Simon Hackett attended PAC from 1978 to 1982. Simon then graduated from Adelaide University with a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics in 1986. He joined the staff at the University of Adelaide in 1987 and became a part of the team that established AARNet, the university sector precursor to the commercial Internet, before founding Internode in 1991. Internode grew to become the largest privately held national broadband Internet Service Provider in Australia, before being purchased in 2011 by iiNet.
He was a founding director of the Internet Society of Australia, a consumer rights advocacy body in the Internet realm.