Australian furniture design, more Moonee Ponds than Milan, could benefit from a little innovation ...

Like most men I rarely find much to look at in shopping brochures. But glancing through a Harvey Norman catalogue on the weekend brought me face to face with something new. Australian furniture designers appear to be discovering the power of design.

Gerry Harvey does us all a great service by choosing to showcase Australian made furniture in his stores - he knows bulky fashion items like sofas can be made competitively here and there are no months-long supply chains to worry about.

But until recently while competently designed, the Aussie product was more derivative than innovative or inspiring. This is a product of history - furniture makers in the past would visit Italy for furniture shows and then intepret what they saw.