A great piece in today’s Herald-Sun by Andrew Bolt, about the battle between the ACCC and Visy – or specifically, Graeme Samuel and Dick Pratt.
He makes a brilliant point:
This must not be a country where the rule of mates trumps the rule of law.
…read it¬†here.
Remember people, whatever questionable enterprise you are involved in is ok until you get in trouble with the Law. Until such time you can expect the envy of men, the adoration of women, command over birds and small mammals. It is also acceptable once the Law makes you their bitch that friends evaporate, women laugh at you, birds divebomb for your head and small mammals urinate on your shoes. All entrepeneurs get ahead by extolling virtue in public and at the very least fence-sitting legally in private. Conducting business completely legally is expensive and reaps no reward. In a country where non-violent crime is fairly often subjective in its nature – and therefore difficult to prosecute – yet its reward is social, financial and personal gain, there is little incentive to go the straight and narrow.
Human lifespan is the main problem with objectivity in business. We live long enough to get one education, marry one woman, have one family, buy one house, conduct one major affair, choose one career and sport one hairstyle. Similarly in business one is around long enough to learn the business under a master’s watchful eye, inheriting his traits and cultivating his knowledge. By the end of your useful life you may indeed become the master; you have stuck aroud long enough because there are certain things you have done in business that a simple clerk would not have done. Certain legally questionable, sometime incestuous and always extra-curricular activities which cannot be asked of a cadet in any job and certainly not listed in a resume.
However, Dick Pratt, may have broken the Law. An absence of high-profile support suggests impropriety but by no legal means endorses it. What Dick Pratt enjoyed and shared through his business enterprises is forbidden fruit. No one who had a taste would dare owning up, let alone taking a bite from it.
Paul, I completely disagree. Your assertion that “Conducting business completely legally is expensive and reaps no reward” is completely false, a claim that smears the tens of thousands of honest, hard working Aussie businesspeople and entrepeneurs, in businesses large and small.