Dick Smith smith creates own newspaper ad ‘overpopulation will destroy Australia’
Entrepreneur Dick Smith has created his own newspaper advertisement titled, ‘overpopulation will destroy Australia’, as an extension of the ‘Fair go Grim Reaper’ television advertisement he launched in August last year.
Smith, who was named Australian of the Year in 1986 and the founder of ventures including Dick Smith Electronics, Dick Smith Foods, Australian Geographic and media and production company Smith&Nasht, told Mumbrella his intentions were to “try and explain that the major political parties are not reflecting the will of the people”.
“Eight out of 10 people want a population plan, but the major political parties don’t do that because they will offend the wealthy, and naturally if I was a politician I would be very scared of the wealthy in this country, they are powerful.
“Because I am simply a car radio installer and not a qualified journalist or marketing person, I can simplify things and I realised that every Australian has a population plan but the government has no equivalent plan, I thought that is a really simple way of explaining the story,” he continued.
Smith, who wrote the ad himself, said print is a better medium for advertising because it “works”.
“One of the good reasons about print, is after the ads appeared I have been rung by at least a dozen journalists about the ad, but when I do stuff on the web or digital you get nothing, so people who tell me ‘print is a waste of time’, I have found to be the absolute opposite, print works.
The ad appeared in Monday’s The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald
“When I ran the ads in the print media criticising the ABC for not showing balance on the population issue, what happened was I am told that one of the ABC board members, cut the ad out from the newspaper and handed it around at the board meeting and since then we have had a Four Corners on population, we’ve had Q&A on population and there has been lots more coverage giving some balance, so it shows that print ads certainly work,” Dick continued.
The ad shows a picture of Smith with the subheadings: “Every Aussie family has a population plan. They can have up to 20 children but they don’t. Instead they have the number they can give a good life to. Yet our major political parties have no similar plan for our country!”
Smith said he got the word “powerful” word “overpopulation” from a young woman in her twenties who wanted to do some marketing work for Smith.
“I thought, that is a powerful word and that’s why I headed the ad with the word overpopulation.
Mumbrella understands Smith will also be launching a media campaign in regional Australia later this week highlighting what he claims is government mismanagement of the aviation industry.
Smith, an amateur plane and helicopter pilot, served on the board of the Civil Aviation Authority and its successor, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, between 1990 and 1999.
Abigail Dawson was Mumbrella's senior content journalist covering event content. She left Mumbrella to move into an agency role in 2020.
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Hmmm. There has been a lot of discussion lately that a culturally diverse economy has been proven to be a stronger economy (article link – https://www.theage.com.au/national/immigration-is-key-to-our-prosperity-20180420-p4zatk.html).
Do you think you could sue Dick Smith for false advertising, as he doesn’t reference any of his sources? And make him pay to create a retraction ad? Just a thought.
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Typo … avaition.
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Thanks David, that was my work. Now fixed.
Paul Wallbank
News Editor
How does that article offer any research that the economic benefit is beneficial for the country?
Yes the total GDP pie increases, and politicians can all stand up and talk about Economic Growth, but the reality is it all means absolutely nothing if the gains aren’t spread across everyone. Population growth only increases the pie for those at the top, for everyone else it makes things more crowded, services slower, pollution greater, waiting times longer, quality poorer and quality of life worse.
Spend a day in Sydney and tell me that adding 200k people a year every year is a good idea?
Let the infrastructure and public services catch up first because it’s always going to be easier to import people down the line than it will be to fix structural problems with our cities.
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If only Dick wasn’t too tight to pay someone to do this work properly he wouldn’t come up like a male Pauline Hansen.
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Well out Dick Defender.
Often when we talk about reducing population, people jump on their soapbox and play the right vs left card and the debate turns into a horrible, lacking facts, back and fourth quagmire of slop. The fact is that the swelling population is causing stress. The issues we face are those ‘in power’ want profits and do not want them to trickle down. Private roads is a great example; all that revenue could be going back into infrastructure. Instead these companies pay little tax and the fat cats on the board are millionaires. It is criminal.
If the RC into the banks is anything to go by, we need one into state and federal pollies and the top 200 ASX companies. Flush these parasites out and make our community less stressful.
Rant over:
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I’m all for cultural diversity and agree it has been proven to help create a stronger economy but we also see our Per Capita GDP falling.
https://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:AUS&ifdim=region&tdim=true&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false
On balance we are all getting poorer under mass migration. On top of this there are all the other lifestyle negatives as every resource get stretched. I’m not against immigration we just need to slow down, take a deep breath and seriously look at the benefits vs issues with current migration rate
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And if Groucho wasn’t too tight to pay a proof-reader I would never have discovered Pauline Hansen’s ethically-produced, eco-conscious activewear collection.
Thank you bro.
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@Grouco – that last Harpo wasn’t real btw
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*Groucho
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Really good ad Mr. Smith. Does anyone seriously think we can keep growing forever? I bet not. Now that the U.S. and U.K. are overpopulated, ask them how excessive growth is working out.
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Very well written. Thank you.
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Interesting article on water. NSW, Queenslan going through hard times with drought and all states need more rain as we still have Summer to hit, that will send maybe many to the wall.
Where will people get water from. The desalination plants maybe a strain on the electrical grid as all Coal Fored Power plants closed, relying on Solar and Wind. Countries now pulling out wind power as end of life, and cos lots to replace.
Water market ‘an unregulated disgrace’
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6106019240001
Another issue is the UN’s Windland project as it is happening today.
http://www.agenda21course.com/.....s-project/
When you think of the refugees coming into countries driven by the UN, one must remember that Islam has a large say in the UN today with the Orginisation of Islamic Corporation. (OIC)
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