Personally I don't care and for a very simple reason
I feel that online shopping is a short term gain for a long term loss
Now this is my personal opinion and everyone is entitled to do as they wish but I have however witnessed the gradual collapse and erosion of local suppliers because they can not compete with the big boys on many levels
The little guys simply don't have the bulk buying power nor do they have the backing of a huge well resource company to help them capture market share and drive prices in a direction to push competition out of the market
Then in return the big boys have to do market share battle with online stores that have a competitive edge over the big stores because of the difference in businesses model and less over heads
so the eventual outcome of this is pretty much the following
the small family owned business shuts down and that locally known family business is lost forever
The large big companies are forced to rationalise their business model which normally ends up with regional stores being closed down and more of the focus is towards online sales to compete with online only stores
suddenly we notice we now have less range and more of a generic selection of the same crap different label and its not cheap anymore with freight and individual item costs going up and the nearest store that stocks what you're after is a 3 hour drive away
This is the future its all great if you live in or very near a capital city where the big companies always have stores open but if your regional your in trouble
Sure quite often you don't need to actually see the item as you know what your after and might even know part numbers and so on but sometimes its more important to actual see the product to check for any small differences and a good example of this is as follows
A product I buy that is for camping has 2 versions of the same product one version is for the Asia pacific region and the other version is made for the Americas region
The version for the Americas is a far better product you can feel it in the weight of the item and all the small details like the joins and hinges
Now you can get both versions in Australia but you just have to check for one detail that gives it away and that is the follow phrase
" Esta fabricado en China "
it will also have
"Made in China "
stamped on it as well
this is how you can tell its an oversupply from the Americas region market being sold in the Asia pacific region
this is why sometimes its great to be able to physically inspect an item 1st
So to briefly summarise that rather long rant
The fact that we are now being charged gst and being told who to buy from doesn't surprise me and it wont be long before there will only be a handful of very big and powerful companies that will have the correct government approval to sell items online in Australia and once again we will be paying a premium for items with little option as there will be no where else to go to as more and more companies move over to online stores only for the massive economic savings