competitors back end to single desk

Competitors back end to single desk
Steve Lewis, Chief political correspondent
February 21, 2006
LIBERAL Party MPs have snared the financial backing of Australia's biggest grain companies as they step up their campaign to end AWB's monopoly over wheat exports.

In a provocative move, a new Liberal-backed "ginger group", dubbed Friends of Agriculture, will be launched next Monday -- and some MPs hope it will help bring about major changes in the wheat industry.

AWB's biggest rivals, GrainCorp, ABB (formerly the Australian Barley Board) and Western Australia-based Co-operative Bulk Handling, have thrown their financial support behind the launch, which is expected to attract up to 50 Coalition MPs.

"What we are trying to do is get the broad parliamentary community to understand the intricacies of the wheat market," Liberal Party backbencher Wilson Tuckey told The Australian.

The former minister is one of a number of Liberals determined to end AWB's stranglehold over wheat exports.

Mr Tuckey and other Liberals helped snare the financial backing of the three grain companies.

The plan has inflamed tensions with the Nationals, still smarting after Victorian senator Julian McGauran defected to the Liberal Party last month.

The Nationals are determined to fend off attempts to end the single desk, which gives the embattled AWB an effective monopoly over marketing Australian wheat offshore.

NSW Nationals MP Kay Hull said the rural-based party would "fight to the end" to save the single desk. She said she wanted an "absolute categorical guarantee" that the arrangement would remain in place, irrespective of what emerged from the Cole inquiry into AWB kickbacks.

"At the moment, I am not entirely confident by the signals that I hear," she said.

The three grain companies will send their senior executives to brief the parliamentarians on their industry. Clearly, some Liberal MPs hope this new process will assist in their campaign to dismantle the present system.

Mr Tuckey, a long-time critic of the AWB and the Nationals, again criticised the junior Coalition partner.

"They are campaigning for their mates who have dug in at AWB Ltd," he said.

"We have more farmers and wheat growers than the Nationals by a long shot."

But Nationals senator Fiona Nash said wheat growers around Australia wanted to retain the present industry structures.

"I will continue to fight for the best interests of wheat growers and they are telling me they want to keep the single desk," she said.