Australian Prime Minister John Howard is in Ottawa today visiting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Now I am no expert in international relations, but I do know Howard is one of the world’s most successful conservative politicians and that he has provided principled and courageous leadership in the war on terrorism.
And that little bit of knowledge came in handy a couple of days ago when an Australian reporter called me up to get my opinion on Howard’s visit.
You can read the resulting article here.
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4 comments:
Can this story end already?
Howard has been a successful conservative leader, but Australia has a different political scene. There they ahve a socialist party (Labor Party) and conservative party (Liberal Party) whereas we have a socialist party (NDP), centrist party (Liberals), and conservative party (Conservatives). If there is any lesson here, it is for the Liberals, which is stay in the centre, don't drift to the left or the Conservatives could be in power for many years to come.
Also while I support Howard's economic policies, I disagree with his social policies and foreign policy views. Allying ourselves with the United States closely is the wrong way to go. We make more friends globally by keeping our distance from the United States than by getting too cozy.
I think we have lessons to learn from Australia. Dwindling the ranks of the civil service being one of those. We have way too much bureaucratic bloat in this country and not much to show for it.
I am not against us adopting many of John Howard's economic policies, which have worked well. However, on issues of immigration, minority rights, moral issues, foreign policy and aboriginal affairs, his approach has been a disaster and we should not go down that route.
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