As to Dick Smith making a noise about aviation, here's what the Editor in chief of The Week magazine (David Salter) said in the latest editorial.
" It's time to call Dick Smith's bluff. Here's a man who's relentlessly used his access to the media to promote a nerd-made-good, honest-little-Aussie image and push a succession of barrows, each more hyprocritical than the last. In the 1970s and '80s, while local manufacturing industries withered, this champion of local enterprise made millions importing cheap electronic goods from Asia and retailing them to us at hefty mark-ups. Then he established Australian Geographic magazine (printed in Japan), while doing TV commercials for Holden (owned by General Motors in the US). Next came the preposterous Dick Smith foods - another business venture dressed up as patriotism.
Now he's tried to elbow his way into the election campaign by jumping on the "small Australia" bandwagon. This born-again Malthusian wants to "stabilise our population" by cutting immigration to just 70,000 a year and encouraging a drop in the natural birth rate. He put his case in a polemical television program which - to its great discredit - the ABC accepted for broadcast even though it knew Smith had instituted the project with substantial personal funding. One man's insatiable appetite for media attention apparently now overwhelms the principles of independent public broadcasting. But we shouldn't be surprised. It is, to my mind, just the last in a long sequence of unattractive dissemblings Dick Smith has pulled on Australia."
It seems not all in the media are enamoured with Dick.
BTW, "Malthus has become widely known for his theories concerning population and its increase or decrease in response to various factors. The six editions of his An Essay on the Principle of Population, published from 1798 to 1826, observed that sooner or later population gets checked by famine, disease, and widespread mortality. He wrote in opposition to the popular view in 18th-century Europe that saw society as improving, and in principle as perfectible. Malthus thought that the dangers of population growth would preclude endless progress towards a utopian society. As an Anglican clergyman, Malthus saw this situation as divinely imposed to teach virtuous behaviour. " - a little research on the net came up with this.
I know, a bit of thread drift, but I thought I'd share this with you all.
DP