Dick Smith clashes with Waleed Aly

Australian Businessman Dick Smith made headlines this week when he threw his support behind controversial politician Pauline Hanson and her immigration policy. Last night sparks flew between Smith and The Project host Waleed Aly when Aly asked more about his support.

Mr Smith made clear in his interview that while he supports Hanson’s immigration policy which would see the number of people allowed to immigrate to Australia limited he does not support her stance on banning Muslims. Mr Smith’s beliefs are that too many people being allowed to enter Australia could cripple its future.

When Aly brought up that Australia’s ageing population was going to put a strain on any growth because people still working would have to pay more taxes is when tempers started to rise. Aly said, “You can come up with an immigration program that meant so a whole lot of young people would have to work with taxes at huge levels to support the retiring… otherwise you would have to level with us now and tell us how much tax you want young working people to pay so that the ageing population can have a retirement?”

Mr Smith fired back by saying, “Yeah, that’s absolute rubbish. You don’t understand basic economics, and all I can say is it’s going to get worse and worse.

“Peter Costello said that we’ve got to have three per cent growth. That doubles everything every 25 years. It gets to most incredible figures. A billion people in the time of 200 years of modern Australia. That would be ridiculous.” He then added, “I’m happy as a wealthy person to pay more taxes, to pay my tax now, so we don’t have to have a Ponzi scheme because it will affect young people.”

Mr Smith believes that the population of Australia to stay below 26 million people. He will be meeting with Pauline Hanson but has ruled out donating money to the One Nation party.