We have been searching our minds to try to figure out why John Howard and Peter Costello refuse to criminalise cartels and send their perpetrators to jail. Here are 10 possible reasons for their inaction:

1) They believe in old-style capitalism, not the warm and fuzzy kind

2) They don’t want to offend Richard Pratt, one of Australia’s richest men and a large financial contributor to the Liberal Party

3) They believe that large, unequal oligopolies are good for the modern Australian economy

4) They don’t want to offend Richard Pratt, one of Australia’s richest men and a large financial contributor to the Liberal Party

5) They believe such an action would offend big L Liberals

6) They don’t want to offend Richard Pratt, one of Australia’s richest men and a large financial contributor to the Liberal Party

7) They believe such an action would unsettle the Big End of Town

8) They don’t want to offend Richard Pratt, one of Australia’s richest men and a large financial contributor to the Liberal Party

9) They believe such an action would alienate big Liberal Party donors

10) They don’t want to offend Richard Pratt, one of Australia’s richest men and a large financial contributor to the Liberal Party.

All perfectly valid reasons if you want to secure your high-end funding base, not upset a powerful billionaire, provide favoured treatment to people who commit grotesque white-collar crimes and not empower the ACCC with the penalties it needs to do its job properly.

Quite sensible, really, in a modern $1 trillion economy.