Ethical Analysis of Australian Government's Contract with EOS

BUSINESS ETHICS

BUSINESS ETHICS 1
The term “ethics” refers to the collective guidelines that are comprised of the legal
rules, moral principles and generic virtues that guide the behaviour of the individuals in
various scenarios (Kagan, 2018). Over the years, different experts have provided a range of
ethical theories that are broadly divided into two groups, namely the consequentialist and the
non-consequentialist ethical theories. While the previous focusses on the overall outcome
from the ethical point of view, the latter is centred on the actions irrespective of the outcome.
The following work has been prepared with the objective of exploring the various facets of
the ethics in relation to the accusations on the Australian Federal Government in granting
license to a weapon manufacturing company to the countries accused of war crimes.
Therefore the said topic would be evaluated in the light of the utilitarian and Kantian theories.
Further, an additional theory namely the virtue ethics would also be used for the further
elaboration of the topic.
PART 1
Lately the Australian Federal Government had granted the license to the company
Electro Optic Systems (EOS) that further has a business agreement with the US arms
manufacturer Orbital ATK. Thus, the said deal between the Australian Federal Government
and the EOS has been in light because the same represents an indirect business relationship
with the country of Saudi Arabia which has been repeatedly accused of committing war
atrocities on the neighbouring country of Yemen (Welch, Taylor & Trigger, 2019). Does the
central point of the following evaluation if whether the said action on the part of the Federal
Government falls within the purview of the ethical principles or not. Utilitarianism is one of
the most persuasive moral theories. The theory of the utilitarianism is a version of
consequentialism and centres around the consequence of an action to measure the
righteousness or the wrongness in the same. The utilitarian’s hold the belief that the chief
objective of morality is to enhance the amount of good and useful objects in the society and
make life better in the world and thereby reduction of the amount of bad things such as
unhappiness (Mulgan, 2014). On application of the principle of the utilitarianism on the given
case, the following points are noteworthy.
The father of the utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham had developed the theory by the
adoption of the view called hedonism. Further hedonism states that the thing which is good in
itself is happiness/pleasure. The value of the pleasure or happiness is further characterised by
production of the well-being or diminishing of the ill-being. In the given circumstances, it is

BUSINESS ETHICS 2
significant to note that the war atrocities committed by the country of Saudi Arabia are well
known in Yemen. The said Saudi-led war acts have lately been facing the harshest criticism
across the globe because of the air strikes that have killed numerous of the civilians in Yemen
at weddings, on school buses, funerals and the said air strikes were aided by American-
supplied bombs and intelligence. It is significant to note that the philosophers of
utilitarianism believe that moral judgments be based on the “equal consideration of interests.”
Thus, while the company EOS and the Federal Government considered their economic
interests in the said extension of deal, they failed to efficiently consider the fact that the sale
of 500 remote weapons systems (RWS) units were destined to be used in the same war that
had led to the devastating effects on the country of Yemen and its citizens. The said business
relationship can further not be justified from both the Actual consequence utilitarians and the
Foreseeable consequence utilitarians. The Foreseeable consequence utilitarians hold the
belief that a person that a person acts rightly by indulging into the actions that has the highest
level of “expected utility (Arnold, Audi & Zwolinski, 2010).” As stated earlier, the remote
weapon systems as manufactured by the EOS are likely to be used by the US counterparts to
be further used in the Saudi Arabia. The Federal Government has defended itself for the said
actions by stating that he terms of the arms trade treaty have been abided by in the said
assistance in the light of the human right obligations, but there is no transparency in the
transactions to accord the said fairness on the part of the government. From the point of view
of the Actual consequence utilitarians, the government has again failed to take care of the
reasonable steps such as the quantities of equipment provided by the EOS, and how the
means have been adopted to ensure that those weapons have not ended up on the battlefield in
Yemen. Further, there are two facets of the theory of utilitarianism namely the act
utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. While the former states that the action that will create
the greatest net utility must be performed, the second stresses the significance of moral rules.
The lead difference in both the approaches is that while there is a direct application of
utilitarian principle directly to the evaluation of individual actions in the act utilitarianism,
there is direct application of the utilitarian principle on the evaluation of rules first which
further examines the individual actions in rule utilitarianism. Applying both the principles on
the stated circumstances, the following observations are noteworthy. It is significant to note,
that the Australian government did not follow the principles of the act utilitarianism, as the
risk of selling defence items overseas was not measured carefully. In terms of the rule
utilitarianism, the government did not way efficiently the consequences as supported by the
board minutes of the EOS where the company has signed a letter of intent or the sale of 500