[Peetwo]

- Big grins to the last -

Thought this one from 'that man' would best be suited on thorny's thread...

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Australian of the Year: Dick Smith is till reaching for the sky

Dick Smith stepped in to help the family of Albert Namatjira

The Australian 12:00AM January 10, 2018

EAN HIGGINS



The thing Dick Smith did in 2017 that he’s most proud of has nothing to with what he’s best known for: business entrepreneurship ventures which have made him rich, and his endless battle as an aviator to reform regulation governing Australian skies.

Rather, Mr Smith is most chuffed at how he was the deal-maker and enabler of a solution to a long and bitter battle over the copyright of renowned Aboriginal watercolourist Albert Namatjira.

When Namatjira died in 1959, the Public Trustee of the Northern Territory took administration of his estate, with Legend Press, owned by John Brackenreg, continuing to manage copyright and royalty payments to the Namatjira family.

The Public Trustee sold Namatjira’s copyright to Legend Press in 1983, ending the income stream to the artist’s family.

Mr Smith heard about the controversy from National Gallery of Australia director Gerard Vaughan, and decided to intervene — his father had worked for Brackenreg about 60 years ago.

“I was able to call the Brackenreg son, Phil, and use the best of my salesmanship to persuade him this would probably get worse and worse and damage his father’s name even more,” Mr Smith said.

Under the deal, the copyright was sold to the Namatjira family for $1, and Smith paid $250,000 — not, as he expected, to the Brackenregs but at their request, to the Namatjira family.

For this act of philanthropy, and his tireless efforts to reform aviation regulation, Mr Smith has been nominated as a contender for this newspaper’s Australian of the Year.

The Dick Smith legend, seen in Dick Smith Electronics and Australian Geographic, is one of starting with good concepts, working very hard to build them into successful businesses, then selling them off for a lot of money.

“You look around the world, copy the best, and employ the best people,” he said.

Mr Smith said that as chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, he’d battled to do just that with aviation regulation reform, aiming to “do everything we can at the lowest cost” without compromising safety. Instead his successors in the authority had, he claimed, “quickly looked around the world and selected the most expensive option”, imposing so much cost on aviation that it was killing the industry.

Yet he has not given up.

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MTF...P2