Changing the goal posts? Yes.

The problem is that the other 73% don’t understand AWB Ltd any better than you do. But if they did, most of them would support your “gang of four”.

You should understand that AWB Ltd is not one of your run of the mill public companies. When set up AWB was intended to serve more like a cooperative. The shareholders are the people it serves, the wheatgrowers. In an earlier criticism you spoke of “institutional shareholders”. I expect you would find on examination that there aren’t any institutional shareholders.

You mentioned “agrarian socialism”. Well, the old Australian Wheat Board with its “single desk” was an outstanding example of agrarian socialism. Thanks to excellent management by wise farmers who had no university education employing people who did have a university education, and backed initially by a non partisan public service which employed very intelligent people, it worked marvellously well to the benefit of all Australians.

Firstly it guaranteed Australian consumers a supply of high quality wheat at a guaranteed price which almost every year turned out to be lower than the world price. Secondly, by distributing to growers the profits which would otherwise have been taken by traders, it enabled Australia’s wheat producers to operate without subsidies in a world market in which our competitors are heavily subsidised.

Just in case you do not know it, as an Australian consumer you are using this wheat every time you have a slice of toast or a Weet Bix. Furthermore, you are getting this wheat at a heavily subsidised price without making any contribution to the subsidies.

The problems started to arise when university education became the driver, not the server, of the management, and after the public service was politicised. Our modern university education is badly flawed. The public service is now led by partisans committed to one side of politics, not by people of broad vision.

As AWB Ltd stands today, profit for AWB is profit for the people it serves. If the changes are effected, AWB will become just another company run by our exceedingly incestuous big business club, subject to takeover in a bad year. For AWB the bad year will be the first year when it rains too little or too much, as in recent years. After that wheatgrowers will once again become fodder for the schysters just as they were before the Wheat Board was established. Then the cost of your toast and Weet Bix will increase hugely. There will even be years when you can’t get any.

Some rules do need changing, such as the 3 year cutoff which converts A class shares to B class. The recent drought has been outside all expectations, and this rule has alienated many of your 74.7%.

I expect that you have no more had time to thouroughly study the Cole Report than I have, but if I once more see the accusation “$300 million in bribes to Saddam Hussein” I will get the report out and study it looking for cause to sue for libel. The $300 million did indeed go for inland freight, and that at a tonne/kilometre rate which makes us Australian farmers jealous. This was found to be illegal under the Oil for Food program, but in the absence of weapons of mass destruction the Oil for Food program was itself as corrupt as Dicken’s ass.