His comments came yesterday as holders of AWB's restricted A-class shares voted to scrap the shares, with 77pc of votes cast supporting a change in the company's constitution that will redeem and cancel the stock.

A-class shares can only be owned by wheatgrowers, are non-transferable, receive no dividends and have to be surrendered when farmers stop producing wheat.

Their only real power is to nominate a majority of grower-representative directors to the AWB board. Mr Stewart has argued that this left AWB at the mercy of agri-politics and prevented it from appointing directors with broader experience for the changed environment in which AWB operates since its "single desk" wheat trading licence was removed.

Yesterday's meeting was a resumption of the gathering adjourned on August 21, where proxy voting figures showed the resolution would be narrowly defeated, with 74.7pc of holders of A-class shares supporting the change — just shy of the 75pc needed.

This time, AWB managed to lift the percentage of eligible shareholders voting from 27pc to about 44pc.

That meant the number of shares voted was a little more than 50pc in total.

Of the proxies in the hands of AWB before the final vote, 70pc were in favour of cancelling the A-class shares, 22.8pc against and 7.2pc were open proxies — meaning the chairman could vote them at his discretion.

Wheat Growers Association president Bob Iffla said after the meeting that opponents of scrapping the A-class shares would consider whether to challenge the result, but said they would have to consider the overwhelming number of grower shareholders who had supported the change.

Mr Stewart limited questioning at the meeting, saying that the issues had been widely discussed at the previous shareholder gathering.

That did not stop activists for both sides challenging Mr Stewart and the grower-nominated directors over their stances on the change.