Four million copies of the original ‘Uncle Sam’ poster by James Montgomery Flagg were printed as a recruiting aid in the first world war, so effective it was reprised in the second. But it was the Vietnam War I thought about as, only slightly jet-lagged thanks to Qantas making Dubai the Kangaroo Route stop these days, I headed toward the British Library’s front doors. The chilling words of an anonymous US major to reporter Peter Arnett in 1968 about the just-bombed town of Ben Tre weighed on my mind. ‘It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,’ he famously told Arnett. ‘It became necessary to destroy the party to save it,’ sums up the Kevin carpet-bombing operation on the Gillard prime ministership over the past three years. To what end?

A little-known fact is that not once, not even for a single day, since Rudd and Gillard entered parliament in 1998, has Kevin had more votes in the party room than Julia. How galling that must be for a man whose superiority is so self-evident — literally, evident to himself, that is. Because it wasn’t evident to colleagues sitting around the cabinet table during his prime ministership. Weird, freaky, angry guy is the polite character snapshot they give of Rudd, echoed by Labor staffers, the bureaucracy, RAAF stewards and anyone else who had the misfortune to encounter him in power. Labor ministers’ far worse descriptions of him on the public record apparently carry little weight with voters. I hear the Liberal party has tested them on focus groups whose members discount their content as ‘just politics’. This is of some concern to the Liberal apparatchiks working hard to make Peta Credlin, um, I mean, Tony Abbott prime minister.

The British Library reading room is closed on Sundays, so what better thing to do on an English summer day than motor down to Sussex with a friend. London motorways are as badly signposted as Melbourne ones but, after a couple of 180-degree turns, Financial Times environment correspondent Pilita Clark eventually gets us to Charleston, the Sussex cottage where Bloomsbury hung out when they weren’t in, well, Bloomsbury. We see Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant’s studio, the dining table where Virginia Woolf held court when visiting her sister, and the window John Maynard Keynes gazed out of when he came to stay for weekends. And we see lots of cows. Charleston is, of course, on a working farm but that doesn’t really come across in the photographs of boho intellectuals in floppy hats reading books in garden deckchairs.

It’s lucky we went straight to Charleston rather than stopping in Lewes on the way. The river Ouse, into which Virginia Woolf walked after filling her pockets with rocks to weigh herself down and drown, runs through it and could have been tempting after our depressing conversation about Australian politics during the drive. One thing that particularly strikes Clark is the contrast between the open, intelligent and illuminating conversations one used to be able to have with public servants during the Hawke years and those with today’s shaking wrecks too scared to give you more than the time of day. It’s a negative legacy of the Howard years, intensified under the monomaniacal Rudd and not remediated under Gillard. And politicians wonder why journalists aren’t interested in and engaged with policy any more.

Having done Sussex we return to London via Brixton — once the scene of riots, now gentrifying. House prices there are up nearly ten per cent in a year. The following evening I take Clark and her long-time partner Peter Wilson, until recently the Australian’s London correspondent, clubbing. Think chesterfields and claret, not strobe lights and Ecstasy. Wilson has lost ten kilograms since taking a break from high-pressure journalism. I stick my finger in the yawning gap between his neck and shirt collar and suggest he gets himself to Jermyn Street for some new clobber before Clark throws him over for a green hedge fund manager.

Lovers, leaders — why one ever changes them is one of the great ponderables of life. Campaigns of permanent destabilisation like that run by the Kevinistas are self-fulfilling prophecies: internal terrorism creates systemic failure which only the cessation of that terror can fix. To use a metaphor: you won’t be my friend, so I’ll beat you until you agree to be my friend, which you will in the end because I’m punching you into bloody, purple pulp and you’ll die altogether if I don’t stop. The truth is, Rudd and Gillard both won. Rudd destroyed Gillard’s prime ministership, yet Gillard finished up a longer-serving prime minister than Labor icon Gough Whitlam, with a couple of major reforms to her credit. The loser is the ALP itself which, while they both remain in caucus, risks being soured by a bitterness every bit as big and deep as that which swamped America after Vietnam.

Chris Wallace is a Canberra writer. She has written biographies of Don Bradman, John Hewson and Germaine Greer.

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I now find myself invited to enter the modern-day arena equivalent: the ABC building in Ultimo for Q&A, hosted by the Caesar-esque Tony Jones. Accompanying him on tonight’s episode of ‘slay the token conservative’ is an accomplished pride of lions almost guaranteed to disagree with everything I say. Bring it on!

The response to my forthcoming appearance seems to have polarised the online community. What passes for debate within the Twitter cesspit has contributors evenly divided. Half will be tuning in to tonight’s show to see me mortally wounded while the other half can’t stomach the thought of this particular conservative being allowed anywhere near the ABC and are refusing to watch; perhaps the start of a new campaign of ‘Boycott Divest Sanction’ for the perpetually outraged.

Speaking of which, professional climate-change alarmist Bill McKibben is a fellow panellist tonight. He’s trying to convince those Australians with any money left not to invest in fossil fuel companies. Bill helpfully points out that these companies will all go broke as a result of government green schemes and he wants to make sure we don’t lose our money. I never thought that capitalism and green cronyism went
so well together.

Rather than a good investment, to me withdrawing capital from the fossil fuel industry sounds more like a surefire way to lose our base-load electricity supply, destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and prompt a swift return to the Dark Ages. Perhaps when Bill is flying around the world delivering his brand of piety in a wind-powered plane and living on mung beans, I’ll rethink the strategy.

My other fellow panellists are NSW Labor MP Linda Burney, Michael Stutchbury who edits the Australian Financial Review and singer Martha Wainwright. I gather Stutchbury was happy to see me on the panel, lest he be targeted as the conservative. It’s the first time on Q&A for all my fellow panellists and there are whispered confessions from three of them that they have never even watched the show before. If only they knew what they were missing.

Former Labor leader and dangerously random thought-bubbler Mark Latham certainly knows about Q&A. He once wrote (in this august journal), ‘People who despise the show feel compelled to watch it every Monday night. It has become compulsory viewing for media masochists, a self-flagellation hour for political tragics… I’ve been asked to appear… but I’d rather spend time in a dentist’s chair.’ Showing all the hallmarks of his consistent and principled approach to public life, I’m not surprised when told he is a guest on next week’s program. Anyone for a root canal?

The show goes live and proceeds as expected. There are questions on racism, climate change, political hypocrisy, religion and culture. It was good to see a few familiar faces in the audience, and Professor David Flint actually gets to ask a question. With his encyclopaedic knowledge of our Constitution, I felt sure he’d ask about the forthcoming constitutional referendum. Instead, he calls out the high-flying hypocrisy of the green zealots who wing their way around the world preaching against increasing emissions of carbon dioxide. A note to Bill, Penny, Kevin, Greg, Al, Tim: I think he was referring to you.

After a quick make-up stripping session and thanks to cast and crew, I disappear to the local pub to catch up with some audience members who were kind enough to invite me. I am greeted by a small group of young conservatives who share their perspective on the show. Their views are most encouraging. When asked for my thoughts on the past hour, I confess that my own judgment will be tempered by the reaction of my wife. As her viewing schedule is a half-hour behind, time passes over a leisurely beer and spirited conversation.

Eventually the telephone call comes. My much better half laments how boring the show was; son number one wants to know why I didn’t have a full-on go at anyone and son number two says he is proud I kept my cool. I guess that is what makes Q&A such a popular Monday night fixture: people can take from it whatever they wish.

In the aftermath of every show, there is always the regret of the opportunity missed. Watching the online replay and listening to Linda Burney talk about how endemic racism is in this country I regret that I didn’t ask her view of the Australia Day race riots initiated by staff in the Prime Minister’s office. I presume she would have been appalled at this exploitation of indigenous Australians and that we would stand united against such racism emanating from the office of Ms Gillard. Strangely, a quick search of the internet failed to find any public comments condemning the actions of her Labor comrades. Maybe hypocrisy isn’t solely the preserve of the Greens after all.

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Five years. If a week, as Harold Wilson once observed, is a long time in politics, five years is a virtual eternity. How strange then that in all that time since Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination which set the scene for the 44th presidency he has been unable to put together a convincing, coherent foreign policy. Here it is, the global leader, but it does not have a foreign policy whose essence and rationale can be conveyed succinctly. Julia Gillard tells Congress that ‘Americans can do anything’, while Tony Abbott urges the conservative Heritage Foundation that ‘America needs to believe in itself the way that others still believe in it.’ Yet Americans, in record numbers, think their country is heading in the wrong direction. And US foreign policy remains a disorganised mish-mash, a collection of ad hoc responses: Libya, yes; Syria, no; Afghanistan, sort of. As Winston Churchill said in another context, it is a pudding without a theme. Why is this? Why this failure on the part of the most powerful nation on earth?

This is what I want to talk about during my two-week trip to the US. My 5,000-word cover article ‘The Invisible Superpower’, co-authored with my friend and mentor Owen Harries for the May-June issue of the American Interest — Francis Fukuyama’s Washington-based magazine created to challenge the neoconservatism of the Bush era — provides the perfect platform for my visit. Our argument: that although Obama’s foreign policy rightly marks an escape from the delusional ambition that the US can and should lead everywhere, it’s too

bad the President has failed to articulate a doctrine that matches resources with aspirations, and brings commitments and power into balance. And the response: well, it’s about as mixed as Washington is polarised. Conservatives such as nationally syndicated columnist George Will and Nixon-Reagan speechwriter Pat Buchanan praise us for recognising the wisdom of great-power prudence and humility, while the neocons at the American Enterprise Institute imply that we’re cold-blooded amoral schemers out of touch with the liberal ideals of the greatest power since Rome.

But one thing is clear: despite the Gillard-Abbott consensus that Uncle Sam can do anything, the American people are tired of the world. They are suffering from foreign policy fatigue. Obama did not utter the words ‘mission accomplished’ in the War on Terror in his landmark security speech last week, but he himself recognised that it is time for a change and for a respite from responsibilities.

The scholars at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs conduct regular opinion polling on foreign policy, and they conclude that Americans are now less concerned about foreign policy than at any time since the heyday of isolationism between the world wars. That is why in last year’s presidential election it was the dog that did not bark. And that is largely why the US does not have a coherent foreign policy.

This is not just a popular feeling in small-town America. Read this:

The biggest threat to America’s security and prosperity comes not just from abroad but from within. The US has jeopardised its ability to act effectively in the world because of runaway domestic spending, underinvestment in human and physical capital, an avoidable financial crisis, an unnecessarily slow recovery, a war in Iraq that was flawed from the outset and a war in Afghanistan that became flawed as its purpose evolved, recurring fiscal deficits, and deep political divisions. For the US to continue to act successfully abroad, it must restore the domestic foundations of its power.

Whose views are those? Former Republican presidential adviser Richard Haass, writing in his new book Foreign Policy Begins at Home. Haass describes himself as a ‘card-carrying member of the foreign policy establishment for nearly four decades’, and his thesis that Washington should reorder priorities in favour of domestic affairs more or less reflects the feelings of a clear majority of Americans.

Whether this mindset represents a short-term cyclical phase or a long-term trajectory is not clear. What is clear is that realism, US foreign policy’s perennial hangover cure, is making a comeback. For generations, as Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose has told me, overenthusiastic idealists of different stripes have led the country into strategic blunders and had to be bailed out by more prudent successors. But when the crisis passes, the realist message about the need to act wisely in a pluralistic world ends up clashing with Americans’ idealistic impulses. We’re witnessing this today: Obama has tried to clean up the mess bequeathed by Bush 43 only to see left- and right-wing hawks call on Uncle Sam to back more assertively the opponents of the Assad regime in Syria. Most Americans laugh along with Henry Kissinger’s joke about the 1980s Iran-Iraq war: ‘It is a pity they can’t both lose.’

To his credit, Obama, like Rand Paul whom I visit in his Senate office, shares and reflects the current lack of interest in foreign policy. That may explain why a majority of Americans support the President’s sensible caution and why Paul is a rising Republican star. It is also why Canberra should get real about what Menzies called ‘our great and powerful friend’. Uncle Sam is putting his house in order.

 Tom Switzer is editor of The Spectator Australia and American Review, an online magazine published by the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. 

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Whenever someone moves towards me at a function I inwardly freeze in terror, convinced I’ll get their name wrong. But not this time. Coming up the steps of the Art Gallery of NSW, and being greeted by bystanders like a rock star, is John Howard. But do I say ‘Hello John’? Or ‘Good morning, Mr Howard’? Or ‘May I carry your coat, Your Excellency’? Or should I resort to the more battler-ish ‘g’day mate’ and offer a Latham-esque handshake? I never get the chance. Howard suddenly smiles and greets me by my first name. I am stunned, lost for words. How many people must he have met, over the years? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How can he remember who any of them are? As he moves off through the crowd, I note the spring in the former member for Bennelong’s step. Not surprising, really. There can be very few deposed political leaders the public have so rapidly regretted turfing out.

I have no problem remembering Nick Cater’s name, but just to be sure I quickly glance down at the cover of his book The Lucky Culture that he is about to sign. ‘Hi Nick, great speech,’ I say. I’ve only met Nick once before, when he invited me for coffee at the Australian after publishing a piece I wrote about the demonising of climate change deniers. I can’t remember anything about the coffee, except that maybe I had one too many, because I started blathering some nonsense about being a cross between Rod Liddle and P.J. O’Rourke. Nick never published another piece of mine, so clearly he disagreed, but was kind enough to invite me to his book launch. Or maybe — I suspect — it was the power behind the throne, Rebecca Weisser, who snuck my invite into the pile when he wasn’t looking.

There are name-tags galore at the Press Freedom dinner, at Cockle Bay’s Dockside. I haven’t been to Darling Harbour at night for years, and am astonished at the transformation. It has turned into Singapore’s ghastly Clarke Quay. Anita Jacoby, the woman whose excellent judgment I have to thank for my time on The Gruen Transfer, has invited me at the last minute to join her table. I never find out who dropped out, but I’m glad they did. It’s a wonderful evening. I sit between Janine Perrett, whom I know from Sky, and Sandra Lee, the former Sunday Telegraph columnist and current author. Immediately, Sandra pulls out a small laptop. ‘Now that’s dedication,’ I think to myself — until I realise she isn’t writing per se, she’s tweeting. And doesn’t stop tweeting all night. Janine and I agree that tweeting is a desperately unhealthy addiction and anti-social obsession, so I wait until Janine has ducked outside for another ciggie before checking my Twitter updates.

Ms Perrett is worried her pooch doesn’t love her. At first I pooh-pooh the suggestion, but soon Janine has me convinced. My suggestion as to how to remedy the problem, which involves a hessian sack and a brick, doesn’t go down well with Sandra. Or anyone else. Janine disappears for another fag.

Unlike John Howard, Malcolm Turnbull hasn’t got a clue who I am and mercifully we avoid making eye contact on the way in. But suddenly the member for Wentworth is zig-zagging between the tables of well-refreshed journos and making a bee-line for our table. I freeze in terror, lest he recognise my name-tag and decides to berate me for writing that he actually belongs in the Labor party. But Malcolm whizzes straight past, and eagerly joins the table adjacent to ours, who greet him like a long-lost friend. ‘Who are they?’ I ask Anita. ‘Oh, that’s the Guardian Australia table,’ she replies.

I recognise the face immediately, but more importantly, the voice. Sitting across from me is Channel Nine legend Jim Waley, one of those TV journalists who seem to have graced our screens for as long as I can remember. Much to my delight, a conga line of newsreaders and presenters come up, eager to pay homage to the great man, who once stayed up all night bringing Australians the breaking story of the unfolding attack upon New York’s Twin Towers.

The next day is a Thursday, which means it’s time for my Sunday morning chat with John Stanley. We do an advertising and marketing segment on 2UE that, mercifully, John prefers to pre-record. Pre-recording allows him to edit it and put in all the right bits. I’m still waiting for the time we get caught out, with me saying something or other such as ‘beautiful day, today’ when there’s a howling gale outside.

Every other Friday arvo it’s off to Sky in Macquarie Park for the ritual — and very much live — humiliation known as The Contrarians. Peter van Onselen’s shtick is to pose questions that he hopes will throw you, rather than the ones you would love to answer. So my fellow contrarian and former Labor union lawyer Hugh McDermott gets ‘Why is Wayne Swan such a joke?’ which has him twitching uncomfortably in his seat. Meanwhile I’m thinking ‘Why didn’t I get asked that? That’s my area of expertise!’ Instead, PVO forces me to promise to shave my head — along with him — if the Gillard government gets re-elected. Just one more reason to keep fingers crossed for a resounding Coalition victory.

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As it happened, the boss liked the book and asked HarperCollins to rush ten copies to New York. I’m told he gave one to John Howard over dinner, along with a copy of Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and Niall Ferguson’s Reith Lectures. Mr Howard told Mr Murdoch he had already read The Lucky Culture and had agreed to launch it in Sydney.

Indeed he did, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which houses Tom Roberts’ ‘The Golden Fleece’, an image recording the industry and ingenuity of Australians barely a century after European settlement. One member of the arts community was incredulous when I told her the venue and the speaker for the launch. ‘John Howard?’ she asked. ‘In the Art Gallery?’

The notion that Labor is the friend of the arts and the Coalition is the party of philistines appears to persist despite all evidence to the contrary. In one of many unsolicited emails in response to my book, Mark Latham seized on my admission that I had given up soccer to barrack for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as evidence of elitist tendencies. On the Chifley Research Institute website he claimed: ‘By any objective test, classical music, opera and ballet are insufferably boring.’ One cannot say the same about the former opposition leader, who may be insufferable but is rarely boring.

Keeping out of the culture war trenches was never going to be easy even if John Howard had not agreed to launch The Lucky Culture. There was a further setback when The Spectator Australia published a favourable review by Tony Abbott. In jumped Miranda Devine with a flattering column, followed by my old boss Piers Akerman. Why on earth had I agreed to my publisher’s suggestion that the cover should be blue?

Fortunately, Labor’s Chris Bowen came to my rescue, agreeing to launch the book in Western Sydney. My friend Michael Thompson recommended the Revesby Workers’ Club. I rang club president Daryl Melham. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘But just remember I’m doing this for Chris and Michael, not the Australian.’

After John Howard’s speech at the Art Gallery, I recounted an incident in 2006 when the prime ministerial motorcade emerged from Kirribilli House to find its path blocked by a cyclist. In Australia, even the prime minister has to take his turn; he cannot pull rank, even when the cyclist realises who is behind him and deliberately slows down. It was time to own up. The boofhead on a bike was me.

It was nothing personal: I was merely reveling in the egalitarian moment. Indeed only the other week I was cycling home to my Kirribilli apartment when I looked over my shoulder to see Julia Gillard in the back of the Comcar. Sadly I was never able to slow down Kevin Rudd, although I suspect even he would now admit I might have been doing him a favour if I had.

I repeated the anecdote that evening in my speech at the Revesby Workers’ Club. ‘It’s a pity it wasn’t Bob Askin,’ heckled Daryl Melham. ‘He would have run you over.’

Jack Snelling, South Australia’s Health Minister, hosted the Adelaide launch at Parliament House. ‘I’m glad that at least you have given Mark Latham something to do,’ he said. Snelling told the gathering that The Lucky Culture was ‘a necessary read for those of us in the Labor party’ with one qualification: ‘You take too much of a Whiggish view of history, without a Tory awareness of the crooked timber of humanity.’ A reprimand from a Labor minister for lacking ‘a Tory awareness’ was a moment to treasure.

‘This book has had more launches than Nasa,’ Henry Ergas told me. And why not? Many within the beltway find its thesis puzzling. On the ABC’s Q&A, Tony Jones pressed me to define the insider class more clearly. Jon Faine on ABC Melbourne 774 insisted that cultural power was no match for wealth. Was I suggesting, he asked, that a humble radio presenter had more power than Gina Rinehart? ‘Yes,’ I replied, although it was plain he was not convinced. In suburban and rural Australia, however, the concept needs no explanation at all.

I am told by someone who subscribes to Crikey that Guy Rundle ran out of invective after a mere 2,000 words. That’s the problem with the cultural progressives this days: no stamina. Janet Albrechtsen’s column on The Lucky Culture gave him second wind, however. ‘The vaguely North Korean festival of journalist Nick Cater continues,’ he wrote. Peter Coleman told me Bob Ellis has called for the book to be pulped. For a first-time author, it was a proud moment.

The Lucky Culture was launched for the fourth time in Woy Woy, in the finest Thai restaurant on the Central Coast, where Goong served a magnificent feast for 60 or so guests. H.G. Nelson, aka Greig Pickhaver, told the audience that the good news is that there are 12 more launches to go. ‘I know Engelbert Humperdinck when he tours in July will be saying a few words. Wayne Swan’s offered to say a few words before the budget speech on Tuesday night. I think Prince Harry will be saying something at the christening of his nephew. And the big news, the breaking news is that Kevin Rudd — that’s right, Kevin Rudd — will be launching the book in Brisbane.’

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With the recent release of Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept for President Putin’s third term marking the re-emergence on the world stage of a more assertive Russia, it was an opportune time to visit Moscow at the invitation of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’s national pride took a battering as the country descended into not only a financial crisis but an identity crisis. As Condoleezza Rice recounted in Foreign Policy recently, Lavrov would reminisce about the night in December 1991 when the Soviet Union fell during his time as Ambassador to the UN: ‘He said he didn’t know what country he represented anymore.’ After my few days in Moscow, it was not hard to detect a sense of nostalgia, not for communist ideology, but for Russia’s status as a global superpower.

I entered the splendid Gothic-style building that housed Russia’s Foreign Ministry, one of the Seven Sisters, the opulent Stalinist-era skyscrapers that dot the city landscape, and was ushered along a corridor lined with portraits of former Foreign Ministers. The rather stern-looking bunch included Trotsky, Molotov, Gromyko and Ivanov. As we paused before the portrait of Alexander Gorchakov, widely regarded as one of Russia’s most brilliant 19th century diplomats and Foreign Minister after Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War, I was reminded of his now historic claim that ‘Russia is not sulking, she is composing herself.’ How very apt.

A walk through Red Square before arriving at the State Duma set the scene for my meeting with political analyst and former Duma member Vyacheslav Nikonov, who is in fact the grandson of Vyacheslav Molotov, Josef Stalin’s legendary Foreign Minister. Molotov was famous for his combative negotiating style, but I am pleased to report that I had a very cordial discussion with Dr Nikonov on geopolitical affairs and he seemed to be, shall I say, a far less explosive character than his grandfather.

Minister for Communications and Mass Media Nikolai Nikiforov is also the chair of the Australia-Russia Joint Commission on Trade. Given that Russia has the largest landmass of any country at more than 17 million square kilometres (compared with Australia’s seven million), the challenges of providing high-speed broadband to the cities and thousands of smaller communities across its vast expanse seem insurmountable. However, Russia has a solution. Its version of a national broadband network, including fibre to the home in parts of Moscow and other large cities, is entirely funded by private capital. It was more than surreal to be in the former Soviet Union answering questions about Australia’s current NBN model of a government monopoly with 100 per cent public funding, and being respectfully reminded of the immense benefits of private sector funding for the construction of 21st century communications infrastructure.

While Russia has traditionally focused its foreign policy on Europe, the US and the Middle East, it has recently declared itself to be a ‘Pacific power’. Putin’s policy of developing Russia’s Far East with major infrastructure, including a trans-Siberian oil pipeline to Kozmino, a port near Japan, sends a powerful message. As Russia has the largest proven reserves of natural gas and is the second-largest oil producer in the world, it intends to dramatically increase its energy exports to meet the insatiable demand from Asian countries. The construction of the Far Eastern National University in Vladivostok and the hosting of a successful APEC Summit in that city in September 2012 highlighted Russia’s intention to be closely integrated with the economies of the Asia Pacific.

As the world’s 12th-largest economy, Australia should seize this opportunity to increase trade and investment with Russia, the ninth-largest. Two-way trade stands at just $2 billion, and there is an opportunity to increase our exports to include advanced technologies, expertise and equipment in hard rock mining as well as professional services, education and tourism. I’m told that more than ten per cent of Russia’s 142 million people took a holiday outside the country last year.

It was a pleasant surprise to dine at one of Russia’s finest restaurants, Nedalny Vostok (roughly translated ‘Not So Far East’) and find that the renowned chef is a Brisbane boy, Glen Ballis. The delightfully adventurous seafood menu included crayfish from Western Australia, Tasmanian oysters and New South Wales beef. The house specialty was Kamshatka Crab or king crab from the Bering Sea, but I wasn’t
up to arm-wrestling with the gigantic claws as part of the meal. While Russians have taken to premium wines with enthusiasm, high-quality Australian wines were notably absent. For a country that has a robust attitude to alcohol consumption (a law came into effect on 1 January proclaiming that beer was now to be defined as alcohol rather than food), this must be a potential market for the best Australian wines, barriers to entry notwithstanding.

For several decades, the Australian Embassy has leased the magnificent art nouveau Derozhinskaya Mansion in the picturesque Kropotkinsky District, named after the famous Russian anarcho-communist theorist Prince Peter Kropotkin. The building is undergoing significant restoration to preserve the work of one of Russia’s most accomplished architects, Franz Schechtel, who designed the mansion in 1901. Australia’s public diplomacy will receive a considerable boost in coming weeks as many Muscovites are lining up to see this city treasure in all its former glory.

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Dean Acheson coined that memorable phrase ‘present at the creation’ to describe the start of the Cold War and the policy of containment designed to block the spread of Soviet imperialism beyond the satellite states of Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. Many of those who had been ‘present at the burial’ of that same Soviet Union, in 1989, came to St Paul’s to pay homage to Thatcher. She was the last survivor of that great trio of herself, Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II who, more than any others, had combined to end Russian hegemony over millions: the world’s most transformative political development since the second world war.

Prominent in the congregation was the indomitable Lech Walesa, the Polish Solidarity leader whose courageous challenge to communist authority at the Gdansk shipyards united moral force with industrial action in a movement from which the Soviet puppets in Warsaw never recovered. He is a true hero of the late 20th century. There was the hale and alert 92-year-old George Schulz, Reagan’s Secretary of State for seven years, whose diplomatic wisdom and common sense augmented the philosophical clarity delivered by his boss. Beside him was James Baker, first Chief of Staff, then Treasury Secretary to Reagan, and later Secretary of State to President George H.W. Bush. Baker has been an éminence grise in conservative America for three decades.

Other anti-Soviet warriors from Eastern Europe, including former Czech Republic president Václav Klaus, joined the great conservative congress in Christopher Wren’s superb edifice. In fact, the representation of Eastern Europe was markedly greater than that of the rest of the continent. And no gathering of this kind would have been complete without the presence of Henry Kissinger, a long-time friend and admirer of Thatcher.

The Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, delivered a brilliant homily. It was not, he declared at the beginning, an occasion to debate the virtue of Margaret Thatcher’s policies; but before a television audience of tens of millions he neatly put into its proper context the late PM’s reference to there being ‘no society’, which has been so deliberately and frequently misquoted against her.

The night before the funeral, David Cameron invited Janette and me to a dinner at 10 Downing Street, which included Schulz, Baker, Dick Cheney, Brian Mulroney, Canada’s Thatcher-era PM, and as well Stephen Harper, that country’s current PM. There is no better conservative leader in office anywhere in the world than Harper. Also, there were former ministers, who had served with Thatcher, and current British ministers such as George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Many provided reminiscences of the late PM; some were humorous, others more serious. I recalled her great sense of timing when addressing the Tory conference at Blackpool in 1979. At one point she said ‘I am, as you know, the first Prime Minister of Britain who is…’. All then expected her to say the inevitable ‘a woman’. Instead she said, ‘a research chemist’. It was true, but not what the audience expected.

After London I had duties to perform as Chairman of the IDU, the umbrella body for centre-right political parties around the world. The growing number joining us from Latin America, Eastern Europe and Africa is terrific. Our Executive met in Helsinki, and our Finnish hosts were splendid. Being there gave me an opportunity to ask about the Finnish education system, held in high regard worldwide. From the President and the Prime Minister down, the message was that the prestige and quality of teaching was seen as central to success. Money was important, but what was taught and how it was taught was even more important. There has to be a lesson in this for education professionals in Australia. Greater respect and rewards for good teachers must be a key goal.

Then to Dallas for the dedication of the George W. Bush (digital) Library — a magnificent and thoroughly contemporary building. It retraces the Bush presidency, warts and all, and serves as an institute which will support the education and research pursuits of countless thousands in the years to come. To build it, more than $500 million was raised from private donors, a mark of the esteem in which the former President, and the Bush family, are held in his native Texas. President Obama and all living former Presidents from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush himself were there; all spoke graciously. The ceremony was a textbook demonstration of bipartisan American patriotism, and all the more impressive for being so.

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From the windows of his cottage at the Old Soldiers’ Home, on the edge of Civil War-era Washington, Abraham Lincoln could watch the Union dead being buried in a cemetery outside. Some 5,000 of his soldiers were interred there during the war (1861-65), prior to resumption on the grounds of Robert E. Lee’s family home at Arlington and the creation of the United States National Cemetery. Lincoln’s Cottage is now being faithfully restored and represents another opportunity to achieve a better understanding of America’s greatest president. Most significantly, Lincoln regarded the times during which he rode to and from the White House, despite the threat of assassination, as important thinking time. There is no doubt that some of his greatest decisions, such as the Emancipation Proclamation, were worked out in his mind as he rode across the District of Columbia. In our age of 24/7 media pressure, thinking time for political leaders is even more important than it was for Lincoln.

Washington DC is the mid-point of my most recent American journey. This is arguably the most productive and enjoyable visit I have made to the United States. In LA, Australian friends take me to dinner at the Sunset Tower on West Sunset Boulevard. For film buffs this is best known as the site of Vanity Fair’s Oscars night after-party. My friends, courtesy of their talents and perseverance and acknowledgement at the Sundance Film Festival, are doing well in Hollywood and are most generous hosts. All that’s missing, I tell them, is William Holden floating face-down in the hotel swimming pool, after the brilliant opening scene in Billy Wilder’s unforgettable Sunset Boulevard.

The weather in the US this spring has been unpredictable to the point of absurdity. But it has also spawned a new dimension in American TV reporting of the weather. A heavy snowstorm was predicted for Washington DC. Almost immediately this was described as the Snowquester, in recognition of the Sequester taking effect on the American Federal Budget. This prompted commentator Stephen Colbert to say that he was waiting for all weather events to be named after current talking points on US television. He said, for example, that the next major snow storm should be called the Blizzardashian. Inventive humour like this confirms me again as an Amerophile.

Ambassador Kim Beazley remains remarkably well-informed and insightful. Over an enjoyable Georgetown dinner with his wife Susie Annus, Kim talks of his concerns about tensions on the Korean Peninsula, well before these hit the front page. Australia’s diplomats in the US (the Beazleys; Phil and Julie Scanlan in New York; UN Ambassador Gary Quinlan; Roger and Robyn Price in Chicago, and others) serve this country well. Diplomatic life is far more demanding than in the period depicted in Lawrence Durrell’s satirical sketches in Esprit de Corps.

Cyber espionage is top of the national security agenda in Washington DC. In discussions with senior US officials, it is pleasing to note the very close co-operation between Australians and Americans in meeting this serious challenge to our national interest, while maintaining a common commitment to open communication in our societies.

The Asia Society, New York, has convened a conference on the South China Sea and it is a privilege to be invited to contribute. Other panellists include former US Ambassador to China Stapleton Roy and former US Secretary of State for East Asia Christopher Hill, as well as a range of speakers and participants from the region. This is an area of real concern for Australia, not only given our trade connections but our political and strategic links in Asia and the Pacific. There will be much more on these contested areas of policy and geography in the future.

While in New York, I catch the funniest review I have ever seen. Old Jews Telling Jokes, at the Westside Theatre on West 43rd Street, is a hoot from the opening line. Most of the jokes are either blue or offensive or both. In other words, the humour is wickedly funny. So funny, in fact, that I am not brave enough to repeat any of it in this column. But suffice it to say if you’re in NYC, be sure to see it.

There are some great advertising messages on billboards in the US, ranging from road safety in California, where a seatbelt is shown next to the words ‘Click it or Ticket’, to an anti-smoking message under a picture of a man bearing the graphic scars of open heart surgery at Ronald Reagan National Airport in DC. However, the best may be seen from FDR Drive in New York. It reads: ‘NYC: Tolerant of your beliefs, judgemental of your shoes.’

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My emeritus status also involves parrying the question: ‘Well, what stories should the papers be covering?’ For starters, I’d cut the bloodhounds loose on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, started in 1948 to provide free medicine to pensioners and a free list of 139 drugs considered ‘life-saving and disease protecting’. A marvellous piece of public policy, the PBS has become a multi-billion-dollar rort for US and UK drug companies, a.k.a. Big Pharma, and locally-owned pharmacies luxuriating under the protection of an iron-clad closed shop. They are receiving astronomical subsidies from the oppressed Australian taxpayer. Why?

I dips me lid to Kate McClymont of the Herald and a small group of investigative practitioners at the Australian Financial Review and the ABC who are keeping alive the flame of independent journalism. The trouble with all the bluster of ‘exclusives’ from News Ltd is that they tend to be all bark and little bite. The targets are invariably easy marks — ‘Australia’s Most Evil Man’ — and the consequences insignificant. Some of these amateur operators will get their next scoop from the same place they got their last one: the local Nörgen-Vaaz outlet.

Three books on the subject of Fairfax Media are in the works. Colleen Ryan, former editor of the Australian Financial Review (1998-2002), is writing The Rise and Fall of the House of Fairfax for Louise Adler’s Melbourne University Press. The AFR’s editor-at-large Pam Williams is contracted to Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins, and Ben Hills, former SMH investigative reporter, has been commissioned by ABC Books. It’s laptops at ten paces. Which one to buy? I have the highest professional regard for each of them: Colleen has won three Walkleys, Pam four and Ben one. Compulsively, I will buy all three.

I’m still waiting for the book on the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The great Harry Gordon wrote The Time of Our Lives, on behalf of the Australian Olympic Committee but it was purely focused on sport. Ex-ABC foreign correspondent Richard Palfreyman, who became the director of communications for the Games, knew where the bodies were buried, as did Milton Cockburn, who worked for the Sydney organising committee, Matthew Moore of the Sydney Morning Herald and Bruce McDougall of the Daily Telegraph. Sandy Hollway, SOCOG’s CEO, was rumoured to be writing his bruising account of the ‘best ever’ Games, while David Tierney and Graham Cassidy, staffers with Olympics Minister Michael Knight, also developed a synopsis. The real story was such a fiasco of screaming egos, personal skulduggery, contract cronyism, doping scandals, wasted opportunities and wanton pillaging of the NSW Budget that everyone presumably decided to keep schtum. Pity.

I’m in Sydney to attend the Rocks Media Lunch, which was started seven years ago under the enlightened direction of former journalists Sandra Jobson and Bob Darroch. I’ve also signed up to a public conversation at Better Read Than Dead Bookshop in Newtown with Hall Greenland, Fort Street old boy, former editor of the Week and Greens candidate for the inner-city federal seat of Grayndler. My main topic will be the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s inquiry into the NSW Labor party and the destructive symbiosis it has uncovered between Eddie Obeid, the right-wing’s factional chieftain, and Ian Macdonald, the left-wing’s gauleiter. Aided by the mindless passivity of the centre, they’ve gutted the 120-year-old party of Aussie-style social democracy.

Last month’s speaker at the Rocks lunch was Michael Kirby, the former High Court judge, which demonstrates that the members are predisposed towards dissenters. However, I dissent from Kirby because I am a republican and he is a monarchist. Or put another way, I am a Roundhead and he is a Cavalier, and that contest has been settled in France, Portugal, Germany, Russia, Hungary, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, India and China. He is devoted to a smooth hereditary succession to enthrone Charles and Camilla (or Will and Kate?) as our king and queen, while my faith is with history and enlightenment.

A lady passed me in Rushcutters Bay wearing a T-shirt proclaiming: ‘Trees are human too.’ I restrained myself from exclaiming wittily: ‘The only humans who believe that are logs.’ The motif summed up the disintegration of thought, logic and rationality we seem to be suffering as we go deeper into the 21st century. For example, the other day I heard from an unimpeachable source that the next prime minister of Australia will be Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop will be Foreign Minister.

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It is curiously appropriate that the news of Margaret Thatcher’s death should be broken by Tony Jones in the middle of a Q&A panel discussion between four utterly predictable Leftie feminists (plus the sainted Janet Albrechtsen) about — you guessed it! — whether Julia Gillard is held to a different standard because she is a woman. Mrs Thatcher had a lot more sexism to contend with as she rose, half a century ago, through the ranks of the Conservative party; and when, as Prime Minister, she was ridiculed as ‘the grocer’s daughter’. Unlike Gillard, however, Thatcher never used her gender to play the victim. Why would she? Virtually from the moment she crossed the threshold of 10 Downing Street on that famous day in 1979, she was every inch a Prime Minister.

Not that Mrs Thatcher was unconscious of the subtle power of her femininity, and the sobriquets she attracted — most famously, the Soviets’ ‘The Iron Lady’ — complimented her as a woman while emphasising her power. She is said to have enjoyed nothing more than Jacques Chirac’s remark, ‘She has the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe.’ Imagine the outrage if somebody said that about Julia Gillard! But we can be fairly confident that nobody ever will.

Mrs Thatcher’s death comes only a few days after one of the greatest celebrations of freedom Australia has seen: the dinner last Thursday at the National Gallery of Victoria to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Institute of Public Affairs. In the stately Felton Hall, more than 500 people gather to mark the occasion. It is a night of Byronic exuberance, which brings together many of those who have, over the years, defended freedom against the zeitgeist. There is an eve-of-the-great-battle atmosphere in the room, and the sense of expectation is almost palpable.

The guest list is an Almanach de Gotha of all the people the Left most loves to hate. The principal speaker is the great Lucifer himself, Rupert Murdoch, supported by, among others, Tony Abbott, Andrew Bolt, Hugh Morgan and John Roskam. Seated beside Rupert is Gina Rinehart, while at a nearby table Ian Callinan chats companionably with Cardinal Pell. The brave journalists who have fought the fight for press freedom have come: Janet Albrechtsen, Tom Switzer, Miranda Devine, Chris Kenny and Rebecca Weisser. Along with Abbott, many of the Liberal party’s favourite warriors are there: Michael Kroger, Alan Stockdale, Santo Santoro, David and Rod Kemp, Brian Loughnane, Christopher Pyne, Scott Morrison and Sophie Mirabella among them. Surveying this splendid crowd, Christopher says to me archly ‘No wonder there are so many protesters!’

The two best speeches of the night are those from Murdoch and Abbott. Both are measured, thoughtful, indeed philosophical. Interestingly, Rupert has adopted the American habit of using a teleprompter. His speech is about the relationship between freedom and morality. The most important argument for freedom is not the economic one, that it produces efficiencies which are socially beneficial. Important though that is, the most powerful argument for freedom is the ethical one: that free societies invariably give their citizens better and more dignified lives. The Left has for years had a monopoly on the rhetoric of social justice, but fine words butter no parsnips. When one judges by outcomes rather than mere words, it has always been the parties of freedom which have created better societies. Abbott’s speech also takes a deeply philosophical tone in praise of the civilisation which has woven freedom into its very being.

My night ends at the after-party (unlike those sour-faced, weight-of-the-world-on-their-shoulders Lefties, liberals and conservatives know how to party) having a long talk with Andrew Bolt about human rights. I argue that liberalism is all about protecting the rights of the individual, conservatism about defending traditional rights. It is the parties of the Left which sacrifice individual men and women on the pyre of ideology, collectivism and utilitarianism. We must never cede the argument about human rights to our enemies. I could talk to Andrew Bolt for hours on end: he is a charming, indeed slightly shy interlocutor. If only the hate-breathing Lefties who find him so objectionable had his good manners!

The following night, back home in Brisbane, I attend this city’s most important cultural event of the year: the first performance by the Queensland Ballet under the leadership of its charismatic new artistic director Li Cunxin. The recruitment of Li — whose fairytale personal story was made famous by Mao’s Last Dancer — is a great coup. He has chosen to present the Australian premiere of Ben Stevenson’s Cinderella, the work which he made his own at the Houston Ballet.

It does not often happen that people come in large numbers from across Australia to an opening night of the Queensland Ballet, but such is Li’s cachet that this is exactly what happens tonight. The indefatigable Primrose Potter, as well as Jeff and Felicity Kennett, are among 170 people who have travelled from Melbourne; a similarly large number have come from Sydney. It is an achingly beautiful production — and, in a way, an allegory of Li’s own life: liberated from enslavement and propelled to international acclaim by dint of hard work and his own creative genius. Margaret Thatcher would have understood.

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