AWB: monopoly and governance issues

The Oil for Food inquiry into AWB raises more issues than just AWB's corporate behaviour in Iraq.

There are sensitive political and economic issues relating to AWB's monopoly over the right to sell Australian wheat. That monopoly is linked to AWB's particular shareholding and governance structure by which wheatgrowers have one type of share and investors another.

Two economic commentators (John Quiggin and Nicholas Gruen) have now expressed the view that the monopoly should end. Their articles and the comments are worth reading.