4 December 2025. ‘International Law, Corporations and the ‘Agricultural Problem’’ with Madelaine Chiam
In 2006, the Cole Inquiry found that the Australian Wheat Board/AWB Ltd had violated the 1990s UN sanctions regime against Iraq by paying nearly $300million in ‘kickbacks’ to the government of Saddam Hussein. These events highlighted the significant control that Australian agricultural corporations - statutory, public and private - have exercised in international trade. In this paper we explore a longer history of agricultural corporations by examining statutory corporations connected with the Australian dairy industry in the 1930s and their influence in international trade and the League of Nations.
The paper focusses a series of conferences and committees in the 1930s, through which Stanley Bruce and Frank McDougall developed programs in nutrition and other aspects of the ‘technical’ work of the League. In a 1935 speech, Bruce described the proposals on nutrition as designed to ‘marry health and agriculture’, and thus enable ‘a great step in the improvement of national health’ and ‘an appreciable contribution to the solution of the agricultural problem’. The ‘agricultural problem’ was, in essence, the need to create new markets for Australian agricultural products while protecting Australian producers of those products. The positions taken by Australia were influenced by a range of factors, including the Australian Dairy Produce Board and its state counterparts. While the Bruce and McDougall programs had little impact at a League in decline, they subsequently influenced the creation and work of both the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Economic and Social Council of the UN.
This example of Australian influence at the League is part of an ARC Discovery Project on Australia’s capacity to shape international law, in which the research team is tracing key moments of Australian exercises of influence in international institutions. The seminar is based on a paper co-authored with Dr Sarah Green, La Trobe Law School.
2-3pm, Melbourne Law School. Register here.