Before calling the status of the nation’s politics and the emergence of the teal independents a “recipe for catastrophe,” billionaire Gerry Harvey said that China’s style of governance is the most effective method to get things done in Australia.
A dictatorship in the Chinese mold, according to Harvey Norman’s executive chairman, is the best kind of government.
The greatest system, according to Mr. Harvey, is the Chinese one if you want to get things done.
You just do it. You have a government that is completely in charge and doesn’t care what the people think.
As more Australians favoured candidates from neither of the two big parties in the next federal election in 2022, Mr. Harvey made the remarks to news.com.au while voicing worries about the growth of small parties, particularly the teal independents.
Six of the teal independent candidates won seats in the election, including Allegra Spender, Kylea Tink, Monique Ryan, Zoe Daniel, Kate Chaney, and Sophie Scamps.
Too many independents in parliament, according to Mr. Harvey, would cause the political process to be “exceptionally sluggish” and will prevent anything from being done.
He continued by saying that “large minority groups with a very loud voice and not a lot of people behind them” were now represented in parliament.
In many respects, it’s a formula for catastrophe, but given the direction democracy is taking us, I don’t believe that’s going to change.
Mr. Harvey has previously advised Australia to establish a one-party system similar to China’s.
He made the contentious recommendation in 2016 that Australia should abandon its “broken” democratic system and become a dictatorship.
He told The Daily Telegraph that “neither side can do anything about it because the moment they do they’re blasted.”
“The only solution we have is a tyrant as in China or something like.” Right now, our democracy is not functioning.
More recently, the multibillionaire businessman got into trouble for first refusing to pay back millions in taxpayer-funded JobKeeper payments received during the Covid epidemic in spite of his experiencing skyrocketing earnings.
“From our point of view, it’s a minor amount of money, and our thoughts are all about our company moving ahead,” Mr. Harvey said at the time.
“In any case, 99 percent of the JobKeeper funds will not be refunded.” The government created JobKeeper to support a strong economy.
The economy recovered, and JobKeeper performed as expected. Some individuals, in their view, believe it’s a terrific notion to return it.
At this time, we won’t be paying it back.
This was true even though the retail behemoth made about $10 billion in profit for the fiscal year 2020–21 and received more than $20 million in labor subsidies in the previous year.
After receiving harsh criticism, the store finally refunded $6 million in JobKeeper payments.