I'm a great believer in governments doing as little as possible and people power doing the rest, so I'm in favour of governments being there to govern in the areas that need governing, not a whole heap of other things that they stick their sticky fingers into.
If you are a manufacturer, an Internet company doesn't suit you. An Internet company does not display your product; it can't upsell. But we do a better job than any of the opposition.
Society might have been better off without them, but we are supposed to look after the disadvantaged, and so we do it. But it doesn't help the society.
The political system is broke. It doesn't matter who the leader is if you are frozen in time and your hands are tied. Social media is so strong that minority groups get a huge say.
We're supposed to be an entrepreneurial company; we're meant to be expanding and looking for opportunities - but the minute you do it, you get your head bashed in.
You could go out and give a million dollars to a charity tomorrow to help the homeless. You could argue that it is just wasted. They are not putting anything back into the community.
You get that air of satisfaction from achievement. It makes you feel good. We are only here for a very short time, and so you're crazy if you don't go out and try to milk it to the greatest extent you can.
You've got to open on a Sunday, but at the end of the day, you've just lost a lot of money by opening on the Sunday, so it's very, very difficult to make money when you're paying unskilled people $42 per hour.
The internet thing is what I have the greatest problem with. I don't know if anyone in the media gets the internet thing and Harvey Norman. I think they have some strange interpretation of it that bears no resemblance to what actually happens.
I'm hoping there'll be, if not a boom, then a big pick-up in housing because if that happens, then it will employ a lot of people, and the domino effect will go through the community, and it will help everyone.
I'm probably not your typical business person in many ways. I don't wear a suit. I don't carry a briefcase. I don't wear a tie. I'm fairly casual. I haven't got a big office, and it's in a very ordinary part of town. I'd much prefer to downplay than impress.
I would think that most of the online business will be conducted by traditional retailers and that over 90 per cent of the e-retailers will, in fact, all go out of business.
I think the main thing you measure your success by is what you do in comparison to your opposition. If you're in an industry where you're the leader, then you're performing very well.
I know people like myself where we've got resorts, or we're in the hospitality business, and we just can't make money because you're paying someone minimum $42 per hour or something on a Sunday.
I had a trial run with Norman Ross for 21 years, from '61 to '82. I didn't have it in mind to open a chain like Harvey Norman. I opened one shop, but then the next thing you know, I've got another shop and then another shop.
I get a lot of comments from people that I'm just an ordinary bloke. They immediately feel they have a closer relationship with you; they relate to you.
Everybody, be they female, whatever your religion, whatever your nationality, you're an individual, and if you perform well, we want you, and if you don't, we don't.
Even if you sell the same number of plasma televisions - if you are selling them for 20 or 30 or 40 per cent of the original price, your revenue goes down, and the profit goes with it.
As a retailer, we want everyone out there to earn more money, but then if you're running a business, and we can't make money because the wages are too high, that's a problem.
