The Vitamin's Nonsense Page

Harper, Aussie PM cement close ties

From today's Toronto Star.
May 18, 2006. 05:41 AM
GRAHAM FRASER
NATIONAL AFFAIRS WRITER
OTTAWA—He's Stephen Harper's new best friend.
Australian flags are hanging on the lampposts in downtown Ottawa to welcome Australian Prime Minister John Howard — the only foreign leader who Harper got to know before he became Prime Minister.
Last summer, they both attended a meeting in Washington of the International Democratic Union, a conservative gathering, and according to sources, the two men bonded.
Although Howard, 66, is about 20 years older with 14 years in power and four successful elections under his belt, the two men have a "similar outlook, similar policies and similar ideologies," said an official in Ottawa who has watched the careers of both men.
"There is a centre-right alternative approach to governance," the official said, adding "not the harder American version and not the soft European version."
The bond they established last summer has proved to be more than simply personal.
After the Jan. 23 election, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's ABC News reported that Brian Loughnane, the federal director of Howard's Liberal Party, provided informal advice to the Conservatives during the election campaign.
"It's understood he travelled to Canada several times and spoke regularly to Conservative campaign officials," said ABC News reporter Kim Landers.
Loughnane is a friend of Patrick Muttart, one of Harper's advisers and now a special adviser in the Prime Minister's Office. Muttart had made a careful study of Howard's successful 2004 election victory.
"Mr. Harper's campaign was in fact orchestrated in such a way to look like John Howard's campaigns of the last 10 years," said Greg Barns, a former candidate in Howard's party, who is now writing a book comparing politics and society in Canada and Australia. "That is, with an emphasis on tax cuts, with an emphasis on so-called mainstream values, with a tax on so-called elites."
Howard, like Harper, is a blunt-talking conservative whowas an admirer of Britain's Margaret Thatcher and her economic policies of reducing taxes, privatization and cutting the size of government.
Also, like Harper, the Australian leader has remained a clearly conservative leader and a close ally of U.S. President George W. Bush, who sang Howard's praises after a meeting at the White House on Tuesday.
While there may be some mutual political satisfaction in today's meeting, this is not the reason Howard is coming to Ottawa, where he will address the House of Commons today.
"The purpose of the trip is to celebrate the policy similarities of the two countries," Australian High Commissioner Bill Fisher told the Toronto Star.
"Australia and Canada are like twins separated at birth."
Fisher said he is amazed at the similarities he sees almost every day: both are continent-sized federations with a Westminster parliamentary system; both are sparsely populated with populations concentrated in cities; both cling to the southern rim of their countries, with a hostile climate in the north; both deal with problems of isolation and urban concentration; both have indigenous issues; both have natural-resource-rich economies; both have immigration issues and transportation woes.
As a result, Fisher said, there are many practical issues the two leaders can discuss, and exchange notes and ideas about.
"Canada is really the one country in the world where (an Australian prime minister) can do that," he said. "It's a super occasion to compare notes and policy ideas."
Fisher joked there are no problems between the two countries to be fixed or improved by the two leaders.
"There are no problems. No problems," he said, in mock dismay. "I looked and I couldn't find any."
As a result, he said, the relationship is undervalued in both countries.
However, beneath the surface of tranquillity, Canada and Australia work closely on a number of issues, sharing intelligence data and working closely together at the United Nations.
The one significant difference has been in defence policy.
Australia, unlike Canada, has configured its military for combat rather than for peacekeeping — and, with 10 million fewer people, has an armed forces the same size as Canada's.
Under Howard's leadership, Australia sent 1,500 troops into Iraq, while Canada refused to participate in the Iraq war.
The result has had considerable impact on Australia's relationship with its allies.
"Howard killed three birds with one stone," an Asian diplomat observed. "He did George W. Bush a favour, he did (Britain's) Tony Blair a favour by relieving some of the British troops in Basra — and he did Japan a favour by providing security protection for the humanitarian and reconstruction operation that the Japanese had sent to Iraq."
That is the kind of leverage and influence that Harper is trying to achieve by extending Canada's military mission in Afghanistan.

posted by The Vitamin's Blog @ 9:23 a.m.