Advance Australia, without NZ

At nearly 70, Don Farrell is the oldest minister in the Australian government-a wily backroom tactician who has spent 16 mostly invisible years in Parliament.

- Bernard Lagan

That is not to say Farrell, who gained a law degree then became a unionist, is idle: rather, he's a factional Godfather who has made and broken Labor prime ministers.

Now Australia's rumpled Trade and Tourism Minister, he still rarely steps into the limelight. To his own bemusement, he set off a small firestorm when he answered a question in the Senate on March 18, saying that New Zealand was Australia's closest international ally.

The opposition's mirth and even the surprise of one or two of Farrell's Labor colleagues came after Farrell took issue with his questioner's description of the US as Australia's most trusted international partner.

Farrell responded: "I'm not sure that the United States is our most trusted ally. I would have said New Zealand, in the whole history of time. I would have said New Zealand is our closest internationally."