History > 2006 > Australia

 

Koalas, kangaroos burned up

in massive Australian fires

December 18, 2006
Times Online
By Sam Knight and agencies

Tens of thousands of koalas, kangaroos and other unique Australian animals been burned to death in wildfires, leaving "Pompeii-like" remains in the Outback, wildlife officials said today.

Bushfires burning across the southern states of Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales have reached such speeds and intensities that animals are dying before the flames even reach them, said Pat O'Brien, president of Australia's Wildlife Protection Association.

"The fires are so devastating and moving so quickly that animals just don’t have a chance to get out of the way," he said. "Because of the heat and the fireballs that are happening the animals are just bursting into flames and just being killed even before the fire gets to them because its so hot."

Koalas and possums are especially at risk because they instinctively take refuge in trees, while kangaroos and rare, flying squirrels, known as gliders, are also vulnerable. Frogs, birds and snakes are thought to have died in the greatest numbers.

Bushfires started by arson and lightning strikes have been burning for a month already in the dry Australian summer. In Victoria alone more than 4,000 firefighters are trying to control blazes that have scorched more than 5,000 square kilometres of the Outback, an area more than twice the size of Luxembourg. Reinforcements have been called in from New Zealand.

Mr O'Brien fears that the scale of some of the fires means that entire habitats might have been destroyed, leading to the extinction of some local species, while Sandy Fernee, a spokeswoman for Wildlife Victoria, said volunteers were coming across "Pompeii-like" landscapes.

"It’s very grim. A lot of what we come across are animals we can’t even recognise. It’s just a pile of ashes," she said. "It’s rare that we find something we can help."

"I think we’ve already lost tens of thousands of animals when you consider how widespread the fires are," she added.

Eucalyptus trees have added an explosive element to the bushfires, officials said, observing that the sap in the trees heats up and erupts into flames, spreading the danger. "As soon as they get hot, the eucalypt oil catches on fire and then it just goes like a steam train," Hugh Wirth, president of Victoria’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, told Reuters.

Mr Wirth said wildlife rescuers were finding very few survivors in the Victorian fires. "Surviving wildlife usually comes out of hiding within three to four days of a fire going through the area and unfortunately we’re not getting any reports of any survivors so far," he said, adding that those animals that do survive face a risk of starvation in the blackened land.

    Koalas, kangaroos burned up in massive Australian fires, Ts, 18.12.2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2510668,00.html

Outback cracks under assault of the Big Dry

Five years of drought have left Australian land parched and towns on the verge of economic ruin

Sunday December 10, 2006
The Observer
Phil Mercer in Sydney

A farmer moves his sheep in search of food in drought-stricken New South Wales, Australia. Photograph: David Gray/Reuters

Drought has plunged one of Australia's most famous outback towns to the brink of social and economic collapse. Bourke - heralded as the 'Real Gateway to the Outback' - faces oblivion.
Five years of drought has left Bourke facing its worst crisis. Little wonder Australians are calling this prolonged barren spell the 'Big Dry'. The earth in this isolated corner of New South Wales, 500 miles north-west of Sydney, crunches underfoot. Every step stirs a tiny swirl of fine dust.

The land is slowly dying of thirst. Some farms are the size of a small country, yet still they can't produce enough grazing for their livestock. Farmer Ben Mannix is determined to stay until the drought passes, but life is a struggle. 'You fight it,' he said. 'You work through and you pick up your pieces and on you go because breaking down or giving up isn't going to achieve anything.'

The ground is cracked. Without decent rain, it's been at the mercy of temperatures that have exceeded 50C.

Even in less extreme times the heat is oppressive. A bone-dry wind dries the back of your throat. A squadron of flies that won't take no for an answer mounts another sortie towards unprotected eyes, mouths and ears. This is the last town before the vast nothingness of the deep interior. There are smaller townships further inland on unsealed tracks but this is where pubs, post offices and newsagents stop.

In the wide, sleepy main street in Bourke, no one seems in much of a hurry - it's too hot. A dozen shops are doing their best to stay afloat, but when the farming industry is in pain, the whole town suffers.

Some shopfronts are boarded up. The population of this hardy community is about 3,500 and declining. Those leaving are unlikely to return. Among the playtime squeals and basketball games at the primary school there is a real sense of despondency.

'The adults are saying that they might have to evacuate next March,' said Emily, 11. 'In a few years the town will be dead and all the shops will go bankrupt.'

As the sun beats down on the playground, children struggle to remember the last time they saw a downpour. For half their lives they've known drought.

Twelve-year-old Adam said his friends would dance all night in the rain when the heavens did finally open, but he was not optimistic: 'If we don't get rain soon it's going to be pretty hard 'cos my dad's in the water industry selling irrigation and we might have to move to where there's more rain.'

A government-sponsored report says Bourke is on the brink of collapse, its economy in reverse. Since 2001 it has shrunk by 21 per cent. Crime is up, so is unemployment. There has been an increase in alcohol and drug abuse. The town's Aborigines are feeling the pinch more than most. Many rely on casual and seasonal work on the farms. Bourke prides itself on surviving - and succeeding - in inhospitable conditions. Those who want to stay do so for good reason. There is money to be made.

The locals say the land here is some of Australia's most fertile and that in good times you can grow anything, from cotton to citrus fruit. But the Darling River that the region has relied on has stopped flowing and forecasters don't expect drought-breaking rains to come until the middle of next year. 'We're in the worst drought in a hundred years,' said Peter Costello, the government Treasurer. 'We are facing a recession, possibly depression, in rural production.'

· Smoke from bushfires burning hundreds of miles away blanketed Australia's second largest city, Melbourne, yesterday, delaying flights. Water-bombing aircraft intended to help contain some of the 24 bushfires burning out of control in the state of Victoria were grounded because of the smoke. The bushfires, most sparked by lightning strikes, have blackened 450,000 acres of land.

    Outback cracks under assault of the Big Dry, O, 10.12.2006, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1968543,00.html

Storm after cleric calls unveiled women 'meat'

October 27, 2006
The Times
From Bernard Lagan in Sydney

THE most senior Muslim cleric in Australia was fighting to keep his position yesterday after likening women who did not wear veils to uncovered meat that attracted predators.

“If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it . . . whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem,” said Sheikh Taj Din al-Hilali, the spiritual leader of Sydney’s large Middle Eastern Muslim community.

In his Ramadan sermon to 500 worshippers in Sydney last month, Sheikh al-Hilali alluded to an infamous series of gang rapes in Sydney in which a group of young Lebanese men preyed upon Australian-born women. The leader of the men received a 55-year jail term, later reduced on appeal.

Sheikh al-Hilali said that there were women who “sway suggestively”, wore make-up and dressed immodestly “and then you get a judge without mercy and (he) gives you 55 years”. He continued: “If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.” His remarks, revealed yesterday, caused a backlash, and the Sheikh was said to be so shocked at his condemnation that he spent yesterday in bed, breathing with the aid of oxygen.

John Howard, the Prime Minister, who is normally very cautious in reacting to matters of religious belief, savaged Sheikh al-Hilali, while prominent members of the Muslim community said they believed that he should be sidelined. He said that the Sheikh’s remarks were reprehensible. “They are quite out of touch with the contemporary values of Australia. The idea that women are to blame for rapes is preposterous,” Mr Howard said.

Pru Goward, the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, said that Sheikh al-Hilali should be removed. “I think it’s time he left,” she said, adding that the Sheikh’s remarks were “an incitement to a crime. Young Muslim men who now rape women can now . . . quote this man, their leader, in court.”

The board of the Lakemba Mosque said early today that it would not censure Sheikh al-Hilali, but that he would not give sermons for three months.

Sheikh al-Hilali told The Australian that he had meant to refer to prostitutes as meat, even though there was no mention of prostitutes on the tape. He said that the message he had intended to convey was: “A woman who shows herself off, she is to blame, but a man should be able to control himself.”

Late yesterday the Sheikh apologised to women offended by his remarks. “I would like to unequivocally confirm that the presentation related to religious teachings on modesty and not to go to extremes in enticements,” his statement said. “This does not condone rape. I condemn rape. Women in our Australian society have the freedom and right to dress as they choose. The duty of man is to avert his glance.”

He is due to meet a senior British Imam, Dr Abduljalil Sajid, in Sydney today. Dr Sajid said that people had attacked Sheikh al-Hilali without any evidence of wrongdoing.

MUSLIM INFLUX


In the 2001 Census there were 281,578 Muslims in Australia — about 1.5 per cent of the population

Of these, 64 per cent were not born in Australia

Approximately 30,000 were born in Lebanon, many of whom arrived during the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war

Of the others, 24,000 were born in Turkey and about 9,000 each in Afghanistan and Pakistan

There are more than 100 mosques, most in Melbourne and Sydney

41 per cent of Muslim women are married by the age of 24. Only 12 per cent of Muslim men are married at that age

Muslims had made visits to Australia long before Europeans, when Indonesians hunted sea slugs in the 17th century

In the 1860s Afghan cameleers ran caravans into central Australia

    Storm after cleric calls unveiled women 'meat', Ts, 27.10.2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2423758,00.html

12.15pm

Sydney beach riots 'fuelled by racial prejudice'

Friday October 20, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Roger Maynard in Sydney


A man tries to hit police with a beer bottle during last year's race riots at Cronulla Beach, Sydney. Photograph: Rob Griffith/AP



Running battles between white Australian gangs and Middle Eastern youths on a Sydney beach last year were fuelled by racial prejudice, alcohol, text messages and the inflammatory remarks of radio shock jocks, a police report has found.


The clashes, which were sparked by an alleged attack on surf lifesavers a week before, raised serious questions about Australia’s multicultural society and undermined the fabric of the country’s strongly held traditions.



Five thousand people were involved in the riot last December on Cronulla beach, which started as a protest to “reclaim the beach” from groups of mainly Lebanese youths who had reportedly intimidated young Australian women bathers and assaulted two volunteer life savers. In scenes reminiscent of an all-out race war, gangs of white youths chased and assaulted anyone of vaguely Middle Eastern appearance, and fought police trying desperately to bring the situation under control.

The mob violence was followed the next day by retaliatory attacks by gangs of Middle Eastern youths who went on the rampage in the beachside suburb, smashing cars and beating up innocent passers-by.



Now an extensive inquiry into the racially motivated violence has revealed a variety of causes, along with key weaknesses in the way police handled the trouble.



The report, by a retired New South Wales assistant police commissioner, Norm Hazzard, accuses the police of misjudging the racial tension that preceded the riots and of failing to have an adequate command structure in place to deal with the trouble.



Risk assessment on the day was “inadequate and flawed” as junior officers risked their lives to protect bystanders and suppress the attacks, the inquiry found. The level of violence was “unprecedented in Australia”, the report says.



In a reference to similar riots in France last year, it adds: “These riots carried with them a clear message to the Australian community that our multicultural society has now entered a phase of development, similar to what has manifested itself overseas.”



In addition to racial prejudice, the police investigation put much of the blame for the mob violence on drunkenness, text messaging and local media outlets, which had whipped up public sentiment. In the lead-up to the riot, 270,000 text messages calling for a showdown on the beach were sent, urging young Australians to go “wog bashing”.



Others sent by Lebanese youths urged their fellow countrymen to “bring ur guns and knives and let’s show them how we do it”.



Inflaming an already highly volatile atmosphere, some of Sydney’s radio shock jocks weighed in, wrongly accusing the Lebanese of kicking the surf lifesavers unconscious. Likening the lifesavers to “heroes and Anzacs”, the broadcasters branded men of Middle Eastern appearance as “vicious and cowardly mongrels who hunt in packs”, the report claimed.



An academic analysis included in the report said that while the media might not have caused the violence, it may have influenced public perceptions and fed social behaviours.



Mr Hazzard said there were clearly two aspects to the conflict: “There is evidence of racism and bias amongst the Cronulla community, but there is also evidence across Sydney of a significant level of violent criminality being committed by an element of the Middle Eastern community.”



Commenting on the findings, the New South Wales deputy police commissioner, Andrew Scipione, defended the role of his men during the riots, insisting they had done a good job under trying circumstances.

    Sydney beach riots 'fuelled by racial prejudice', G, 20.10.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1927541,00.html

Australian Farmers Commit Suicide as Hope Evaporates

October 19, 2006
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:44 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SYDNEY (Reuters) - One Australian farmer commits suicide every four days, defeated by the country's worst drought in 100 years which has left them with dust-bowl paddocks and a mountain of debt, says a national mental health body.

As drought rolls into a sixth year, stoic farmers are reduced to tears under the stress of trying to produce a crop and hold onto land sometimes farmed by the same family for generations.

``One male farmer every four days is committing suicide,'' Jeff Kennett, chairman of beyondblue, said on Thursday.

``My fear is that when under prolonged stress and when they see their assets totally denuded of value, that we will see an increase (in suicides),'' Kennett told local radio.

The rate among male farmers and farm workers is more than twice the national average, the NSW Farmers Association says.

The figure is all the more worrying because only about 10 percent of Australia's 20 million population live in rural areas and the number has been declining for years as the rural economy struggles. The vast majority of Australians live in cities.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics suicide report says 2,098 Australians took their lives in 2004.

Crop losses stretch across the country, 92 percent of economically dominant New South Wales state is in drought, and farmers have started off-loading stock before the hot, dry summer when they would be forced to buy feed and water.

With an El Nino weather pattern, which will bring more dry weather and soaring temperatures, now on the horizon and little prospect of rain until early in 2007, rural hope is evaporating like water in Australia's mud-cracked dams and rivers.

Farmers' wives calling talk-back radio in the city describe their husbands' depression at trudging out into their dry paddocks, day after day, knowing they are losing money.

Prime Minister John Howard has announced a $350 million (US$263 million) aid package, but Kennett says farmers also need help coping with the depression and stress of years of drought.

BREAKING INTO TEARS

A team of 60 psychologists should be sent out for the next six months ``to help address the anxiety, stress, depression being faced by many farmers,'' particularly men, said Kennett.

Australia's farmers are typically tough, resilient and resourceful -- qualities that have enabled generations of country families to tough it out in hard times of drought and bushfires.

But these same qualities also prevent many from seeking help, particularly for depression, because they are worried that asking for help could be seen as weak or shameful.

Rural counselor Liz Tomlinson-Reynolds said she receives up to 12 calls a day from depressed farmers.

``They're actually breaking into tears and you know, obviously, terribly, terribly distressed and that's over the phone. The ones that I see personally are no more stoic,'' Tomlinson-Reynolds told radio from northwest New South Wales.

More than 300,000 rural Australians experience depression each year, says beyondblue, but only a small number seek help.

A beyondblue study found several factors contributed to rural stress, such as isolation, drought-induced financial difficulties, stock loss, pressure of decision-making and the constant mental and physical demands of farming.

But rural communities are the least well-equipped to deal with mental health problems, with limited access to counseling, said the New South Wales Farmers Association.

``There are other facets of severe drought that are unable to be measured in production or dollar terms,'' the association said in a discussion paper on the drought released on Thursday.

``These are the social ramifications testing not only the farmers but all people on the frontline of drought,'' it said.

``Depression, isolation, alcohol abuse, family breakdown and suicide rates in regional and farming communities are all exacerbated in time of drought.''

    Australian Farmers Commit Suicide as Hope Evaporates, NYT, 19.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-australia-drought-suicide.html

Call to Enrich Uranium in Australia Stirs Debate

August 2, 2006
The New York Times
By RAYMOND BONNER

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Aug. 1 — At a time when the United States wants to reduce the amount of nuclear material washing around the world, one of Washington’s major allies, Australia, is on the verge of expanding its production and export of uranium.

The Australian prime minister, John Howard, one of President Bush’s staunchest allies, says the country should also begin enriching uranium, a move directly counter to Mr. Bush’s call for the uranium enrichment club to be limited to the handful of countries that already have the capacity.

Mr. Howard, leader of the center-right Liberal Party, says he does not see his country as confronting Washington, but as pursuing its best economic interests.

For Australia not to reap greater income from its vast uranium deposits would be akin to Saudi Arabia not exploiting its oil, Mr. Howard said in a major speech recently on the country’s energy policy.

He said he had not informed Mr. Bush of his nuclear policies. “I don’t need to talk to the U.S. president every day about everything that pops up,” said Mr. Howard, who has been criticized by some Australians for talking — and listening — to Mr. Bush too often. “I mean, he’s running his own country, and I’m prime minister of Australia.”

The Bush administration has remained silent about Mr. Howard’s proposals. “We’ve made no official statement on the issue,” a press aide at the American Embassy in Canberra said Tuesday in response to a request for a comment.

At home, Mr. Howard’s nuclear proposals have set off a spirited debate, marked by a dramatic U-turn on uranium mining by the leader of the opposition liberal Labor Party.

For his part, Mr. Howard says Australia has the largest reserves of uranium in the world, and it does not make good economic sense not to enrich uranium. Such a policy is reminiscent of what he called “one of the great historical anomalies of the Australian economy.”

A few decades ago, sheep were the backbone of the Australian economy, and most of their wool was exported.

“We had the best wool in the world and we sent it overseas to be processed and we bought it back at a much higher price,” Mr. Howard said. “That always struck people as rather odd. I would be keen to avoid that again.”

In the 1940’s, Australia undertook serious uranium exploration at the request of the United States, which needed it for its embryonic nuclear weapons program. Later, the country became a leader in the movement to halt nuclear proliferation, and in the 1970’s, antinuclear demonstrations drew tens of thousands to the streets in Sydney.

In 1983, the liberal-left Labor Party came to power, and it quickly adopted what became known as a “no new mines” policy. There were three uranium mines in the country at the time, so it also became known as the “three mines only” policy, and it is still in effect.

But perhaps not for much longer.

In the address, on July 17, Mr. Howard declared that Australia could become an “energy superpower.” It is already the world’s largest exporter of coal, and within a few years is expected to become the second largest supplier of liquefied natural gas, he said.

Then he turned to uranium.

“With close to 40 percent of the world’s known low-cost uranium deposits, for Australia to bury its head in the sand on nuclear energy is akin to Saudi Arabia turning her back on global oil developments,” Mr. Howard said.

Within the opposition Labor Party, there is fierce division over what the country’s nuclear policy should be.

A week after Mr. Howard presented his vision, the Labor Party leader, Kim Beazley, laid out his energy policy. In a speech to the Sydney Institute, a conservative research organization, Mr. Beazley said it was time for the Labor Party to drop its “no new mines” policy.

Mr. Beazley said it was in the national interest to mine more uranium, especially since China was likely to double its demand for Australian uranium in the next 15 years.

Mr. Beazley said he knew his decision would not be popular in his own party, and he was right.

“I will vigorously oppose any watering down of Labor’s uranium policy,” said the party’s environment spokesman, Anthony Albanese. “You can guarantee that uranium mining will lead to nuclear waste. You can’t guarantee that uranium mining won’t lead to nuclear weapons.”

Mr. Beazley was adamant, however, that the Labor Party was still opposed to uranium enrichment.

    Call to Enrich Uranium in Australia Stirs Debate, NYT, 2.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/world/asia/02australia.html

Australian PM to stand for fifth term

Monday July 31, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
David Fickling


Australian prime minister John Howard is to fight a fifth election next year, ending months of speculation that he would face a leadership challenge from his treasurer Peter Costello.

Mr Howard wrote to MPs from his Liberal party today saying that, having "taken a variety of soundings within the parliamentary party", he had decided to stand again.

"My position has been that I would remain leader of the Liberal party for so long as that was the party's wish, and that it was in the party's best interests that I did so," he wrote.

The announcement is the latest blow for Mr Costello in a leadership tussle that has been going on for several years, breaking out into open verbal disputes earlier this month.

In 2000, at one of his lowest political ebbs since he won his first election in 1996, Mr Howard suggested that he would consider his retirement when he reached his 64th birthday.

But when he turned 64 three years later there was no word of retirement, and despite feverish speculation that he would step down after his victory in the 2004 federal elections, he has remained in power.

There was open conflict earlier this month when Mr Costello and former defence minister Ian McLachlan claimed that a deal had been struck with Mr Howard in December 1994, just six months after the Granita meeting that stands behind the similar leadership feud between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Mr Costello said that two years before his first election victory in 1996 Mr Howard had promised to hand over to him before fighting a third election. "I did not seek that undertaking. He volunteered it and I took him at his word. Obviously that did not happen," he said.

Mr Howard has denied the claims, saying that the meeting was one of many discussions and "did not involve a conclusion of a deal".

Mr Costello is widely felt to be out of favour with Mr Howard as a leadership successor. His dry style and liberal social policies are a sharp contrast to Mr Howard and his right-wing allies within the Australian government.

In his letter today, Mr Howard tried to head off any disunity within the party by putting Mr Costello on his ticket for next year's election.

"A crucial element will be Peter Costello's contribution, not only as deputy leader but also as treasurer, where his work over the past decade has been so important to our success," he wrote.

Mr Howard has had Australia's second-longest term as prime minister, passing the milestone of 10 years in office earlier this year. He is unlikely to match the record of his political hero Robert Menzies, who ruled the country for 18 years in two terms spanning the 1930s and 1960s.

    Australian PM to stand for fifth term, G, 31.7.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1834069,00.html

Australian PM Finally Wins Black Support

July 25, 2006
By REUTERS
Filed at 3:16 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Prime Minister John Howard has been demonized by Aborigines for a decade, but on Tuesday one of Australia's most influential black leaders said Howard could be the person that ends generations of black squalor.

After years of racial tensions over Howard's tough practical approach to improving aboriginal living standards, prominent black leader Mick Dodson said Howard had an historic opportunity to do what no other prime minister has achieved.

``You may be the best-placed prime minister in Australia's history to do what needs to be done for the sake of my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren and yours,'' Dodson told a racial reconciliation conference in Melbourne.

Australia's 460,000 Aborigines have a life expectancy 17 years lower than the rest of the country's 20 million people, with the majority living in remote outback communities where there is little access to good housing, health or education.

With Howard sitting a short distance away on the same stage, Dodson said Aborigines would put aside differences on spiritual issues to work with Howard to improve the lives of Aborigines.

``I'm here today to tell the prime minister that I am ready to walk alongside him in taking the next steps toward reconciliation,'' said the long-time Howard critic.

Six years ago, Howard angered black leaders at a similar conference when he refused to apologize for the wrongs of white settlers and past government assimilation policies of removing aboriginal children from families to be raised in white homes.

On Tuesday, Howard told the conference his government and black leaders must focus on programs to improve opportunities, rather than symbolic debates, such as land rights and sovereignty over Australia before European settlers arrived in 1788.

``I do not think that 30 years of obsession with symbolism has advanced the cause of aboriginal people,'' Howard said.

``Reconciliation will come not as a result of eloquent rhetoric or high-level communiques. It will come through indigenous and other Australians taking millions of small steps in the right direction.''

But Howard said it would still take generations to improve the living standards of Aborigines.

Howard, in his fourth consecutive term in office, now controls both houses of parliament and can implement his indigenous policies unopposed. Under a tough-love policy of shared-responsibility, remote black communities sign up to social contracts in return for government services.

In one outback program, children must attend school to be allowed to use the community swimming pool, while another program made government funding conditional on guarantees that children would wash more regularly.

The pool-for-school deal had a marked impact on truancy levels, while the wash-for-fuel deal helped cut down on the incidence of preventable eye disease in a remote community. The government has signed more than 150 similar agreements.

Howard's approach to indigenous problems has been slowly winning support with black leaders, with many now acknowledging Aborigines must take responsibility for their plight.

``As an aboriginal man, I have a particular responsibility to take action. I need to do more, my brothers and sisters across the country need to do more,'' said Dodson.

Aborigines suffer higher rates of alcohol and substance abuse, unemployment and imprisonment than other Australians.

``Until our children grow up with the same chances as other Australian kids, the same life expectancy, the same opportunities, we all need to do more,'' said Dodson.

    Australian PM Finally Wins Black Support, NYT, 25.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-australia-aborigines.html

Leader

The ignorance of Mr Howard

Saturday April 15, 2006
The Guardian


There was no more steadfast ally of George Bush and Tony Blair in the invasion of Iraq than John Howard, the prime minister of Australia. Mr Blair, in particular, was full of praise for his "strength and leadership" and his willingness to "get stuck in". Just a month before the war began, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, informed Mr Howard that Britain was "in exactly the same position as the Australian government in respect to Iraq".

Not quite, we hope. Mr Howard has now become the first Australian prime minister in 23 years to be called to account before a judicial commission after it emerged that a company exporting wheat to Iraq under the UN's oil-for-food programme had been paying huge kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime right up to the start of the invasion. It is by no means inconceivable that some of this money paid for weapons that were then used to fight Australian troops.

The company, AWB (formerly known as the Australian Wheat Board), has exclusive marketing rights for bulk wheat exports from Australia. It was Iraq's largest single supplier under the oil-for-food programme and also, it now emerges, Saddam's largest supplier of bribes - to the tune of £125m.

Although a series of 21 diplomatic cables dating back almost three years before the war had warned the Australian government that AWB was suspected of paying bribes, Mr Howard denies that he received or read any of them. Even though he made a speech just a week before the war accusing Saddam Hussein of cynically exploiting the oil-for-food programme in order to buy weapons, it apparently never occurred to him that AWB might be involved. "I always believed the best of that company," he told the judicial commission. Mr Howard's foreign minister and his trade minister have also succumbed to ignorance and/or amnesia as far as the warning cables are concerned. Foreign minister Alexander Downer told the commission that had "no specific recollection" of the crucial messages, and that he gets so many cables he tends not to read them all unless "I'm stuck on a plane and I've run out of reading material".

Not surprisingly, this is stretching the tolerance of voters and has caused a sharp dip for Mr Howard in the opinion polls. It may not bring down his government, but it does make his principled stand against Saddam's dictatorship look distinctly grubby and will do little for the morale of Australian troops still risking their lives in Iraq.

    The ignorance of Mr Howard, G, 15.4.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1754472,00.html

1.45pm

Australian PM to face bribe inquiry

Wednesday April 12, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
David Fickling

The Australian prime minister, John Howard, is to appear before an inquiry into claims that a former government agency bribed Saddam Hussein's government to assist wheat exports to Iraq.

Mr Howard will appear before the Cole inquiry tomorrow morning, following appearances by his foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer, and trade minister, Mark Vaile, in recent days.

The inquiry is examining whether the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) paid A$300m (£125m) in kickbacks to Saddam's government between 1997 and 2003.

AWB, which manages Australia's wheat exports, is now a private company but was a government agency until 1999.

"The Cole commission of inquiry has requested that I appear at its hearings," Mr Howard said in a statement. "As I have said previously, I am happy to do so."

Claims that Canberra knew of bribes being paid to Saddam's government could prove highly damaging to the government.

Australia was one of Washington's key allies in the 2003 Iraq war and an active supporter of UN sanctions against the country.

Wheat exports were permitted under the sanctions regime, but any bribes would have violated the agreement.

Mr Downer and Mr Vaile spent several hours in the witness box this week as they were questioned about 21 diplomatic cables between 2000 and 2004, tipping the Australian government off to the alleged bribes.

The ministers said they had no memory of seeing the cables, many of which were sent by Australia's intelligence services. Mr Downer said that he only ever had time to read summaries of the cables "when I'm stuck on a plane".

The inquiry was initially set up to look at the conduct of AWB officials and there have been a string of high-level resignations from the company since hearings started in January.

But increasingly the focus of the investigation has turned on how much the Australian government knew about the alleged corruption. Earlier in the inquiry, Tim Snowball, a senior executive in AWB's New York office, said that he had discussed the bribery with an official from Australia's department of foreign affairs and trade (DFAT), Bronte Moules.

During the March 2001 meeting Ms Moules had said the UN sanctions committee was turning a blind eye to low-level bribery, he testified.

Last month the inquiry heard how DFAT had dismissed a cable sent to Canberra by Ms Moules in 2000, which passed on Canadian fears that an exports-for-bribes scheme was in place.

Australia's current ambassador to Egypt Robert Bowker, who was then working in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that received the cable, dismissed it after deciding that AWB was unlikely to be involved.

Mr Howard has already submitted confidential written testimony to the inquiry, and he will be cross-examined on that statement tomorrow.

He will be Australia's first prime minister to appear before such an investigation since 1983, when Bob Hawke was called before an inquiry into KGB activity in Australia.

The existence of the system of kickbacks was first alleged in the report of the UN's Volcker inquiry into the oil-for-food scandal when it was published last October.

The payoffs are alleged to have been channelled via Alia, an Australian-owned trucking company based in Jordan.

Iraqi dock officials are claimed to have refused to unload wheat from Australian ships without the paying of bribes.

The opposition Labor party has demanded that the inquiry be extended to rule on the competence of the government to investigate AWB.

At present the terms of reference only relate to finding out how much the government knew about the alleged sanctions-busting.

    Australian PM to face bribe inquiry, G, 12.4.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1752425,00.html

Deputy Premier of Australia Is Questioned on Kickbacks

April 11, 2006
The New York Times
By RAYMOND BONNER

SYDNEY, Australia, Tuesday, April 11 — The high-profile hearings into accusations that an Australian wheat company, AWB Ltd., paid $200 million in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's government under the United Nations oil-for-food program became even more dramatic on Monday with the appearance of the deputy prime minister, Mark Vaile.

Mr. Vaile, who is also minister of trade, was asked whether he knew about the kickbacks and about his harsh rejection three years ago of public suggestions by American wheat growers that AWB was paying kickbacks. He responded repeatedly to questions with the answer, "I don't recollect."

Adding to the tension, Prime Minister John Howard announced that he had been asked to give a written statement to the commission. He is the first Australian leader since 1984 to have been asked to give testimony to a judicial inquiry.

"I do not believe, on the information known to me, that any of my ministers have been guilty of dereliction of duty and I am very, very happy to provide a statement and, if asked, to appear," Mr. Howard said Monday morning.

The lawyers involved in the case will review Mr. Howard's statement to decide whether to request that he be called as a witness. The decision will rest with Terence Cole, chief of the investigating commission.

The question underlying the appearance of the high-level government officials is whether government officials knew AWB Ltd. was paying kickbacks to Iraq. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer began testimony at noon on Tuesday.

Mr. Downer rejected a report from the Coalition Provisional Authority in June 2003, in which an American army captain, Blake Puckett, said "every contract" under the oil for food program had included a kickback to the Iraqi government. That was just the report by "a junior officer," Mr. Downer said in dismissing it.

But Mr. Cole does not have the authority to investigate directly any government role in the kickback scheme. Under the mandate Mr. Howard gave the commission in December, the commission's focus is on whether AWB violated any laws. If the government was aware that AWB had been paying kickbacks, then the company's culpability, if any, would be greatly diminished.

A series of intelligence reports and cables, which have been introduced into evidence in censored form, suggest that the Australian intelligence agencies were aware that Alia, the Jordanian trucking company that AWB used, was a front for kickbacks to the Iraqi government. Peter Varghese, director general of Australia's intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, also testified Monday. But Mr. Cole sharply limited the questioning.

Three years ago, U.S. Wheat Associates, a trade group representing American wheat growers, in an open letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, suggested that AWB had inflated the price of wheat it had been selling to Iraq, raising the possibility of kickbacks. At the time, Mr. Vaile called the suggestions "slanderous and outrageous."

On Monday, Mr. Vaile said he had issued that denial based on assurances from AWB that it had not paid kickbacks. In response to questions from the commission counsel, John Aguis, he said he had not ordered an independent investigation then or at any time, even as the accusations mounted publicly.

Mr. Vaile also testified Monday that he had no recollection of reading a cable written in June 2003 by an American civil affairs officer assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad saying that "every contract" under the oil-for-food program "included a kickback to the regime of 10 to 19 percent."

The Australian mission in Baghdad reported the cable to its government in a memo that was widely distributed, including to the Trade Ministry.

Mr. Vaile was asked why he had never ordered an independent investigation, even after the United Nations commission that investigated the oil-for-food scandal, led by Paul A. Volcker, issued its report last October. The report said AWB had been the largest payer of kickbacks to the Hussein government.

"Did you cause any inquiries to be made?" Mr. Vaile was asked.

"No," he replied.

    Deputy Premier of Australia Is Questioned on Kickbacks, NYT, 11.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/world/asia/11cnd-australia.html