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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.

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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.

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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.”

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