Ross Lightfoot (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to add some mitigation and rebuttal of the contribution made by Senator O’Brien today. I do not want to purposely go into those realms where there may be some conflict between the Cole royal commission—the inquiry that has been going on for some weeks now—and those findings that may or may not be in the interests of the Australian Wheat Board. The Australian Wheat Board is a company that is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and a lot of farmers have shares in the Australian Wheat Board. I do not have any shares in the Australian Wheat Board, incidentally. I do have shares in many other companies. When the Australian Wheat Board is dragged into this chamber with the privilege of parliament, which the Australian Wheat Board does not have, it damages the farmers. I would far prefer to wait—in fact, I will—for the decision to come down from Commissioner Cole, hopefully in a few weeks time.

But Labor argues that the government should have been alerted by the wheat prices that there was something wrong. When the Australian dollar falls, there is more return to our farmers because wheat prices are set in US dollars. When there is a bad season in the major wheat-growing countries of Europe and in Canada, the United States and Argentina—and there often is—wheat prices rise as a result. When there is a bad season in Australia with the droughts, wheat prices rise. To say that wheat prices rose and the government should have been alerted that something was wrong is to say clearly and unambiguously that you do not understand the world system.

I know there is a lack of business acumen on the other side, because most of the senators on the other side are drawn from the trade union movement. They do appalling damage to farmers, to small businesses, to small towns, to people who make a living out of the bush, and to Western Australians in particular—because in Western Australia we grow half of the nation’s wheat crop, notwithstanding that we have slightly less than 10 per cent of the nation’s population. Already the United States, the biggest exporters of wheat—subsidised wheat, I might say—are saying that they are not going to allow Australia to export wheat until this inquiry is finished or if an adverse finding is found. We do not know whether or not an adverse finding is going to be reached by the royal commission.

The Wheat Export Authority set up an investigation into the Australian Wheat Board and investigated 17 major overseas contracts without finding anything wrong or untoward. The Wheat Export Authority has provided all the relevant papers to the Cole royal commission. I do not suppose that all of those have yet come out, but when they do, and I hope they do, they will certainly be a mitigating factor for the Australian Wheat Board.

I have noted that wheat prices vary considerably from week to week. Between November 1994 and December 1995, when Labor was in government, Australian Wheat Board contracts to Iraq increased by $83 a tonne, or 33½ per cent. This was during Saddam Hussein’s regime, a regime that this government assisted in removing—one of the most heinous regimes in the Middle East, and there have been a few of them. Did the Labor Party say then that there was anything wrong with their own government for exporting to Iraq—to Saddam Hussein’s regime? We are not exporting now to that regime. That is a regime that we helped to remove.

My main point of concern is: I will wait for the Cole royal commission findings to come out, and I do not think there is going to be anything wrong. I hope that the people on the other side will apologise to Australian farmers for the damage they have done. I hope they will apologise to the shareholders of the Australian Wheat Board for the loss of equity in that listed Australian company on the Australian Stock Exchange. I hope that they will have the sensibility on that side, if there is some sensibility—and there are some people over there who are very decent people—to say that they were wrong and to repair the damage. (Time expired)