The proper name of the Australian Wheat Board inquiry is the Inquiry into certain Australian companies in relation to the UN Oil-For-Food Programme. I’m not making that up. Most people are calling it the AWB inquiry, or if they are feeling rather formal, the Cole Commission (after the commissioner, Terence Cole, AO RFD QC).

What promised to be a rousing, and indeed entertaining, commission has been something of a disappointment. The inquiry has summoned ministers, senior bureaucrats, and jetsetting business executives to explain themselves and how this utter debacle could occur despite the many warnings, premonitions, and past experience with the Baathist regime’s capacity to corrupt trade deals. Although very few of the witnesses are known for their comic abilities, they are frequently the target of caricaturists and readers were no doubt hoping for some juicy statements to satirise. Sadly, this has not eventuated.

The problem is that most witnesses have fallen back on tried and true denial mantras.

• “I did not receive or read the relevant cables.” (PM John Howard)
• “We had developed, I believe, a trusting relationship.” (Wheat export authority chairman Tim Besley)
• “I don’t recall.” (Just about everyone. Repeatedly.)

In other words, the Senior Denial Coach has advised: (1) claim you weren’t informed, (2) claim you trusted the other party and were just as much a victim as, say, an Iraqi dissident being interrogated with equipment funded by wheat kickbacks, and (3) claim the details are somewhat fuzzy. This is all very professional, but it is rather predictable. The current Australian Senior Denial Coach is clearly old-school and oriented towards dour defensive strategy rather than scintillating, attacking football. Sorry, by football I meant to say testimony.

What the Cole inquiry needs to liven it up is more interesting denials. As a parent with children aged 4 and 7, I have a wealth of interesting denials to offer. These denials are published as a public service, as making judicial inquiries more entertaining would do wonders for stimulating public knowledge in political matters.

Some suggested denials:

• “I know it wasn’t her, but it wasn’t me either.”
• “It was Mr Nobody.”
• “The ants must have done it.”
• “It isn’t there.” (To be spoken while staring straight at It.)
• “A giant monkey took it.”

And our all-time favourite:

• “A great ball of wickedness descended upon me.”

If Miss 4 can come up with that last one, why are the top evaders in the nation able to provide nothing more than the tired old anaemic rebuttals? They should be able to convince us that alien invaders had temporarily occupied their brains, or that Saddam Hussein had kidnapped their daughter and Kiefer Sutherland wasn’t available that day. These people should be the High Priests of denial and deflection. I mean, isn’t that what they get paid the big bucks for?

A final observation: memo is short for memorandum, which is Latin for “a thing to be remembered.” In the light of recent political theory and practice, I propose that the word be retired from public life and its place taken by “ignorandum.”