As published on Crikey, Friday, 26 October 2007
The press releases announcing this year's Australian Business Arts Foundation (ABAF) Award winners have been without the usual fanfare of previous years. Indeed, there’s hardly an article in the mainstream media covering the event.
It could be that the involvement of Richard Pratt AC as not only patron of the Foundation but namesake to the category of most interest, the Richard Pratt Business Leadership Award, has made ABAF a little reluctant in pushing the list of winners out into the public domain.
The winners for the award are a very select bunch and this year's recipient, James Strong AO, is no different. Interestingly, Mr Strong is currently the Chair of the Australia Council for the Arts and ex Chair of the organisation that last night awarded him the business leadership award. He headed ABAF from 2001, seemingly the same year in which the Pratt prize was first awarded.
The award is "for a business person who through their leadership, advocacy, practice and example has made an exceptional contribution to Australia’s cultural life by fostering and facilitating increased business investment in and support for the arts…" The nomination form for the award has three ‘elements’, one of which is to consider how the nominee has "taken a lead role in changing business, political and community attitudes towards the value of supporting the arts."
Previous winners of the award include David Clarke AO – Macquarie Bank founder, David Gonski AC – Coca-Cola Chair, Harold Mitchell AO - Mitchell and Partners, arts advocate and lawyer Kenneth Tribe AC and Janet Holmes a Court AO.
But how tenable is Richard Pratt's involvement in the Foundation as patron? Nick Gadd, ABAF spokesperson, told Crikey that the foundation had no plans in altering the present situation either with the awards dedication or Pratt as patron.
How much longer can the arts reasonably be associated with Pratt as a beneficiary of his company and work? The low traffic in press releases this morning certainly raises some questions.
Tuesday, 30 October 2007
And the Richard Pratt Business Leadership Award goes to...
Posted by Nicholas Pickard at 9:31 am
Labels: Arts Funding, News
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6 comments:
Would you prefer we simply (and rather a little too conveniently I might add) erased from our collective memories all of the outstanding contributions both Richard and Jeannie (who started The Production Company) have made to the arts in Melbourne?
Richard Pratt's errors of judgement and business misadventures have been, and will continue to be, dealt with by the various courts of law to which he and his associates are answerable.
Maybe the practitioners who have benfitted so handsomely from the Pratts' contributions should all be expected to give the money back so that Richard Pratt could use it to pay his fine? Perish the thought.
It's quite fatuous to now take the moral highground and enmesh us all in some Walt Disney-esque ideology about how business in this country really functions. For me, Richard and, by association his marvellous wife Jeannie's, total public humiliation is punishment enough.
More balance please Sydney Arts Jounro. The right hand side of your stove-top works just as well as the left hand side. Try it sometime.
Thanks for your comment Geoffrey. I don't disregard the wonderful contributions that the Pratt's have made to the arts over the years.
But I am less convinced that the thousands of small business onwers who had to pay for the price fixing cartel that Mr Pratt had established to the tune of $700 million is particularly fair. And of course the amounts of money that small business owners get hit with then get passed onto the rest of us.
As Malcolm Maiden in Fairfax said, Mr Pratt and Visy are "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."
I don't think its about left and right stove tops.
So we're quoting Fairfax journalists as some kind of authority figures now are we? You can't have it both ways.
Perhaps this Crikey-inspired little piece of Richard Pratt skullduggery might have been prefaced with an acknowledgment about his extraordinary history of financial support and all sorts of other philanthropic activities before asking a question about how long the arts can afford to remain associated with him.
My question to you is how do you imagine the arts can afford NOT to be associated with him and Jeannie? Nick Gadd, who has more than likely got quite a handle on, not only more reasoned public opinion but also precise figures relating the nature and extent of the Pratts' gifts, is responding in an appropriate manner by batting off suggestions that the Pratts' money has blood on it.
The courts are there to deal with these matters. Comments made outside of those hallowed institutions might reasonbly be determined to be in contempt of court.
I think that it might be worth noting two things. 1. There was a quarter page paid advertisement for the ABAF award winners in the Australian this weekend, which hardly seems to suggest that the awards were unpublicized due to some sense of shame or scandal. Such ads are neither cheap nor low profile. 2. In a marked contrast to other corporate scandals (AWB, HIH, One.Tel et al) and accusations of cartel behaviour and price fixing (petrol stations), Pratt has confessed and is prepared to pay an as yet undecided penalty. This is markedly different to the other party involved in the cartel, Amcor, who only confessed when they were granted immunity from prosecution if they testified against Visy. If only all CEOs behaved like Pratt, then corporate lawyers would be gouging much less money out of the hands of the State and Commonwealth governments when such matters are prosecuted. James Hardie springs to mind as an example. AWB is another, with the investigation already costing the taxpayer (ie. us) $36 million, with no prosecutions or penalties in sight. Pratt has cut to the chase, bit the bullet, and I admire him for that.
As for Pratt's philanthropy, I'm sure the Opera and Ballet companies would be thrilled to return their 'contaminated' regular gifts of $1 million annually (OK, Pratt decided not to fund the Opera anymore a couple of years ago, but as far as I know still gives the ballet a million a year). didn't Peter Sellars once say that "Money is like sausages. You shouldn't really think too much about where it came from."
Arts philanthropy should be celebrated, and criminal behaviour prosecuted. It seems as simple and as separate as that to me.
Precisely David. And when are you going to bring your AWB show down here to Melbourne? We'd love to see it!
Thanks Geoffrey. We're happy to take it to Melbourne, but need a local presenter to make that happen. So far we've got two probably nots and a maybe. Stay tuned!
Maybe we should approach the Pratt Foundation?
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