Those Ideas come from the land down under!

“And he said, I come from a land down under. Where beer does flow and men chunder. Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder? You better run, you better take cover.”

Never mind the undue influence of the Americans on the agenda of Stephen Harper; it’s the Land of Oz we need to be worried about. As the days until voting day dwindle, a couple of news services have discovered that Stephen Harper’s campaign is finding help from John Howard, the Conservative Prime Minister of Australia, who flies the flag of the Australia Liberal Party, but seems to be anything but.

The Globe and Mail picks up on the similarities between our current election campaign and the 1996 Australian campaign that brought Howard to power. Mr. Howard's national campaign director, Brian Loughnane, is advising the Conservatives in this campaign and his playbook is something that the Conservatives seem to be sticking to in rather serious fashion. Courting the folks in the mortgage belt, with tax cuts and a return to familiar values.

“With a slack jaw, and not much to say. I said to the man, are you trying to tempt me. Because I come from the land of plenty?”

And there’s a very good reason for Harper and his Conservatives to take his template seriously, since 1996 Howard has won four successive elections and seem to have captured the middle ground of Australian voters. Now there’s something that should be giving Paul Martin’s Liberal party some serious indigestion. Beyond just losing an election, they may inadvertently have set the table for the Conservatives to spend some time at 24 Sussex Drive and possibly take away the one thing they could always depend on, an appeal to the broad middle ground of the electorate.

Over at the Tyee, they too have picked up the theme of long distance tech support for the Conservative campaign. They detail some of the things that Howard benefited from in his campaigns, the most glaring similarity being an opponent who seems to be stumbling around in the dark, which seems to be the featured attraction in our 2006 campaign.

They also suggest that a Harper victory next Monday may not be necessarilly be an endorsement of the Harper agenda, but rather a supreme distaste for the present government and a desire to move on from the past few years of scandal and entitlement. Something that Howard initially benefited from and then used to his advantage, as he continued to govern Australia while the opposition Labour party began to devour itself with internal struggles and subterfuge.

The only question that needs to be answered is will Canada be facing a similar form of governance as that of Australia. Break out the Fosters and the Vegemite sandwiches folks! While everyone was worried about the influence of George W., it was a John W. we should have been thinking about all along. We’re about to be following the way of the south, just not the south many of us thought it would be.

We’ll observe this final week of the campaign with a thought from those early eighties Aussie Exports, Men at Work; it pretty well sums up many Canadians feelings regarding politics these days.

"Who can it be knocking at my door? Go 'way, don't come 'round here no more. Can't you see that it's late at night? I'm very tired, and I'm not feeling right. All I wish is to be alone;Stay away, don't you invade my home. Best off if you hang outside, Don't come in - I'll only run and hide."


Down under- Men at Work, from Business at Usual, 1982
Who can it Be Now - Men at Work, from Business as Usual, 1982