Australian wheat growers review AWB monopoly veto

Australia's main wheat grower body plans to lobby for the retention of a monopoly system for bulk wheat exports, stripping it from tainted exporter AWB Ltd and handing it instead to a new grower body.
The Grains Council of Australia said there was a political push to change the wheat export system and Australia's 35,000 growers who strongly favour retaining a monopoly on exports had to take control of the process.
"We face a stark choice," Grains Council Chairman Murray Jones told the group's annual conference.
"Industry can either say we want the single desk system to remain and be enhanced, or we can sit back and wait for others to dictate changes that may not be in growers' interests," he said.
AWB is being investigated by an Australian government inquiry after a report by a United Nations panel last year accused it of paying $222 million in kickbacks to the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein through the UN oil-for-food programme.
The inquiry, headed by Supreme Court judge Terence Cole, has publicly released AWB documents that show it was aware it could have breached UN sanctions against the Saddam regime by providing "service fees" and other requested payments.
The scandal has led to calls for reform of the monopoly export system, ranging from complete deregulation to allowing other Australian agricultural groups to join the trade. However, growers support a monopoly export system, believing it provides better prices and more certainty for Australia's A$4 billion ($3 billion) a year wheat export trade.
They want a relatively slow transition from AWB as monopoly exporter, with AWB retaining rights to export most of Australia's bulk wheat through to 2010.
A plan prepared by industry consultant Marshall Place Associates recommended Australia create a grower body modelled on US Wheat Associates, which is in fierce competition with Australia on world markets. The producer-owned company, to be called Australian Wheat Associates, would replace the government's Wheat Export Authority (WEA) as "industry regulator" to administer wheat export licences.
The plan is built on a primary and secondary wheat export licensing system. AWB would remain a primary licence holder for bulk wheat for the 2006/07 to 2008/09 seasons, and be guaranteed 85 percent of all export wheat.