18 June

Tony Abbott once said that Malcom Turnbull ‘invented the internet’ in Australia. Want to know who really invented the internet in Australia? Universities. Universities built Australia’s first internet. And they still have their own network, which they built themselves, and which is orders of magnitude better and faster than anything else in the country. Gigabit speeds (1000 Mbps), while the rest of the country is lucky to get 25 Mbps. The next time some opinionated windbag, in parliament or behind a radio mike, says universities are sheltered workshops, remember their screamingly good internet. And also, that they’re in the top 3 export earners for the entire country. About the only sizeable places in the country who have actually created anything for decades, rather than just flogging off resources, or inflating housing prices for windfall capital gains.