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Article from The Courier Mail - 26 Aug 99,
written by Peter Wear If We Haven't Arrived Start The Battle Without Us.
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 Defence 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
Armoured (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 enrol 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 Defence 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 defence 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 defence 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 |
