Wheat Marketing in Transition

This book describes the Australian government's approach to the "problem of wheat", tracking the life and death of collective wheat marketing and its manifestation in the Australian Wheat Board which was central to wheat marketing there for nearly sixty years.

This detailed account tells the background story of a privatised monopoly whose sharp practices embroiled a national government in scandal and shocked a nation that prides itself on the strength of its institutions. AWB Limited, the former Australian Wheat Board that in the 1990s was sold into the private sector, paid more than $US200m in kickbacks to the pariah regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, exploiting the provisions of the United Nations' Oil for Food program by inflating the price of the wheat it sent there to disguise the pay-offs that secured the contracts. The ensuing uproar threatened the careers of key cabinet ministers in the Howard government and contributed to the rise and subsequent election victory of the Australian Labor Party's Kevin Rudd.

Preface. - 1. Introduction. - 2. Australian Wheat Industry Policy in Context. - 3. The Birth of Collective Wheat Marketing. - 4. From Orderly Marketing to Deregulation 1948-1988. - 5. From Domestic Deregulation to Privatisation. - 6. The Monopoly Wheat Exporter and the Dictator. - 7. The Aftermath of Oil-for-Food and the Death of an Institution. - 8. Lessons and Reflections. - Index.