One or two obtuse observers expressed surprise that Martin Sharp came in the end to embrace conservative values. He even went to church! The point is he was always a conservative — of the more subversive kind. He celebrated innocence (Tiny Tim, Ginger Meggs) and mocked trendies, radicals and reactionaries. I have the original from his early period of his famous The Word Flashed Round the Arms lampooning Sydney’s ocker surfies of the day. He signed it: ‘5 minutes’ work. 4 months’ hard labour. Cheers’. A foolish magistrate had found it obscene, although the sentence was overturned on appeal. The incoming Askin government in NSW then introduced legislation to take away from magistrates the power to judge charges of obscenity and give it to juries, in effect abolishing the offence. Sharp was too great an artist to conform to stereotypes.

‘We have mismanaged the Middle East for the past five years.’ This is how Frederick Kagan began his talk at the Sydney Institute last week. By ‘we’ he meant Americans and by ‘five years’ he meant since the beginning of the Obama administration. He was referring not only to Syria, Iraq and the Iran’s progress towards its nuclear bomb, but to the spread of al-Qa’eda from the Mahgreb to the Philippines. The Kagans are a husband-and-wife (‘Fred and Kim’) team who have been an influential and controversial part of the neoconservative ‘brains trust’ in Washington DC. (Frederick Kagan actively advocated the invasion of Iraq and later ‘the surge’.) They are among those whom Owen Harries took on in his famous Boyer Lectures of 2003 — Benign or Imperial? Reflections on American Hegemony. But they are tough targets.

The US, Fred Kagan said, is suffering a nervous breakdown, putting itself and its allies at risk. Its most recent ‘brilliant’ deal was the nuclear ‘surrender’ in Iran where in exchange for nothing of value it agreed to give Iran some $7 billion in sanctions relief. We are losing everywhere except in Afghanistan. One encouraging development is the growing realisation among the Sunni Arabs (especially ‘the Gulfies’) that Israel is the least of their problems and that the Israeli nuclear umbrella protects them against the Iranian threat. ‘I am not a Zionist,’ he says. ‘I am not a Democrat. I am an Equal Opportunity critic.’ Kim Kagan’s last words were: ‘Never underestimate America’s capacity to re-engage with the world.’ Fred’s were: ‘Do not despair. There will be a new President in three years.’

Most people are disconcerted when confronted by a man, husband and father who in his fifties decides to become a woman — notwithstanding the anguish of wife and children and painful surgery. The same sceptics sometimes find it hard, or challenging, to take such a person seriously. But they applauded warmly when the economist and historian Deirdre (formerly Donald) McCloskey delivered the John Bonython Lecture at the annual gala dinner of the Centre for Independent Studies. Professor McCloskey spoke about the sources of the vast enrichment that free markets have brought the world over the past three centuries. She attributes it neither to exploitation (as the Left likes to think) nor to saving (the Right’s shibboleth) but to the new value placed on innovation which emerged in Europe with the Renaissance and spread across the world. (Perhaps she herself is an example of this innovation?) She is, she says, with her mix of defiance and complacency, a Christian libertarian — a ‘postmodern, free-market, feminist, progressive Episcopalian and Aristotelian who once was a man.’ So, she asks, how do you like them apples?

It fell to me last week to ‘officially’ open the annual Students and Teachers Exhibition of the Julian Ashton Art School. It is the most traditional of Sydney’s art schools — and the oldest. Founded in 1890 it has helped form artists from George Lambert and Thea Proctor through to William Dobell, John Olsen, Brett Whiteley, Haydn Wilson and Bill Leak. Its principal is Paul Delprat, great grandson of Julian Ashton. I took as the text for my ‘opening’ speech, Nat Tate. An American Artist 1930-1962, a study of a neglected New York abstract expressionist, by the prize-winning English novelist William Boyd. It is
a tragic story of an artist who killed himself after destroying most of his work. New York art critics and gallery directors acclaimed Boyd’s book at a glittering launch in a posh Manhattan gallery. But soon an investigative journalist exposed the whole celebration as a hoax. There was no such person as Nat Tate. The name came from the National and Tate galleries. Boyd himself drew the illustrations. The photographs came from junk shops. Gore Vidal who was in on the joke had lavished praise on Nat Tate. It was all a spoof of the New York School, especially abstract expressionism and associated stereotypes — the artist as visionary drunk or as brawling, suffering genius. Boyd, who knows a thing or two about art, draws the moral: beware of fads. Julian Ashton, for one, would have approved.

In a splendid speech last week titled What Would Maggie Do Today?, Boris Johnson — Mayor of London and honorary ambassador for the Northern Territory — welcomed mass immigration and ‘the vast mongrel energy’ it is generating in Britain. The expression won’t please everyone but you know what he means. It is surely better than the soporific jargon and acronyms (CALD, NESB) inflicted on us by multiculturalist doctrinaires. Boris himself boasts of Turkish descent.