I have read tens of thousands of words over the past fortnight about the Sydney Swans’ debacle at Melbourne’s Pullman hotel, which has dismantled their season and left the club in crisis. There have been an extraordinary number of permutations and opinions, but one question seems still untouched.
To their credit, the Swans hierarchy has expressed the right priorities – decency, the wellbeing of the women involved, responsibility to the wider club and players. But while police and AFL investigations go on separately, the “Pullman five” have been suspended for the rest of the season by the club because they “breached club standards”. My question is, what precisely are these standards?
At what point did the players breach these standards? When they went out partying all night? When they requested lap dances? Or only when they (allegedly) crossed the line into sexual assault?
The problem is that such moral codes are often highly amorphous and deliberately general. While I don’t doubt that the Swans are genuine in wanting high standards – particularly as the sense of betrayal within the club seems so powerful – such codes also provide a shelter behind which to hide in crises like this.
Is the expected standard merely the minimal obligation to obey the law? That would hardly be a code of conduct, as it is everyone’s responsibility anyway.
When it comes to sexual ethics in broader society today, the moral emphasis is on consent. And obviously consent is critical, but it is still relatively thin, the lowest common denominator. A thicker ethical obligation would require much more: not exploiting people but treating them with dignity, respect, generosity. Even fidelity.
Another problem with the utilitarian approach to ethics is the way standards ebb and flow with changes in fashion. We no longer talk in terms of morals, but of culture, values, and standards, yet in the corporate world these seem to be important only when someone gets found out. Historian Tom Holland has pointed out how much secular ethics still rely on biblical presuppositions such as equality, impartial justice and responsibility. Such attitudes were a dramatic innovation in the ancient world.
On some level we all deeply know what is right and wrong. The Bible tells us that God’s law is “written on our hearts”. We have a conscience to tell us what is right, although it’s not infallible – it can be suppressed or seared, and needs to be carefully tended.
Although moral responses must naturally be sensitive to circumstances, most people still value the virtues (another old-fashioned word) that corporate codes of conduct can never pretend to enforce: humility, gratitude, generosity, gentleness, compassion.
Barney Zwartz is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity
Barney Zwartz, a senior fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity, was religion editor of The Age from 2002 to 2013.
