The lucky country continues to ride its good fortune. Violent unrest in Britain has given us a window into a still avoidable future which promises our ruin.

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In plain view are the uncivilised consequences of allowing wider disappointment in harsh economic conditions to morph into persecution of minorities, and a departure from human rights.

But will we take heed?

Ugly riots there and the flight away from the major parties in both countries point to a deeper abandonment of the terms of engagement which have settled and safeguarded our respective communities.

With its parliamentary and cultural similarities, Britain's fracture is a real-time warning on the galloping risks when the temperature of political discourse is ratcheted up to rage-levels for partisan advantage. Incidents become flashpoints. Unrelated crimes get joined together. Mobs form. Morality is parked. Decency, truth and process, cast aside.

Australia should take careful note - that way lay only heartache, unhappiness and a vulnerable nation. Weakened inwardly and therefore across the region.

Generally, Australia has celebrated its egalitarianism and its tolerance, earning it the reputation as perhaps "the most successful multicultural country in the world".

Now it stands at a fork in the road, its peaceful post-war politics may have often under-performed, but now they seem to be unravelling, yielding to low instincts and a kind of careworn rancour.

A febrile tantrum polity is emerging, and its cynical progenitors have an entirely different Australia in mind.

Their aims are destructive and shallow, the very opposite of nation-building. The nostalgic allure of their pitch is emotional and their promise of a regained prosperity, fancifully thin.

For these self-anointed "true patriots", internal fragmentation is the........

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