace Corps arrived in the Great Southern Land to the acclaim of the grateful locals, who held corroborees in their honour. Soon the newcomers were dispensing their wisdom and largesse, and in exchange for various high-tech implements and precious beads the indigenes willingly handed over their lands. Benevolent settlers - called squatters because of their toileting habits - proceeded to landscape the terrain according to strict environmental principles. Vast mineral deposits were found and philanthropic entrepreneurs engaged in equally sensitive modes of extraction.

These community-minded leaders of industry forged the nation with the occasional help of others called "battlers" or "workers", some of whom gave way to envy and formed seditious bands called unions wanting more than their fair share. Some of them even formed a reprehensible political party that dared to oppose the rights of the truly righteous ones whom everyone knew were destined to rule.

Even before we became a nation, the Mother Country presented us with the glorious opportunity to be blown to bits in the name of the Crown. We stormed the beaches of Turkey, even though the ungrateful inhabitants rudely fought back. But never mind; we won in the end - and kept on winning wars with our great and caring friends in the US (we really did win in Vietnam, despite what they say).

Today, some people don't like us at all - because they just don't - and they keep trying to blow us up again. So we went to war with our mates again, this time in Iraq. And now the Yanks like us so much that they have agreed to a Free-for-all American Trade Agreement to help us get more of their money - and even invited our Prime Minister to the President's ranch.

Peter McCarthy,
Mentone

~

Go Kevin Rudd! He might be a wee bit obsessive, but he's really onto something important here.(& makingthings pretty hot for JH in the process! ..)!:

PM sought Iraq details from AWB
Caroline Overington
January 30, 2006/the Australian

JOHN Howard and Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile asked AWB to keep them fully informed of the wheat exporter's trade with Iraq at the same time as the company was paying millions of dollars in bribes to Saddam Hussein.

The Government insists it did not know Australia's monopoly wheat exporter was paying kickbacks to the Iraqi government.

But letters to be tendered to the oil-for-food inquiry this week provide the strongest evidence yet that the Prime Minister and Mr Vaile asked for details of AWB's dealings with the Iraqi regime.

The letters, including one from Mr Howard to AWB chief executive Andrew Lindberg, have reignited calls for the Government to expand the Cole inquiry's ability to examine Canberra's role in the wheat scandal. ... <cont>

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17978323%255E601,00.html

Last Update: Monday, January 30, 2006. 1:06pm (AEDT)

Broaden AWB inquiry, Beazley urges

The Federal Opposition has stepped up its calls for a broader inquiry into the Iraqi wheat scam after the release of a letter from Prime Minister John Howard to AWB.

Mr Howard has denied having any knowledge of suggestions that bribes were being paid to the Iraqi regime.

The Federal Opposition wants the Prime Minister to expand the terms of reference of the Cole inquiry investigating the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal and the role of AWB in paying kickbacks.

Speaking at a policy launch in Brisbane today, Federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said the incident was a national disgrace and a massive cover-up. ... <cont>

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1557923.htm

Why PM must act to broaden Cole probe
By Michael Gordon
February 1, 2006/the AGE

ANALYSIS

THE case for widening the terms of reference of the AWB kickbacks inquiry was always compelling. It is now overwhelming.

The inquiry was set up at the request of the United Nations after AWB was named as one of the worst examples of a company paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime under the UN's discredited oil-for-food program.

It has been asked to make findings only on whether anyone associated with AWB (and two other Australian companies identified in a UN report) broke any federal or state law.

The terms of reference should be extended to include whether any government officials or ministers knew what AWB was doing and, if they were ignorant, why they did not ask some hard questions.

It should not be forgotten that kickbacks paid by AWB, Australia's government-sanctioned monopoly wheat exporter, went to the regime that was considered so evil and such an imminent threat to our interests that the lives of Australian soldiers were risked to remove it.

The latest revelation of lobbying a key (US) Congress committee reflects a pattern of the Howard Government working hard to protect AWB's interests and maintain Australia's lucrative wheat exports to Iraq even while waging war against Saddam.

The Prime Minister insists the Government would have been negligent if it had not done so, stressing that it had no suggestion and no suspicion that bribes were being paid.

As for the allegations in 2003 from the United States that bribes had been paid by AWB to secure contracts, Mr Howard says the accusers were bitter rivals out to secure the Iraqi wheat market for themselves.

This is undoubtedly the case, but it is important to establish how far our officials and their political masters went to reassure themselves that AWB was not breaching the economic sanctions that were imposed in 1990 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Mr Howard has signalled a willingness to broaden the terms if the "very competent man" running the inquiry makes such a request. Terence Cole should respond to this invitation without delay.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/why-pm-must-act-to-broaden-cole-probe/2006/01/31/1138590504264.html

http://www.theage.com.au/media/2006/02/01/1138590541734.html

Oh what a tangled web ... !

Ya do realise the yanks are drivin this.

Could you enlarge on that, dadpad? You're not just talking about wheat sales & which country gets the markets?

they are pissed cause they couldn't get a look in on the contracts.

if they had've got their piec of the action you wouldnt be hearing any thing about it.

never mind the contracts for rebuilding and supply which have gone to bushes mates. and the one way free trade deals negotiated not long ago

I don't understand what you're saying here, dadpad. If you mean the push for the US wheat marketers to get a stronger hold on o/s markets ... well, of course! Nothing at all new there, but how are they implicated in what the Libs/AWB have actually done?

what the wheat board has done is wrong but if it was the boot were on the other foot do you really think American wheat interests wouldnt do their damndest too cover up.

in fact its probably already happened sevearl times we just cant proove it or we are not game to.

Our posts crossed dadpad. Yeah, I'm aware of the ongoing rivalry for wheat contracts. But what concerns me most is the Oz government/AWB ripping off the UN oil for food money. The dishonesty to the Australian people. $300 million to Saddam when Australian troops were being sent to take part in the Iraq invasion. The "wheat wars" are secondary to that, to me. Anyway, as if the US wheat growers would feel any reason to honour Australian wheat contracts in Iraq, just because we were part of the coalition of the willing? It's all about profit. Cut throat. That appears to over-ride all else.

ok back up a bit the Yanks are pushing the inquiry, why?
not cause they are concerned about the kickbacks and where the money came from thats standard practice for them. They are pushing the inquiry because when these contracts were up for negotiation they wern't given a look in, and they hope to gain a commercial advantage this time around.

ms olga we have already forgiven 500 mill in wheat debt to iraq there are plenty of other caseswhere australia has had to forgive foriegn debt (russia?) at the behest of the UN (argentina?)

Do you seriously think the Yanks wouldnt/arn't acting in a similar manner.