Subtly Said

Mass rollout of these devices is an employee and public surveillance nightmare. This is exactly why the Greens have legislation ready to go to put an import ban in place until we sort this mess out

Private equity is destroying our society. Here's how... For those who aren't familiar with how they operate, private equity (PE) firms exist to buy up established companies, bleed them dry, artificially inflate their short-term profits, and dump the drained husk on someone else for a massive payday. They fire staff, slash quality, stiff suppliers, delay rent, and milk the brand's hard-earned reputation for every last cent. Once the cash is extracted and they've pocketed their billions, what happens to the workers, local communities, landlords, and legacy? Not their problem. The PE executives walk away filthy rich, while the rest of society is left to clean up the financial biohazard they leave in their wake. Enter Anchorage Capital Partners. Back in 2012, this Sydney-based PE firm bought Dick Smith from Woolworths. Then, they aggressively wrote down existing stock, closed underperforming stores, ran fire sales to clear inventory, and suddenly "look how much sales are up" which made the business look like a roaring success. Just over a year later, in late 2013, they sold this hollowed-out carcass on the ASX at a insane valuation of around $520 million. Anchorage cashed out and walked away with hundreds of millions in profit. Founder Dick Smith called it pure, unadulterated greed. The aftermath was completely predictable. Without inventory, long-term investment, and damaged goodwill, the chain imploded just a couple of years later. Thousands of everyday Australians lost their jobs overnight. Stores shuttered. Landlords were left with unpaid leases. Everyday customers were left holding worthless gift cards. But Anchorage didn't care. Their bank accounts were already full. Society absorbed the cost. Anchorage kept the loot. And this wasn't a one-off error in judgment. It's literally their business strategy. They've run variations of this strip-and-flip maneuver with other Aussie brands like Golden Circle (rapidly flipped to Heinz), the New Zealand Burger King franchise (flipped to Blackstone), and Affinity Education. And now, their latest victim is David Jones. Anchorage snapped up the iconic 188-year-old department store around 2022 and under their rule, the legacy retailer bled cash, squeezed suppliers to the brink, and fell behind on rent. However their strategy backfired after they squeezed too much, weren't able to sell the brand in time, and now, David Jones is forced into voluntary administration and receivership, roughly 6,000 workers are facing unemployment, and communities are bracing for massive store closures. This is how private equity works. They buy an iconic Aussie brand, strip its assets to the bone, put a coat of glossy paint on the structural damage, and try flipping it for a fortune, leaving a trail of economic destruction for workers, small suppliers, and taxpayers to deal with. These businesses never survive once private equity gets its claws into them. This isn't an issue unique to any political party either. All sides of politics should wake up and recognise that private equity requires ruthless, heavy-handed regulation. The government should no longer stand by and let offshore and domestic PE firms treat our most beloved local institutions as piggy banks for short-term financial engineering. The catastrophic collapses of Dick Smith and David Jones under Anchorage Capital Partners prove that if we don't rein in these corporate vultures, they will keep burning down our economy one brand at a time. Something needs to be done about this.