Australia is a dumb country that prefers the gambling industry over education (even though higher ed is our 3rd biggest export). The truly dumb thing is that the only thing Australia has a comparative advantage in is the ingenuity of its people. https://twitter.com/AndrewHayen/status/1300365216732020736

Every government talks about 'innovation' but they have no idea what it means. Their only understanding of it is about business efficiency - basically finding ways to make workers more like machines and less like individuals. Great. Dumb. What a brave new world.

Innovation actually comes when divergent ideas come together to create truly new ways of doing stuff. Unis and the humanities in particular offer these perspectives. You think generations of accountants who only study debits and credits will ever produce anything new?

We are destroying our future capacity to change society and the world, all because for the last 25 years Australia has been tumbling down a brutal, neoliberalist rabbit hole that privileges blunt, digestible industries like coal, property and gambling.

Australian politicians only think of their present political expediency. Throw them all in the sea, right and left, and start again.