I really do not like the company Harper keeps.JOHN Howard will take great comfort knowing that when he arrives in Canada today for an official state visit, he'll be meeting a like-minded Prime Minister who has already demonstrated his new friendship.
Despite damning evidence of AWB's illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein under the UN's former oil-for-food program in Iraq, Stephen Harper's new Government hasn't uttered a word of criticism. This despite Canada being the first to sound a warning about the situation and missing out on valuable wheat contracts because it wouldn't pay the same bribes as Australia.
Howard has been to Canada only once in his 10 years as PM but will be the first foreign leader to visit Ottawa since Harper's Conservative Party won office in January. Notably, the visit comes in the same week Harper's Government, the first Tory administration in Canada for 13 years, passes 100 days in office.
Given that political lessons learned from Howard's four election victories in Australia played a big part in Harper's defeat of former Liberal Party prime minister Paul Martin, a love-in of rare ideological passion is expected when the new kid on the Tory block meets the old hand from down under.
At 46, Harper is 20 years younger than Howard, but it's about all that sets them apart. Both men entered parliament aged 34 and both are socially conservative free marketers who believe in family, individual enterprise and the US alliance. A strong Christian ethic underscores their beliefs.
An economics graduate, Harper has the same understated Howard confidence in his intellectual ability and shares the Australian's passion for sports and belief in the playing field (an ice-hockey rink for Harper as opposed to Howard's cricket field) as society's great leveller.
Harper even has Howard's small-c charisma, the boring kind that comes not from any natural flair but from having been around for a long time.
Relations between Australia and Canada are likely to become much closer as a result of Howard's visit, given they are two highly urbanised but sparsely populated democracies that have been strangely distant despite being multicultural societies with a shared historical, cultural and legal heritage; both are also resource-rich commodity exporters and in the strong orbit of the US.
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