I'm also an Aussie living in the US and agree wholeheartedly with the title. The article focuses on "tyranny of distance" issues which I agree are a serious pai

I'm also an Aussie living in the US and agree wholeheartedly with the title. The article focuses on "tyranny of distance" issues which I agree are a serious pain. Another problem in Australia is that the entire investment community is focused on sucking on the government teat* and tax minimization. I was involved in meetings with Australian "VCs" that were far more concerned with how they'd write off the loss from their investment than actually delivering a successful product. * The Australian government has a terrible habit of trying to "pick winners" and invest in projects directly. A classic example of this was a huge fund created in the early 90s to fund "multimedia" development. This probably did more to kill the Australian "multimedia" industry than any other single act. Also in the mid-80s the government at the time came up with a well-intentioned but retarded idea of encouraging research by offering >100% tax write-offs for R&D expenditure. This is a classic example of paying peanuts and getting monkeys -- most companies simply figured out tricks to reclassify stuff they already did, like photocopying, as R&D.