1001 Nights Cast

“It’s obviously been a disaster for the Australian Wheat Board and, no doubt, for you personally’, Commissioner Cole ventured, from behind his desk. ‘Are you able to give me any understanding as to how you think this came about, how it happened in a company like AWB?’

In the witness seat, Andrew Lindberg’s shoulders slumped, his body caved inwards, his head bowed, and a low moaning sound leaked out into the still quiet of the room. Lindberg’s body jerked rhythmically. Looking up he found the eyes of his wife Leigh, amongst the crowd. Face wet with tears, his mouth contorted into a grimace as he struggled to form the words he mouthed to her alone: ‘I didn’t mean to do anything wrong’.

Everyone in the room was sobered by this extreme display of emotion.

Lindberg’s wife got up from her seat and went over to her husband cradling his head, she muttered: ‘I know. I know. I know darling. I’m sorry too, my darling’.

How had it happened? Leigh Lindberg didn’t know. The wheat scandal. If only people knew, she thought, just how sordid the whole thing was.

She bundled her husband up, and led him out of the inquiry.

How did it happen?

Trevor Flugge could hardly be considered an attractive man, either in manner or person. But inside the tent…on the single desk…and sometimes on the carpet…everyone was doing it, ‘that’s how [things were] done over there’…”everyone knew [about it and at that time] no one thought it was wrong.’

So, finally the hearing was over. There were some four weeks before Terence Cole was due to deliver his report. They were anxious weeks. Then on that last Saturday, after the Report (all five volumes of it) had actually been handed to the Governor General, but before it was tabled in parliament, Trevor Flugge rang the Lindberg house. ‘Come over tonight, for a drink’, he said. ‘Let’s get together. I am having a few people. A few of us and some others.’ No-one had talked to anyone for months, not since the whole thing started. Leigh Lindberg thought a bit of camaraderie before the blade fell, might be a good thing. And then she thought, it could be bad. She and Andrew went anyway.

‘You’re looking quite perky’, Trevor said to her in greeting as he opened the door.

He led them into the living room—there were a lot of people. Like the old days, sort of…there was old ‘lazy daisy’ Borlase. And it was good to see Dominic Hogan looking better: she had a nice talk to him. Even Bronte Moules was there. As she moved about, she saw people she really didn’t expect to see, Chris Quennell—thought he was definitely on the outer. And just people, that given everything, it was frankly gobsmacking to see quaffing together in Flugge’s Busselton mansion, decorated as it was with all his awful middle-eastern trinkets. Alexander Downer was there, but so was Kevin Rudd. Vaile’s wife Wendy, must mean that he was around…and a heap of journalists. And in the middle of all this, now as she looked about, there of course was Flugge himself, holding forth in his party Fez. Someone bumped her elbow as they passed. Wasn’t that John Agius. No, she thought, it couldn’t be.

‘All I can say is, I know I haven’t done anything wrong’, Flugge bellowed. “[And I] will not go alone.’ A cheer went up.

Leigh turned away. Where had Andrew gone?

She went out onto the deck, near the pool. But couldn’t see him out there.

Coming back inside sometime later things had quietened down. Flugge was now sitting on a couch, closely attended to by a blonde with a voice recorder she had stuck in front of his face, obviously a journalist. Leigh caught part of the conversation:

‘People think the wheat trade is glamorous. I can assure you it’s not glamorous.’

‘But what about all the first-class travel and the gifts. What about the carpet you were given, for example?’

‘The carpet?’ he said, surprised. ‘Let me tell you about that carpet. The carpet was a mat. I never got a chance to tell the inquiry this, but people talk about the carpet like it was some kind of bribe.

‘The carpet was a mat, and it had a picture of a mosque on it, with some staircase on the side, going up to heaven. It was made by the Iraqi State Company for Carpets or something, and I tell you, if I’d known how much trouble I’d get into for accepting that mat, I would have told them to keep it.’

‘What became of it’?

‘Oh, I think it’s in a shed out back’, he said. ‘I tried to sell it at a garage sale a few years back and I couldn’t get anyone to buy it.’

Leigh moved on. She really had to find Andrew now. This was not good—a vision of that carpet and the stairway to heaven were coming to her now in gruesome flashbacks. She had to get out of there.

That night in Sydney, at Kirribili house, John and Janette Howard had retired early and were reading in bed.

John rolled over on his side to face Janette, and began, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you know I’m sorry, I know I’ve done the wrong thing darling. I could have done better. The whole thing has been a disaster.’

‘Yes, I know dear. I’m sorry too.’ She continued reading and John rolled back over to his side of the bed and went to sleep.