It's therefore easy to be popular because 100 per cent of Australians would agree.

Or maybe not.

Suddenly a young man called James Paterson has popped up with other ideas.

"Is he the nephew of former "yarts" minister Sir Les Patterson?" says Louise.

No, he's not. But he is a bit of a poor joke.

James Paterson is the 28-year-old Senator from Victoria who has been in the Parliament for less than a year.

Young Paterson, if we can call him that, launched himself into the press this past week saying we should sell Blue Poles at its new insurance value of $350 million.

And he didn't stop there. He went on to say that we should fix the budget by stopping funding to sports and the arts.

I get the budget thing but as a Liberal from Victoria he should have looked at the history of his own party.

Jeff Kennett was a strong state leader who fixed the budget in Victoria and, at the same time, increased support for the arts and sport.

They are not mutually exclusive policy objectives and the sooner the young senator learns from the real life experience of his own party, the more capable he will be to live up to the proper role of the senate as a house of review rather than its current trajectory as a house for the harebrained.

He needs to remember that Premier Kennett  supported bringing the Grand Prix to Melbourne with its multi-million dollar benefits. He went on to build the new Ian Potter Museum for Contemporary arts at Federation Square, restore the State Library, establish the new museum in the Carlton Gardens.

He did all of this saying, "you can't have a world class cosmopolitan city unless it has a cultural heart".

Some young Libs, perhaps including the Budgie Nine, reckon young Paterson is set for a 50-year term in the Senate. In his maiden speech he said he believes passionately in Liberal ideas and values that go back centuries.

Louise is rolling around laughing. After finishing her arts degree she studied the form of Sir Redmond Barry, the great 19th century Victorian Liberal leader who was responsible for the State Library, the museum, The Royal Melbourne Hospital and the University of Melbourne.

I wonder if the Young Paterson knows that hard-nosed Premier Sir Henry Bolte started the planning for the great arts precinct in St Kilda Road and that his successor Sir Rupert Hamer established the first department for Youth Sport and Recreation in the world.

All of these Premiers were real conservative Liberals who knew the difference between conserving and flogging stuff off.

But back to Blue Poles. As chairman of the National Gallery a decade or so ago, I received a phone call from an eminent Australian asking if we would be prepared to sell the iconic painting to one of the five richest people in the world.

The offer was for $US100 million plus a smaller Pollock picture – a handsome profit over the $US2 million purchase price in 1973 that was approved by Prime Minister Whitlam amid populist outrage.

And now, 43 years after purchase, Blue Poles has appreciated at 14 per cent a year. Compare that to your house at a bit over 7 per cent or the stock market.

Nevertheless, we knocked the offer back and it fell to me to ring Gough and tell him what had happened. The great former PM told me that the anti-purchase campaign was one of his worst experiences as Prime Minister and then after a short pause said 'Thank you, comrade ... and may I say I was right … yet again"

From time to time Gough would return to the National Gallery and as he grew older we provided an electric scooter to help him get about the building.

I remember his first ride. His eyes lit up as we started to show him how it worked. However we hadn't got to the braking bit before he took off to inspect Blue Poles.

With a closing speed of 5km an hour, terrified guards leaped into action as the great man struggled to find the brake.

With a metre or so to go, the scooter stopped. Gough quietly admired the work while the rest of us breathed a sigh of relief that the former PM was not embroiled in a new controversy about the work as the man who bought and then destroyed Blue Poles.

Australia's cultural treasures and Australia's sporting capacities cannot be separated from our financial and social future. The young senator must come to understand this along with one other thing. They will all outlast him.