Telling us what we already know

To the extent that business leaders think they know something of ethics, most subscribe to the fallacy of “When in Rome, do as the Romans”. In the third world bribery is standard business practice. It’s not as bad as it sounds. In the West we call it networking.

While networking is more subtle than bribery it has the same market distorting effects. Contracts should be awarded to the company that is trumps on price and quality, not the one that has the biggest entertaining budget or thickest brown paper bag.

Given that AWB executives were almost certainly imbued in a western networking culture and were not trained that moral norms are in fact objective universal truths as opposed to culturally relevant expedients, they were hardly likely to be offended at the prospect of handing over a few kickbacks.

Hence, in the end the whole AWB saga really is just stock-in-trade global business practice. The public knows this. That’s why we don’t care. It’s a message that the Cole Inquiry should heed. The only constructive thing that can be done is to wrap up the inquiry and stop badgering irrelevant witnesses who have far more important things to do.

The matter does not even register on the social relevance radar. It is inappropriate three senior government ministers were required to waste their time and appear at the inquiry - there is no issue of national interest at stake.

The money saved by curtailing the inquiry should be used fund compulsory ethics training for corporate leaders. Now that is something that the community could get excited about.