Gooday, humans. We are but days away from a federal election in Australia.

And I could do an episode about the election and about what our predictions and prognostications are about the political outcome here.

I didn't want to. I didn't want to drag your psyche into the horse race of politics, because at the end of the

day, partisan politics is just an outcome of how we try to constitute ourselves as a people,

the things that we think are important to ourselves, and how we want to relate to each other

and to the future of our country.

I think it's a time to be grateful for the fact that we live in a place where so many different

cultures and so many different ethnicities and faiths can coexist.

I think it's a moment to be grateful for the fact that we live in a place where we can

settle our differences at the ballot box.

And no matter how jaded you might be about the Tweedledum and Tweedled D nature of the political parties,

do spare a thought for the fact that the issues on which they agree,

the issues on which you feel frustrated, that there isn't more radical action,

are to a large extent, issues that have

given us enormous levels of peace and prosperity.

The sheer bounty that Western democracies have given to us, the sheer productivity and

middle classness of the Australian experiment and the experiment in similar Western countries

is not something we should take for granted.

And the people who try to target the fraying edges of that democracy

who try to point out this way and that way in which it's wrong,

whether those people are from the left by saying that the West is irredeemably racist and based on white oppression,

white supremacy, colonialism, and therefore is a worthless project that we should tread on

...