Business Ethics 101

Cuddle up to the powerful, cast aside the afflicted and powerless.

Tim Lane tells it like it is.

I think the treatment of Ben Cousins is an ongoing disgrace.

Rather than face up to Cousin's problems, the AFL and West Coast have just put him in the too hard basket, and told him to go away.

The responsible thing to do would be to allow him to keep playing football. If there is one thing that kept his life on track it was playing football.

But the powers that be in their infinite wisdom would prefer to throw a talented footballer on the scrapheap, rather than face up to what is a community wide problem.

The sad thing is that uncritically embracing the wealthy is seen as smart business in sport as in life.

I think collectively we have forgotten what sport is all about. Team play, all for one and one for all. If the West Coast football team was a team in the traditional, suburban sense, they would have done more for Cousins.

We need to end sport being treated as a business and political football by pointy headed lawyers, and get back to what sport is all about- a community organisation where people gather together for fun, entertainment and a sense of joint struggle.

In such a context, the events re Pratt and Cousins would be unthinkable.