"So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!"

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J. M Barrie's invitation to us all to think and live just like his creation Peter Pan - The Boy Who Never Grew Up.

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Thinking, dreaming, men and women of Australia, lend me your imaginations! I invite you to fly away with me, flying from all thoughts of the ugly reality of the likely result of the next Australian federal election.

As I write, all opinion polling is pointing to the ugly reality of the possibility of that next election ushering in a One Nationish federal government with, perhaps Pauline Hanson as our embittered nation's prime minister. It is when nightmarish realities (like those) loom that dreams are born and sweet make-believe comes to our psychotherapeutic rescue.

And it has always been a function of my column, perhaps the key to its uncanny popularity, to give readers a haven of a little make-believe in a wider newspaper otherwise dominated by horrid news and deadly earnest opinions.

And so in the spirit of the creator of Peter Pan I ask you to imagine this. Instead of the next federal election being decided by the unthinking votes of a clodhopping lumpenproletariat mass-electorate of 19 million voters (18,098,797 people were enrolled to vote in 2025's federal election) those masses are given a rest and voting is given over instead to an intelligent, cultivated electorate of just 187,411 of Australia's best and brightest.

To explain this dream, this fantasy of happy things - last weekend, those of us who are devoted listeners to ABC Classic radio thrilled to the suspenseful countdown of the ABC Classic 100: Greatest of All........

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