Last week, Australia was given a reminder about the importance of cash. Waking up to the Dark Ages, around 10 million Optus customers found themselves cut off from civilisation. Among these were emergency workers, hospitals, and those desperately trying to open their shops.

For them, the lesson is redundancy.

In the hurry to centralise Australia’s communication systems by placing the government at the centre of everything, too many people – including those drafting public policy and running telecommunications empires – have forgotten the importance of having a backup.

It’s a strange revelation for a nation obsessed with safetyism.

Remember the days when a summer...