Richard Pratt (appropriate name don't you think?) and his company Visy got a little financial wrist slap for their cardboard cartel arrangements with rival Amcor, dreamed up in suburban hotels, bars and parks and communication on prepaid mobil phones to carve up the cardboard packaging market. Pretty sleazy and presented in faux innocence during the trial.
It is about time that Australia had racketeering legislation. There appears to be a culture of anti competitive behaviour in some of the highest levels of Australian Business. Price fixing and other corporate crimes should have jail terms available, not just financial penalties. Not only that but Mr Pratt still owns the company and the CEO who faces a massive fine is still in his job.
What is the message here? If you are rich and powerful, carry on corrupting?
Update: Seems I am in touch with Aussie Values.
At the beginning of the month the PR campaign kicked off with front page coverage in the Weekend Australian and a comprehensive profile in the paper's color magazine. Richard Pratt would cop it on the chin and make admissions in the case that alleged price fixing between his Visy empire and competitors Amcor.
The result, pending the deliberations of the Federal Court, will probably be a fine nudging $40 million, for an offence tipped to have netted the cardboard billionaire something like $700 million. So a good day's work all round.
ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel argued that offences of this type should attract a criminal penalty, being a "form of theft and little different from classes of corporate crime that already attract criminal sentences".
It seems that the majority of Australian agree.
A special Roy Morgan Poll conducted on the evenings of Wednesday and Thursday this week found that 66% of all Australians consider that ''price fixing should be a criminal offence with jail penalties''. It only gets worse from there for Mr Pratt.
''If price fixing were a criminal offence, should Mr Pratt be sent to jail or not?'', the 690 respondents were asked. 71% said yes.
The PR campaign has been shredded as comprehensively as one of Mr Pratt's own recycled products.
After The Australian 's package other commentators rounded. Malcolm Maiden pulled no punches in Fairfax:
Visy is guilty of stupidity as well as breaches of the law. And the laws that were broken are not inconsequential: cartels are a cancer in the capitalist system, which stands or falls on the concept of fair competition.
Terry McCrann was blunt in News Limited tabloids:
The public Amcor company and the very private Dick Pratt Visy company conspired to rip-off every single Australian. All 21 million of us, year after year. To the tune of some hundreds of millions of very real dollars.
All of which leaves Prime Minister John Howard and an increasingly lone voice.
I have found Mr Pratt to be a generous Australian. He's been very successful in business and my own dealings with him have always been very positive. And I like him.
One that it now seems is out of step with 70% of his fellow, box buying (beer packaging buying???), Australians.
Go Straight To Jail. Do Not Pass Go Captain Scum Bag.
3 comments:
Yes, a perfect name.
Colin, they've always eventually gone down - look at Alan Bond and John Elliott.
Visy has a very large class action to face once this is settled. I think I will join in. All that beer I bought with inflated packaging costs.
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