While it's been 12 months since the wheat export monopoly arrangements were abolished by the Labor Government, the single desk's fate was sealed when the Volcker report into the Iraqi Oil-for-Food scandal was released, exposing Australia's AWB for peddling $300 million in bribes to Saddam Hussein's corrupt regime.

From that point on, the desk was always a goner.

And despite what a bunch of committed, yet die-hard single desk supporters would like to think, no Government - whatever its stripes - is going to bring it back.

The previous Prime Minister John Howard deferred making a decision to get rid of the single desk until after the 2007 election (by which time he was out of office) but behind closed doors in the Coalition party room it was clear the desk was on borrowed time.

Now in farmer-land, I think the jury is still out on whether the new system worked for farmers during the last harvest.

You could not judge the prices farmers received fairly because of the global economic meltdown, and a massive wash-out of the northern harvest also compromised any true comparison of the new system with the old.

Single-desk advocates say the new system is crippling farmers.

So, where is the proof? How many farmers have been forced off their land because there is no longer a single desk?

How many farmers have abandoned growing wheat because there is no longer a monopoly?

I genuinely want to know. But I also what some facts and figures. Quit the emotion, please!

The Government claims more wheat is going into more countries than ever before.

The people who believe the single desk can be reinstated are in dreamland because neither of the major parties will ever bring it back.

These farmers would be better off investing their efforts to work with the Government to iron out the flaws in the new system so it can work for them.

At the moment they are refusing to acknowledge the free market is here to stay, and are flogging a dead horse in the process.