Gerry’s Sandbagging and Tim’s Not a Wanker

Luke Naughton
Jul 20, 2017 · 6 min read

Storytelling is making a comeback, and I can’t help but be entertained. I am not talking about Señor Trump, who spews a new story every day out into the world and relies on his stature and position to convince people that what he says has some merit, at the same time leaving others with a ‘He just said whaaaat?’. Nor am I talking about the golden age of television and binge watching the first season of GLOW. No, I am talking about business guys, and the messages they send out into the world. It’s easy to dismiss the stuffy business section as a bunch of boring stuffed shirts who rattle on about core competencies and EBITDA. Not so. If bungling businessmen are not on your watch list, let me show you the way, and soon you’ll have an alternative to must see tv. Here are two of my favourite recent sagas.


Winter is coming. Actually it’s Amazon. In case you hadn’t heard, Amazon is coming to Australia. Sometime in 2018 they’ll be taking their shell of a website amazon.com.au, which basically sells nothing other than Kindles, and turning it into a full scale Amazon, targeted specifically at Aussie shoppers. This expansion will come complete with local warehousing and Amazon Prime, their frequent shopper club which provides fast free shipping on everything you order.

This is a happy coming for cashed up shoppers, who’ve until now had to make due with either paying extra to ship a limited roster of items from Amazon in the U.S., with utilising less sexy online stores like Amazon’s creepy Australian cousin Kogan, or with actually leaving the house to go to the shops. This could be seen as similar to a few years back when Netflix finally flipped a switch somewhere to start offering their video streaming services. Australia’s online experience is moving up.

Alas, Amazon’s coming is not something everyone is looking forward to, in particular Australian retailers. Amazon’s the 3rd largest retailer in the world as of a few months ago, with a diverse range of products that runs the gambit. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is famous for saying about its competition ‘Your margin is my opportunity’. Thus you can expect that Australian shops are busily sandbagging and casting a wary eye to the clouds gathering in the east.

Yet the reaction has been almost universally ambivalent.

Wesfarmers CEO Richard Goyder apparently has bigger fish to fry — ‘the Amazon thing is being made too big a deal of’.

Myer CEO Richard Umbers, despite having a hard time keeping up with the Zaras and Uniqlos of the world, said that ‘I think we are well positioned to compete with anybody’.

JB Hi-Fi CEO Richard Murray is confident that its unique in store experience, what with all the bright yellow signage yelling at you in all-caps, will help it compete.

A Woolies spokesperson whom we’ll call Richard, noted that ‘Woolworths always welcomes competition’. Unless it comes from Bunnings, because that’s not funny and everyone really liked Masters.

And Harvey Norman Chairman Gerry Harvey has not only shooed off Amazon, but has gone on the offensive, saying that Amazon ‘expansion will be slower than expected’, and that if Amazon brings lower prices ‘we will match that price and we will be competitve, come hell or high water’. Best start preparing your sandbags for that high water, Gerry.

So with all signs pointing to red, why are all the Richards and Gerry staying so positive? Because that’s the story they need to tell the market. These are all publicly listed companies, and any signs of worry, cracking under the pressure, or the smell of crapped pants coming from the corporate offices of these big guys and the ASX would take them down. Unfortunately the stories might not be working and some of that carnage has already started, with Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi, and department store Myer being among retailers to endure double-digit share price declines this year.

Maybe Dick Smiths and Topshop, both of whom recently filed for administration, had the right idea by just rolling over. Stay tuned folks. It’ll be fun to watch this play out.


Our next storyteller is Spinnin’ Tim Gurner(tm), Australian Financial Review (AFR) poster child and everyone’s favourite young rich guy property developer/punching bag who has been in the news a bit recently. Gurner’s active on social media and appears in the AFR every few days to either congratulate himself on a new development that sold out in 29 minutes, or to complain about how unfair local Councils are, both standard developer fare. In May, however, Tim decided to venture into the fields — killing fields, one could say — of avocados. Perhaps Tim should have thought this tact through a bit.

In October of last year, prominent Australian columnist Bernard Salt took to the papers for some misguided harping on millenials and their tendency to blow all their hard earned cash on frivolities like avocado. “I have seen young people order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop and more,” Salt penned on behalf of “Middle-Aged Moralisers”. “I can afford to eat this for lunch because I am middle-aged and have raised my family. But how can young people afford to eat like this? Twenty-two dollars several times a week could go towards a deposit on a house.” Salt’s comments came with no small amount of blowback from frivolous millenials, and articles in response with titles like The facts about houses and avocados (or, why Bernard Salt is an arrogant prick).

Alas our hero Spinnin’ Tim did not heed the lessons so painfully learned by Salt before he went on 60 Minutes in May and took to lecturing millenials for their spending habits keeping them out of the property market, and in particular buying too many expensive coffees and smashed avocadoes on toast. Perhaps the fire lit by Salt was still smoldering and Gurner’s comments were that bit of gasoline that it needed to blaze, perhaps it was the fact that this time the lecture about wasting your money was coming not from some guy who could be your dad (and thus easily dismissed) but instead from a pretentious young Trump-in-training— or perhaps it was a bit of both — but his 60 Minutes appearance was nearly universally lampooned and quickly degraded into a hot mess. Just do a google search for ‘gurner avocado’ and you’ll find evidence of the negative fallout which was covered by not only the local favorites like the Sydney Morning Herald, but the global big guns like Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and The Guardian. Feelings were hurt, financial models run illustrating the thousands of avocados needing to be foregone to buy a home in Australia (to say nothing of one of Gurner’s ‘luxury experiences without equal’), names were called, with the Herald Sun winning the prize with ‘Rolled Gold Wanker’.

In response to all the furore, Gurner spun the following post on LinkedIn after 60 Minutes aired:

Trending on social media for being a wanker does not constitute amazing support

Similar to Gerry and the boys, Gurner’s spin is also intended to keep us believing that he’s still got it. But it’s also a story he tells himself, like Stuart Smalley, the guy who was always looking in the mirror and saying ‘I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me’, but in Tim’s case, he’s saying ‘and doggone it, I am not a wanker’.

Believe what you want, fair readers, but whatever that may be, I hope you are at least enjoying the stories people tell.

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Luke Naughton

Written by

I like Saturday mornings, a cup of coffee, and taking time to think. Creating stuff is cool.

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