Featured, Gadgets, Opinion - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 15:59 - 45 Comments

Dick Smith’s not the hero product we need

opinion If there is one thing which maverick Australian entrepreneur Dick Smith is good at, it is causing controversy.

From Australian manufacturing to population control, from environmentalism to freedom of speech, from terrorism to civil aviation, if Australia is debating an issue, then Dick Smith is likely to have an opinion on it, and all it will take for that opinion to spill forth is a quick call from a journalist. Ten minutes later, Bob — or maybe Dick — is your uncle and the media has a new, sensationalist and usually apocalyptic quote from an Aussie icon to slather all over itself, in big gooey, slightly radioactive globs.

Last night proved no exception.

For reasons which I have been unable to ascertain, given that he sold his flagship electronics chain to Woolworths 30 years ago (almost before the Internet was even invented, and at a time when it predominantly sold black and white TVs and bits of wire), the ABC’s normally excellent discussion show The Drum called on Smith to proffer his expertise on the issue of online retailing. How might Australia’s supposedly ailing retail industry take itself forward with vim and vigour, The Drum’s host Tim Palmer wondered out loud, with the ominous threat of the Internet hanging over every cash register, siphoning transactions daily from the great wheel of commerce?

And of course Dick had the answer.

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