Of course, there will be winners and losers. The report predicts the success of online retailers like Mr Gold will kill off the jobs of about one in 30 retail sales assistants and managers. Jobs will disappear in travel agencies, banks and printing works. Ms Paula Swatman, professor of electronic commerce at RMIT University, is not so sure there will be so little downside. On one hand, the Internet allows vegetable growers in country Victoria to take orders from South-East Asia one night, pick their produce, then have it sent to Melbourne the next day for export.
Payment is lodged electronically in their bank accounts the next night.
On the other, Ms Swatman says, it brings the competition from dstore and retailers overseas into the heart of rural Australia. For dstore, the process starts at the end and has far fewer steps. What happens from there is what dstore thinks will give it the advantage over the established players. The order is logged on a computer at dstore's South Melbourne office and almost simultaneously registers at its Altona warehouse. This is hardly hi-tech.