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Leadership is the biggest story of the day: the man at the top and how he is going to change our lives.
There's a lot at stake: our jobs, our security, the future that awaits our children.
This is potentially a pivotal day, when a nation sets itself a new course. This is history in the making with a man who is determined to make history.
Yes, there is a big change in Canberra but Michael McCormack is no Xi Jinping: that's the leader we should be talking about.
Mr McCormack is the most powerful figure in the National Party, but China's leader is the most powerful person in the world.
That's what the Economist magazine called him last year, as Mr Xi strengthened his hold on the Communist Party.
The party's congress elevated him to the level of the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong.
Xi's China dream
Like Chairman Mao, Mr Xi has a doctrine, "Xi Jinping Thought for the New Era of Socialism with Chinese Special Characteristics". This is Mr Xi's China Dream.
A more powerful military; domestic security (code for winding back human rights, locking up dissidents and potential rivals); asserting Chinese sovereignty; and extending his country's economic reach: these are the hallmarks of the Xi era.
At the centre of it all is the survival of the Communist Party: as The Economist wrote, Mr Xi is "putting the Communist back into Communist China".
Now he will have more time to achieve it: the party is moving to lift the two-term limit on the presidency, clearing the way for Mr Xi to be leader for life.
This is an extraordinary development: it not only cements Mr Xi's position it reveals how he has bent the party to his will.
China had wanted to bury the cult of personality with Chairman Mao: yes, his portrait hangs like an emperor over the gates of the Forbidden City; his photo sits on the mantelpiece of many homes and Chinese file daily past his preserved corpse; but this was the ghost of power now Mr Xi has given it new life.
Mr Xi has revived the spirit of the "great helmsman" as Chairman Mao was known.
He even wears the suit, as he did when he inspected Chinese troops in Hong Kong last year: a demonstration of personal power and a message to those seeking democracy in the Special Administrative Region: you belong to China and I am in charge.
The princeling destined to rule
One of Chairman Mao's earliest biographers, the American journalist Edgar Snow wrote that the revolutionary leader "believed in his own star and destiny to rule".
The same could be said of Xi Jinping: he is what's called a princeling — the son of Communist Party royalty. His father, Xi Zhongxun, was once Secretary General and a politburo member in the 1980s.
Mr Xi is part of a resurgence of strongman populist leaders across the world: he knows his people's soft spots.
Mr Xi is tapping into what China scholars Bates Gill and Linda Jakobson in their book China Matters call a "ferocious nationalism".
They say under Mr Xi hardcore anti-western Chinese nationalists once relegated to the margins are now "mainstream voices in the public sphere".
Mr Xi despises weakness and he has a long memory.
History lies at the core of Mr Xi's nationalism: he reminds the Chinese of the "100 years of humiliation" by foreign powers stretching back to the Opium Wars.
He reminds his people of the cost of weakness: Mr Xi looks to the implosion of the Soviet Union whose leaders he believes were "not man enough" to defend communism.
A China Dream
Xi Jinping is not a Western-style leader. He does not aspire to Western liberal democracy. He is a product of his party and his country — the blood in his veins is indeed red.
His China Dream is not the American Dream. It is a rejection of the rights of the individual. Mr Xi asks the Chinese people to put their country above themselves. As Gill and Jakobson write, "to make personal sacrifices to better the nation".
It is a dream of a powerful military, as Foreign Affairs journal last year stressed of the 10 clauses of Xi Jinping thought the "first five focus on the military".
As it points out: "The world may look hopefully to Xi's speeches for signs of liberal internationalism, but Xi Jinping Thought is an unabashed program of national revival backed up by increasing military power."
The great Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, who wrote The Art of War, said "know yourself and know your enemy".
Xi Jinping knows himself and his country, and he knows who his enemies potentially may be.
As we devote our time today to the comings and goings of Canberra, let's spend some time learning more about Xi Jinping, a leader who will have a much greater impact on the courses of our lives than Mr McCormack.
Topics: world-politics, government-and-politics, foreign-affairs, china
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