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dysfunctional silos .....
from our ABC ….
AWB plan 'not a permanent solution'
The US wheat industry has rejected AWB's plan to split the company into two separate businesses.
US Wheat Associates claims the AWB split into a grower-owned operator controlling exports and a commercial agribusiness firm does not get rid of the single desk monopoly targeted by the US.
"We believe that any solution that leaves a monopoly in place in Australia, Canada, wherever it is, no matter how you shuffle the boxes around or shift responsibility from one organisation to another, a monopoly is not a permanent solution," spokesman Steve Mercer said.
Mr Mercer said if the new arrangement leaves in place veto power over private exports with a new organisation or Australia's Wheat Export Authority it is still a monopoly and must be ended.
The Australian Grains Exporters Association is also critical of the split because it will not make the market contestable until next harvest.
AWB will seek the approval of shareholders after its annual general meeting in February.
But association spokesperson Alick Osborne says that is not good enough.
"If this gets up at all, it won't be until the middle of next year which is far too late for growers, particularly those growers in Western Australia, who are trying to make marketing decisions for the wheat they produce this harvest and are not comfortable with the lack of choice being provided to them today," Mr Osborne said.
The nation's peak grain grower body, the Grains Council, says the split is a positive step towards addressing its key concerns and is confident the proposed changes will help rebuild growers' trust.'
- By Gus Leonisky at 30 Nov 2006 - 5:26pm
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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fairplay .....
from Christian Kerr in yesterday’s Crikey …..
Spin this, Commissioner Cole .....
‘As the Government’s three monkeys – the Prime Minister, Alexander Downer and Mark Vaile – attempt to make a virtue of their ignorance over the AWB, perhaps they should look at the Lloyds of London international shipping weekly, Fairplay, and its editorial:
More organisations than ever seem to have been consumed by a snivelling terror of actually being seen to say something. The worst example this week came from the Cole Commission in its condemnation of the Australian Wheat Board: "The conduct of the AWB and its officers was due to a failure in corporate culture." What a glorious mealy-mouthed cavalcade of euphemisms! Put in its strongest terms, AWB fiddled its books in order to make illegal payments to a dictatorship whose leader has since been sentenced to death for mass murder. Describing such behaviour as a "failure of corporate culture" is quite an understatement. There are less delicate ways of describing it, but they were probably scared of being sued.’
authorised by the awstralyan government .....
from GetUp …..
‘Now that the Cole Inquiry has confirmed scores of AWB executives are liable for criminal charges, Government Ministers and Departmental staff have seemingly been let off the hook. The Inquiry may have been hamstrung, but you can still watch 'the first honest government ad' about the AWB.’
Authorised Bribes
more aspirational prosperity .....
from the Sydney morning herald …..
‘The disgraced AWB figure Trevor Flugge paid no tax on almost $1 million he earned from work in Iraq for Australia's government aid agency, after the Federal Government shepherded a tax law through Parliament last year.
The law exempted Mr Flugge and dozens of other Australian aid workers in Iraq from Australian income tax, passing Parliament with bipartisan support just weeks after the Prime Minister, John Howard, announced the Cole inquiry into the AWB scandal last December.
The assistant treasurer at the time, Mal Brough, announced the Government would "restore a tax exemption for certain Australians employed in Iraq".
Mr Brough said then: "These Australians worked or served in Iraq with the reasonable expectation their earnings would be exempt from Australian tax. The majority of their work was related to reconstruction, humanitarian or peacekeeping efforts which the Government supported.’
Tax Free Million For Flugge's Iraq Work
Ah, the magic of John Howard’s “aspirational prosperity” - no double tax becomes no tax at all.
Doubtless we can be as confident that the federal government’s taxation largesse was extended to members of the ADF serving in Iraq, as we can be that Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, is planning to visit the AWB miscreants with the poof sanctions of the Proceeds of Crime Act?
Just gotta love that “aspirational prosperity”.
More aspirationality in the very small top 2 per cent
The report, from the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the UN University, says that the poorer half of the world's population own barely 1% of global wealth
kickbacks setback...
Six former AWB chiefs escape criminal charges over kickbacks
The corporate regulator will now try to revive civil cases against those accused of breaching sanctions against Saddam Hussein, writes Leonie Wood.
Key figures in one of Australia's most notorious business scandals, the AWB kickbacks affair, are set to avoid criminal charges after another backdown by the nation's corporate regulator.
Lawyers for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission revealed yesterday that the criminal aspects of the long-running AWB investigation had been abandoned.
Five former AWB officers, including the former chairman Trevor Flugge, were told this week the regulator would not prepare a criminal brief for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.
see toon at top and other AWB toons everywhere on this site...