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Breaking the Sheep's Back

Breaking the Sheep's Back

The Shocking True Story of the Decline and Fall of the Australian Wool Industry

by Charles Massy
Paperback
Publication Date: 01/08/2011

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Breaking the Sheep's Back is the untold story of Australia's biggest business disaster. It involves government complicity, and it is a political scandal that reaches into the offices of Cabinet ministers and prime ministers across six federal governments.

In only twenty years, from 1989 to the present, the Australian wool industry - once the nation-building iconic representation of the country - has been cut to only a third of its size, due in large part to this disaster. When the Australian Wool Corporation's Reserve Price Scheme collapsed in January 1991, there was a 4.8-million-bale stockpile of unwanted wool, and its bankers were left owing $3 billion in government-guaranteed debt. During the years leading up to the crash, the Wool Corporation and its affiliates recklessly spent a further $5 billion of woolgrower and government funds.

With the crash, the international wool trade lost billions of dollars all due to Australian government-sanctioned statutory intervention. The combined losses of at least $10 billion constitute Australia's largest business disaster by far, and the social costs are ongoing. By comparison, the AWB scandal involved funds one-thirty-thousandth the size. Yet, despite this politically sanctioned wool disaster, including the close involvement of successive federal governments and its agencies throughout, there has never been a royal commission.

Breaking the Sheep's Back is a private royal commission - over eight years in the writing, and involving a colourful and intriguing cast of characters. It is written by someone who was intimately involved in the industry at many levels; who was appointed by a federal minister to statutory boards after the disaster; who has spoken to most of the key players involved, and to those who were inside the Cabinet offices and Corporation and other board rooms; and who has had access to the key documents (such as board papers, government papers, private correspondence).

ISBN:
9780702238857
9780702238857
Category:
Industrialisation & industrial history
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
01-08-2011
Language:
English
Publisher:
University of Queensland Press
Country of origin:
Australia
Pages:
436
Dimensions (mm):
228x157x35mm
Weight:
0.59kg
Charles Massy

Charles Massy gained a Bachelor of Science (Zoology, Human Ecology) at ANU (1976), before going farming for 35 years, developing the prominent Merino sheep stud ‘Severn Park’.

Concern at ongoing land degradation and humanity’s sustainability challenge led him to return to ANU in 2009 to undertake a PhD in Human Ecology.

Charles was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his service as Chair and Director of a number of research organisations and statutory wool boards. He has also served on national and international review panels in sheep and wool research and development and genomics.

Charles has authored several books on the Australian sheep industry, the most recent being the widely acclaimed Breaking the Sheep’s Back (UQP, 2011)

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