Gerry Harvey, complete trash.
This week Gerry Harvey cemented his position amongst Australia’s most loathed billionaires, defying unionists’ calls to pay back an estimated $22m in jobkeeper after the retailer’s profits more than doubled during the pandemic.
In the latter half of last year the retailer made an after-tax profit of $462.03m - up 116% on the same time period in the previous year (it’s more than a tad ironic given that Gerry Harvey once called online shopping “UnAustralian”).
Gerry Harvey himself will take home $78m from last year’s dividends.
Despite this, and unlike some smaller firms, Harvey Norman refuses to pay back $22m in Jobkeeper that they clearly do not need.
Unionists who called Harvey Norman out on Twitter were immediately blocked by the retailer. Even former workers at the franchise who pointed to mental health hazards at the company were dismissed with emojis.
But we’re hardly surprised.
Gerry Harvey is an absolute flog.
There was the time he described homeless people as “not putting anything back into the community" and said giving to charity was like "helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason".
There was the time he called for a dictator to govern Australia because he hasn’t approved of any Prime Minister since John Howard (yeeeesh).
There was the time he criticised the nation of Ireland for not liking his funny joke about the famine that killed over 1 million people.
Early in the pandemic he called Coronavirus “an opportunity”, and downplayed the risk of the virus saying “There’s pretty much nothing to get scared of.”
He has vocally complained about the cost of penalty rate wages for hospitality workers working Sundays and public holidays, called his own hospitality workers “unskilled”, and guessed that he was paying them almost double what they were actually getting.
Likewise Harvey is calling for a freeze to the minimum wage. For 2.2 million of Australia’s lowest-paid workers.
Unionists outside Harvey Norman in Warrawong, NSW
But with Harvey Norman spending at least $165 million in advertising in Australia’s media outlets each year, you shouldn’t expect to read about Gerry’s antics too regularly in the newspapers. No worries - keep coming back to Megaphone Journal – we won’t be shilling any whitegoods in these pages.
This week Gerry Harvey cemented his position amongst Australia’s most loathed billionaires, defying unionists’ calls to pay back an estimated $22m in jobkeeper after the retailer’s profits more than doubled during the pandemic. In the latter half of last year the retailer made an after-tax profit of $462.03m - up 116% on the same time period in the previous year (it’s more than a tad ironic given that Gerry Harvey once called online shopping “UnAustralian”). Gerry Harvey himself will take home $78m from last year’s dividends.