As we ready our national hearts and souls and minds to exercise the privilege of democratic Citizenship, this majestic Human franchise, it's impossible not to look around at the country and be inspired. So many great Australians, famous and obscure, have embraced what feels to me like a renewed sense of civic seriousness over the course of this campaign. New leaders are appearing; grass-roots movements are sprouting; people of great principle and courage and selflessness are stepping up to have a go at helping to re-define what it will mean to be Australian in the coming years. There's a tremendous energy building in the Polity, you feel; one driven by the simple desire of the powerless many to re-assert some corrective tempering check on the powerful few; to take control of our individual and collective destinies again, truly 'for all of us'. And it's been splendid; delightful; a great additional privilege to have been able to watch just one small part of this rebirth up close, via this website.

As for tomorrow's result? Well, let us simply hope for a change of government. It really is time. Most of the papers have editorialised for a Coalition return - including, controversially, The Age, where according to crikey, that naughty ol' 'State-Corporate Power Merger' anti-democratic business might just be underway:

We all know that the Packers and the Murdochs are backing John Howard on Saturday but news reaches Crikey that Fairfax's Sydney-based management has over-ruled The Age's editorial team and ordered them to editorialise in favour of the Coalition being returned. Morale at The Age was already low, but this is likely to be the last straw...

Well, you'll have to go and subscribe if you want to keep up with the inside running on this late-breaker...(there's still time!)

Still. Whoever wins tomorrow, the government we Australians elect will be the government we Australians deserve. A representative democracy may not please all of the People all of the time, but it's the 'least worst' system of expressing the simple dignity of Citizenship yet devised, and we will all honour it again tomorrow with our 13, 000, 000 votes, regardless of which way they fall.

Good luck to all candidates. And may the very best of you - of ourselves, of our nation, of us - prevail.