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Last week, I wrote about Australia and foreign policy — examining the federal budget for signs of how Australia sees itself and its global mission.

This week, like the country itself, I’m looking inward.

That’s not always a welcome trait — navel-gazing tends to be unattractive in both lovers and nations — but I’ve been thinking lately about what Australia is so eager to protect.

Clearly, there’s a lot, but let’s be honest: These things are personal. And they change.

So think of the list below as a temporal snapshot, in the spirit of Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity.” These are the things on repeat in my mental playlist at the moment.