The old saying is that a person might be  so lucky as to fall into a bucket of manure and come out smelling like roses.  There's a fair chance that whoever named the AWB's reputation recovery plan may have been overly optimistic.

Along with their departments, three Australian ministers, those of Defence, Trade and Foreign Affairs, are now swimming in that proverbial bucket.

Project Rose was conceived when AWB knew that the UN Oil-For-Food Inquiry was going to suggest that the company was bribing Saddam for wheat deals by giving him money to buy weapons with.   It is also likely to be connected with the activities of Australia's ambassador to the U.S. as another part of a continued cover-up program to conceal that AWB, a formerly Government controlled agency, was funding what became an enemy army.

Today the courts have ordered that AWB hand over piles of documents it didn't wish the Australian Inquiry into the matter to possess.  It managed to suppress some, but over half the documents that it wished concealed will now become available for public scrutiny.

 
If all this wasn't bad enough, many Australian newspapers are running the story today of how former Defence Minister Robert Hill, now Australia's representative to the United Nations, regularly dined with one of the architects of the kickback scam. 

Australia's former ambassador to the US, now vice president of a multi-billion dollar US pension fund, stands accused of diverting a US senate inquiry into the bribes scheme on the eve of the last Federal Election.

Australia's foreign minister has been exposed as lying in to the Australian inquiry into the matter, and has moved his senior aides to overseas postings.  For example, his chief of staff has just become the Australian consul to Los Angeles.

This story is a long way from over. If this is a bucket of Australian manure,, there's an ocean of it out there in which Halliburton may be swimming n any day now