Sorry, but
To: The Indonesian Foreign Minister
From: The Australian Prime Minister
My Dear Dr Alatas,
May I thank you, on behalf of the Australian people, for your country's
most kind declaration of war, received in my office at 8pm last night.
With sincere regret, I must decline your invitation to fight. If you
could delay your invasion of our northern coastline until, say, 2015,
I'm sure we'd be able to give you a terrific scrap.
But at the moment I doubt we could even field a team. Our F-111s are
grounded again, and, because of their age (ours have the gearshift on
the steering column, and those indicators that flip out of the door
pillars), spare parts are available only at wrecking yards and swap
meets. Also, we just can't seem to get them to run properly on
unleaded. The Chinooks in Townsville are grounded, too. Losing the
choppers is bad news as our fixed-wing capacity in the north is
presently in tatters. Why? A slight kerfuffle over my good friend
Warren Entsch's concreting business has left our RAAF base at Weipa
short of a number of desirable features - like a runway.
Our Defence Minister, Mr. Moore, sends his apologies, but insists that a
war is presently out of the question as we don't have a Defense
Secretary. Well we have one, but he's currently trying to wrestle Mr.
Moore to death in the Federal Court, for wrongful dismissal. It would be
a little unfair on Mr. Moore to begin a war while nobody in the Defence
Department will speak to him.
You will probably know that the Chief of Navy isn't getting a new
contract either but, even if he was, I could not possibly commit our
senior service to any conflict. Our two Collins submarines, 'Drowning'
and 'Waving', have just returned from sea trials off Fiji to assess
their design targets of silence and stealth. Every time they went into
reverse, normal conversation became impossible across most of Chile and
Peru. It is also disheartening that Drowning ran aground, especially as
this mishap somehow snapped off her periscope. Think
about it!
Not that we have enough submariners to man the boats anyway. Attracting
career sailors to our modern professional navy has not been helped by
recent revelations on prime time television that recruits are routinely
stripped naked, smeared with food scraps and excrement, and flogged on
the buttocks. I take no comfort from the flood of applications this
publicity drew from Tasmania.
The army is still the bulwark of Australia's security, but even there
things are difficult. Changes following the Women In Combat report, and
same-sex relationship rulings, have, in my opinion compromised our
flexibility. For example, both the First Heavy Armored (Dykes With
Pykes) and the Gay Fusiliers (The Queens Light Foot) refuse to fight for
a fortnight either side of the Sydney Mardi Gras.
Other soldiers are insisting, these days, on owning the conflict and
have begun to enroll in regular workshops to manage their aggression.
High Court rulings may also mean, with no offence Dr. Alatas, that we
cannot engage in a battle against a racially-selected enemy force. Can
you recruit a sprinkling of Europeans next time? By all means take as
many of ours as you want.
It is a good indication of the quality of our Defense Intelligence
Organisation that I am unable to send this transmission in code. The
code books were stolen by an unstable, steroid abuser, Jean-Phillippe
Wispelaere, shrewdly recruited by the DIO, and entrusted with most of
our defense secrets. So now we don't have any. Mr. Wispelaere sold
them all in Bangkok. If you have any secrets you don't need any more,
we would be most grateful for them. I should have the code books back
soon. Christies are auctioning them in Havana next week. In the
meantime, DIO suggests we do the old a=b, b=c, c=d code. They swear by
it.
I know our refusal will be a considerable disappointment to you, but can
I suggest that you consider invading New Zealand instead? Their only
significant defense capability lies with their two Anzac-class frigates,
'Mulk' and 'Lemb'. I have no doubt you'll cream them, and I
should know. They were both built in Australia.
Best wishes,
John Howard |
