What about if Pratt was a one legged black midget?

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Richard Pratt - A Carlton legend.

Fair dinkum camt we set up another independant company to overwiew our gaming arm.. without Pratt???

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I'm no legal expert but as far as I can tell Pratt has had no criminal conviction recorded, so to that extent I find it very hard for the gaming commision not to issue a licence on the basis of "bad Character".

The man has made an error of judgment once.

But on the other side of the ledger has been generous to a fault for other things.

My question is can you execute a man's character on the basis of one transgression, if so no one in this country would be fit to hold a gaming licence.

this is all media bullshit & nothing will come out of it & if they did refuse him a Licence the legal shit fight that would come after would be massive

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We are the maybe blues

Just think synbad if it wasn't for Costello and Howards failure to act and change the laws as they said they would Pratt would be sitting in a prison cell now.

Your man Rudd reckons he should be in jail and when and if he gets in he will implement laws so that anyone caught price fixing will do jail time

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

The Carlton football club and all its supporters owe Richard Pratt a huge debt of gratitude. Not just for his actions these past 12 months, but for his ongoing support (with the notable exception of the Collins/Smorgon reign) over a significant period of time.

Fair dinkum, from the way some people go on, you'd think that corporate Australia was squeaky-clean, no-one cheated on their taxes, took sickies, broke the speed limit or ran into the bank when the ATM spat out $120 when they only withdrew $100.

Pratt did wrong and has been punished. Every adult in Australia has done wrong in the past, and most if not all of us will do wrong again. He didn't murder anyone, fiddle with kids, go over to Thailand for sex with underage slaves or boot old-age pensioners out of their squalid rental accommodation.

Richard Pratt's Visy did something that plenty of us have done or will do in the future: manipulate a situation to our financial advantage, without breaking a single criminal law. Ever sold your house at Auction? Ever had a mate or relative dummy-bid for you? Well, you've engaged in deceitful practice with the aim of artificially inflating an asset. That is, you've ripped-off a consumer for your own personal benefit. Shame on you, eh?

The difference with Pratt is the amount of 0's at the end of it all. If you've dummy-bidded for a mate or had someone do it for yourself, you've probably ripped-off a buyer to the tune of $65,000. Pratt ripped off consumers to the tune of $65,000,000. Same shit, different amount. Do you claim a few more things a year on your tax? Well, that's probably $30,000 over your working life you've stolen from our schools, hospitals and aged-care facilities. You heartless prick.

Again, Pratt did wrong. But some of the holier-than-thou crap being spouted about this issue is sickening. How about we line up all 16 AFL Presidents/Chairmen and get the guys from crikey.com to do a number on them? You reckon people get to the top in business by acting like angels? No chance.

Disclaimer: If anyone chucking rocks at Carlton over Pratt's presidency is either Jesus Christ or Mother Theresa, you're exempted from the above.

Your man John Howard was kissing his arse so what???
If Rudd implements that law well thats all fine it doesnt effect Pratt...

Its like all the people that drank and drove 30 years ago before .05...most wouldnt now...
But if theyre fair dinkum can they snag the price fixers at the bowsers and the banks???

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Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil....... the Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Too true. Excellent post

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Cheats never prosper (except in the AFL)

Thats clever John, misleading but clever.

Look nobody except Sydney wants Pratt hung and stoned, but you don't get the biggest fine in Australian corporate history for nothing. It was a massive fraud.

I support Carlton and as long as it benefits us to have Dick in charge, I'll swallow the criticism Carlton cops. But my feeling is that Dick won't stay very long if the shitstorm remains.

The reason the club has to run the pokies would be for tax purposes.

Pratt's philanthropy and otherwise good record may mean we keep the licenses, maybe not. But when it starts to affect the club, he wont stay like Elliot tried to

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T E A M

Absolutely buzz,

but you're arguing that Pratt should go if and when his presence adversely affects the club. I'd agree.

All I'm saying is that people who take moral umbrage about this situation don't have a leg to stand on, given that the values of most of society seem to align quite neatly with Pratt's actions.

By all means, take exception to Pratt's actions. But to be morally outraged is hypocritical, unless you're lily-white yourself.

Dummy bidding is fraud. Claiming a holiday as a business-trip is fraud. Getting your mechanic mate to paint over rust before selling your car to a 'sucker' is fraud*. But I can guarantee you that a lot of the people jumping up and down on their little soapbox over Pratt have done these things themselves.


* I could even argue that push-up bras are a form of fraud. But for the sake of presenting a semi-respectable argument, I won't.

Unfortunately not, unless that entity had absolutely no involvement whatsoever with our club.

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"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, and the young know everything." Oscar Wilde

Pokies.

If it came down to a choice between our club receiving income from Richard Pratt or poker machines, I wonder which one has the least moral 'ambiguity' about it?

I don't think too many people have had their lives ruined from paying a cent too much for the packaging on their slab of Coke.

When you factor in moral implications to things, it can get pretty murky pretty quickly

- personally, I think pokies are a complete and utter scourge.

Wrong I said I didn't have a problem with what Pratt did - My issues are with the posters on this site who want to kiss Pratts bum and hung Elliott when they are both as bad as each other

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If you allow the Government to change the Laws in an emergency
They will create an Emergency to change the Laws

Elliot ran our club down. Pratt has lifted it. That's the difference.

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1945 - End of round 3 Carlton was last.

Last round Carlton made the final four for the first time.

Eventual premiers.

That's what I'm talking about!

I can't speak for everyone else, sydney, but the problems I have with Elliot stem from the deplorable state in which he left the club (and regardless of whether you like the man or not, there's no denying that he completely lost the plot during his last half a dozen years and ran the place into the ground) rather than his business practices.

Pokies are a mindless way for people to lose money, and are unfortunately addictive. Personally, I hate the bloody things, and will always curse the Kirner government for introducing them into Victoria.

At the same time, alcohol and cigarettes are bad for you, and also addictive, but I don't see too many people calling for either to be made illegal, especially booze.

Equally, theft is wrong, and price-fixing is a form of theft. I have no doubt that if Richard Pratt was the president of Collingwood (shudder), we would be leading the charge for him to step down from that role.

Let's not be too sanctimonious about our president here. I want him to remain as president, but I'm not going to excuse his behaviour either. Just because we might perceive pokies as being wrong, doesn't make what Pratt and Visy did right.

Let's acknowledge what happened was wrong, but hope he stays at the helm.

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"The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, and the young know everything." Oscar Wilde

Who cares if Pratt is guilty of price fixing....

The goverment is far far worse, it enslaves it's people for the good of the economy.


We live in a so called free country where all we do is look at our bank balance, and pay for the roof over our heads with our lives.....

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Circumstance has no value. It is how one relates to a situation that has value. All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you.

Call me stupid by I don't get where all you people are getting this price fixing is fraud or theft!!!

Theft
Pronunciation: \ˈtheft\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English thiefthe, from Old English thīefth; akin to Old English thēof thief
Date: before 12th century
1 a: the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b: an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

Fraud
Pronunciation: \ˈfrȯd\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English fraude, from Anglo-French, from Latin fraud-, fraus
Date: 14th century
1 a: deceit, trickery; specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right b: an act of deceiving or misrepresenting : trick


If I were to agree with a rival company that I will not sell under a cerain profit margin in return they do the same where is the fraud or theft? It's not like they are the only two cardboard companies out there.

The only crime that you can lay claim to in this whole fiasco is that it was not in the spirit of competition, and the pollies want to put people in jail for that?

i think we should keep pratt
thats final

It's called price-fixing. It happens in every industry around the world. Pratt was the only unlucky one to pay the price. Amcor escapes penalty because they dob in Visy. Amcor is just as much to blame as Visy. What Pratt did was wrong, but he paid the price. Do the crime do the time. It's all over now.

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"You're not gonna believe this. The guy killed 16 czechoslovakians. He was an interior decorator."

"His house looked like shit!"

As we type from our broadband internet connection while we decide who to vote for at a free election saturated in media coverage on an internet forum dedicated to our own football team...