Tag: AUKUS

Satirical illustration of men in business suits kneeling barefoot in snow before golden gates, with the White House and a brightly lit cage-fighting octagon visible on the lawn beyond, bunting on the fence and banknotes drifting down like snowflakes.

Canossa on the South Lawn

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In 1077 a king knelt three days in the snow at Canossa, and it worked. Nine and a half centuries on, the pope-king turns eighty behind a cage on the South Lawn while the pretenders queue: a trillionaire, a Crown Prince, and a deputy sheriff paying by direct debit. Urban Wronski on the new Investiture Controversy.

One Careful Owner

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The interview never happened. It should have. John Clarke died in 2017, and the genre died with him: the po-faced minister, the patient interrogator, the absurdity delivered in the flat tones of a man explaining a routine procurement. So here is the sketch he might have written, had he lived to watch us buy three used submarines and call it a defence strategy.

The set is two chairs and a desk. We join them mid-interview.

DAWE: Minister, under the original deal Australia was to receive three submarines. Two second-hand, one brand new.

CLARKE: The new one was the exciting one.

DAWE: And now?

CLARKE: Three submarines, Bryan. The number remains unchanged.

DAWE: But the new one has gone.

CLARKE: The new one has been streamlined.

DAWE: Into what?

CLARKE: Into an older one.

DAWE: So all three are now second-hand.

CLARKE: All three are proven. We’ve placed a premium on simplicity. The brand-new one had never been to sea. We didn’t know it. These, we know everything about. We even know how old they are.

DAWE: How old are they?

CLARKE: Between six and fifteen years.

DAWE: The design life is thirty-three.

CLARKE: So someone’s taken care of the difficult early years. We’ve outsourced the running-in. The Americans have very kindly absorbed the depreciation.

DAWE: The country is paying an extraordinary amount of money.

CLARKE: You could buy a great many doughnuts, Bryan.

DAWE: We’re not buying doughnuts.

CLARKE: No, but it gives you a sense of scale. Warehouses of them. Fresh daily.

DAWE: For three used submarines.

CLARKE: One careful owner. Full service history.

DAWE: When do they arrive?

CLARKE: The first in 2032. And in the meantime, the jobs. That’s what nobody mentions.

DAWE: What jobs?

CLARKE: We have two hundred Australian tradespeople at Pearl Harbor. Skilled people. Working on the submarines.

DAWE: Our submarines.

CLARKE: The American ones.

DAWE: We’ve sent Australian workers to fix the US Navy’s submarines.

CLARKE: To increase their sea days. They’re behind, the poor beggars. Can’t build them fast enough. So we’re helping out.

DAWE: While we wait for ours.

CLARKE: While we wait. It’s the alliance, Bryan. You give a little.

DAWE: We’re paying an enormous sum and supplying labour to build the boats the seller hasn’t finished.

CLARKE: When you put it like that it sounds transactional. This is a friendship. You don’t keep score.

DAWE: Minister, are we any safer?

CLARKE: They’re perfectly safe, Bryan.

DAWE: Safe from what?

CLARKE: From the threat.

DAWE: Which threat?

CLARKE: The one we don’t name. You don’t name it. That’s the whole point of it.

DAWE: But you’ve costed it. You’ve sent two hundred tradesmen to Hawaii over it.

CLARKE: We’ve had to be prudent.

DAWE: About a country you won’t name.

CLARKE: Our largest trading partner, Bryan. You don’t insult a customer.

DAWE: So we’re defending ourselves against the people we sell the iron ore to.

CLARKE: We sell them the iron ore. They sell us the anxiety. It’s a very balanced relationship.

DAWE: And the submarines arrive when?

CLARKE: The first in 2032. The Australian-built ones in the 2040s.

DAWE: Until then?

CLARKE: You’ll always know where they are.

DAWE: Thank you for your time.

A note to readers: this, invented interview is a tribute to the comic genius of John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, their remarkable craft and timing and an act of homage to a tradition of satire that is razor-sharp and yet utterly minimalist. Pared to the essentials. Two chairs, a desk, rather than any set and the truth said plainly enough to be unbearable. There is no greater compliment.

A very close cousin to this text also currently appears in The AIMN under, “Underwater Matters: AUKUS and the Art of the Used Submarine.”

Empty spotlit stage with a card table holding a gavel, a gold watch and a furled flag beneath a torn banner reading "PEACE DEAL".

The Art of the Steal

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Trump killed Truth, Justice and the American Way. The same announcement-as-product racket just sold Australia three second-hand submarines and called it a triumph.

A dark editorial cartoon showing a self-satisfied bureaucrat at a desk marked “Sustainability Taskforce” signing documents while a exhausted woman with an NDIS appeal folder sits in a waiting room behind him, and through the window a nuclear submarine sits in dry dock with a $425 billion price tag.

Governments Just Get On With the Job: Mark Butler’s Razor Gang and the NDIS They Want You to Forget

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Lisa Goodwin’s twins are autistic. She applied three times, fought for years,
and when Labor announced its latest cuts she called it “a betrayal.” Urban
Wronski on Mark Butler’s razor gang, the $425 billion submarine program eating
the fiscal space disabled children once occupied, the algorithm that replaces
human judgment, and the shearing sheds that would not recognise the party
that grew from them.

Richard Marles, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, at a press conference projecting institutional confidence while Australia’s defence procurement record, AUKUS submarine delays, the Washington happenstance encounter, and the Geelong refinery fire suggest a more complicated story

DeadWood Marles: Australia’s Liberal in Drag

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He is, in the most precise political sense available, a Liberal in drag. Same tough talk on alliances and deterrence. Same fondness for American hardware and AUKUS largesse. Wrapped in just enough factional red to keep the true believers satisfied. All suit, no spark. And a remarkable talent for making national security sound like a mildly confusing numbers meeting that ran somewhat overtime. Urban Wronski profiles Richard “DeadWood” Marles, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence.

The radome spheres of Pine Gap intelligence facility visible against the Australian desert sky at dusk, small against the vast red landscape

Not Reporting A War Part 2

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Pete Hegseth is the Peter Principle applied to the largest weapons arsenal in human history. Pine Gap guides the missiles. Australian-made F-35 parts are in the payload. And our media calls it a partnership. Part Two of Urban Wronski’s investigation into what Australia’s press is not reporting, and what our silence is costing.