Maturity of a Country

I just watched a show on CBC Newsworld called Hemispheres which had on a guest commentator from Australia. As one would expect, he compared and contrasted our two countries. He used the analogy that the two were like a pair of teenagers (I guess being relatively young countries) that had started to "grow up" as it were. And what was his examples of "growing up"? Cases where the two countries opposed the US. (e.g. opposition to Vietnam, etc.) He then expressed his satisfaction with our PM Jean Chretien for opposing the recent war in Iraq and his displeasure with Australia for siding with the Americans, implying that Canada was better than Australia (hence more "grown up") in this regard. Why is it that the maturity of a country is determined by the criteria that it "opposes the US"? Does that make any sense? Are we really so much better than Australia because our PM opposed a war that resulted in the removal of a very evil person and arguably made life better for the people of Iraq? Does that really demonstrate maturity? Needless to say, the comments fit in very well with the CBC's regular viewpoints.