Richard Pratt Dies
Billionaire industrialist Richard Pratt died late yesterday after a bout of prostate cancer and long succession of the rich and powerful coming to his bed (in the house formerly owned by Archbishop Mannix). As with Kerry Packer, the Australian media (both corporate and to a lesser extent the ABC & SBS) are out lionising him. I find it interesting how when one of these guys dies (I’ll be fascinated to see what paeans are lavished on Chairman Rupert when he goes) they get portrayed as some sort of national hero, even more strangely, a hero for the common man. This goes far beyond simply not mentioning the less savoury parts of their lives, but exults them into gracious gentlemen whilst misdealings simply fade to black.
Just as Kerry Packer’s very dodgy tax dealings dug up by the Costigan Royal Commission didn't stop the most appalling sycophancy from the media when he died (particularly from his very own Channel 9); so too Richard Pratt – a man convicted of price fixing (and whose company copped the biggest ever fine in Australian corporate history) and charged with perjury, a charge that was only dropped because of his impending death and a charge which Commonwealth Prosecutor Mark Dean SC told the Federal Court that the CDPP believed would have succeeded if it had been pursued. We were also treated to former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett telling us
“Stress and anxiety when you're crook are not good partners. It's hardly a benefit. He genuinely thought in making the admission he did (that he was guilty of price fixing), in the interest of his family and his business, that that was the end of it; they'd come to an arrangement. And all of a sudden, they fired a second arrow into the air, and that has hurt him.”
Yes the nerve of the ACCC, charging a man with perjury when he admitted lying to the Federal Court. Who do they think they are?
He also fathered a child with a woman he had an affair with and yet we saw the family man on the media reports.
Notwithstanding that people usually say nice things about someone who’s just died, the media could do better than just putting him up there as just a gentleman philanthropist, whose death really matters to people worried about losing their jobs and their homes.
For some reason watching this story play out on the news over the past few days reminded me of the death of Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited. A rich old man dying in his grand house – reading the book and watching Lawrence Olivier in the TV series, I found I just couldn’t care, given that the rest of Britain was in the grip of the depression at the time. The parallel is rather apposite come to think of it.
Just as Kerry Packer’s very dodgy tax dealings dug up by the Costigan Royal Commission didn't stop the most appalling sycophancy from the media when he died (particularly from his very own Channel 9); so too Richard Pratt – a man convicted of price fixing (and whose company copped the biggest ever fine in Australian corporate history) and charged with perjury, a charge that was only dropped because of his impending death and a charge which Commonwealth Prosecutor Mark Dean SC told the Federal Court that the CDPP believed would have succeeded if it had been pursued. We were also treated to former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett telling us
“Stress and anxiety when you're crook are not good partners. It's hardly a benefit. He genuinely thought in making the admission he did (that he was guilty of price fixing), in the interest of his family and his business, that that was the end of it; they'd come to an arrangement. And all of a sudden, they fired a second arrow into the air, and that has hurt him.”
Yes the nerve of the ACCC, charging a man with perjury when he admitted lying to the Federal Court. Who do they think they are?
He also fathered a child with a woman he had an affair with and yet we saw the family man on the media reports.
Notwithstanding that people usually say nice things about someone who’s just died, the media could do better than just putting him up there as just a gentleman philanthropist, whose death really matters to people worried about losing their jobs and their homes.
For some reason watching this story play out on the news over the past few days reminded me of the death of Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited. A rich old man dying in his grand house – reading the book and watching Lawrence Olivier in the TV series, I found I just couldn’t care, given that the rest of Britain was in the grip of the depression at the time. The parallel is rather apposite come to think of it.