Top Ten Likely Outcomes for the AUKUS Submarine Deal. From most to least likely...

A glimpse into our potential underwater future...

1. Trump declares AUKUS a disaster, a horrible, corrupt Joe Biden deal, and insists that only he can fix it. His solution? Upfront payment of the entire $368 billion, in cash, no questions asked. Albo and Richard Marles launch themselves into an exhausting series of national meat tray raffles, only for Trump to then demand $500B worth of mineral rights. Peter Dutton runs on ‘saving the alliance’.

2. Upon taking office, Prime Minister Dutton orders Treasury to invest the entire AUKUS budget into Trumpcoin. Pleased with Dutton’s financial savvy, Trump reverses his stance and now calls AUKUS “a great deal, the best deal, the most submersible deal ever made.” He personally guarantees delivery of the best submarines, the most nuclear submarines. A decade later, President-for-Life Donald Trump Jr. assures Australia that yes, the submarines were definitely delivered – they're just so stealthy that nobody can see them. Or touch them. Or detect them on sonar. Or find any paperwork proving their existence.

3. Desperately seeking to fill the yawning capability gap, Australia turns to its other AUKUS partner, only to find that the UK has run out of money and can’t build any submarines for anybody, including itself. Insisting on contractual fulfilment, Australia is compensated with the remains of the Royal Navy, now mostly a collection of 1970s tugboats that are “still technically afloat, depending on the tide.”

4. In a desperate bid to salvage the original submarine deal that Scott Morrison torpedoed in favor of AUKUS, Australia dispatches an urgent diplomatic mission to Paris. But negotiations stall immediately. The French delegation refuses to speak English, despite clearly understanding every word. Every Australian request is met with a bemused shrug and a languid, dismissive "Je ne comprends pas." Meanwhile, the French openly gossip in perfect English, pausing only to light another Gauloise and roll their eyes.

5. Just as the Australian delegation throws up its hands and storms off in search of a McDonald’s, France suddenly agrees to build Australia’s submarines. But there are, naturellement, a few conditions. The submarines cannot be expected to operate during the summer months, in either hemisphere, as this would violate French labor laws protecting two-to-three-month holidays. Nor, under any circumstances, may the nuclear reactors be started before 10 AM.

   A limited menu of operations is available between 10 AM and noon, but on closer inspection, Australian negotiators discover the reactors will only generate enough power during tbhis period to microwave a dry croissant and warm up a truly awful café au lait.

6. After years of secret negotiations with France, New Zealand stuns the world by unveiling a brand-new fleet of conventionally powered attack submarines—purchased at a steep discount from the very same deal Australia abandoned years earlier. In a move both gracious and deeply humiliating, Australian Prime Minister Clive Palmer is summoned to Wellington for urgent talks. Upon arrival, he is presented with a formal list of demands, handwritten on luxuriously thick, Hobbit-themed stationery:

   Australia must renounce all claims of ownership over every New Zealand-born movie star, in perpetuity—except Mel Gibson, who NZ insists is “definitely yours.”

   New Zealand is to be recognized as the sole, rightful creator of pavlova, and all Australians must formally apologize for years of cultural appropriation.

   Australia to formally change its name to ‘the West Island’ and remit a one-time compensation payment of $500 billion, to be paid entirely in creamed honey and Ugg boots.

   As PM Palmer sweats into his ill-fitting white suit, the New Zealand Prime Minister turns and winks to President Macron in the corner, smirking and sipping a small but impossibly expensive glass of Bordeaux.

7. Fresh from the success of their highly leveraged buyout of Taiwan, the People’s Liberation Army Navy Finance Corporation and Heavy Engineering Company makes a generous offer to Australia: as many submarines as they need to protect themselves from the predatory ambitions of the Mar-a-Lagon Empire, now entering its third chaotic decade of imperial expansion. The regime, having abandoned NATO and somehow lost a war against Greenland, Canada, and the tax-free territory of the Bahamas, remains hellbent on expansion, with its bloodshot eyes now set on anywhere that sells Diet Coke wholesale.

8. Elon Musk offers to repurpose thousands of unsold cyber trucks as the world’s first chainsaw-armed cyber-sub-mesh-network running on Dogecoin and firing torpedoes via Neuralink. His medical team quietly increases the dosage.

9. At last. After decades of mismanagement, strategic blunders, and paying for submarines that never arrived and possibly never existed, Australia abandons its reliance on foreign allies and fully embraces defence independence.

   The Royal Australian Navy leans into its true strengths, replacing its entire surface and subsurface fleet with a huge swarm of really loud Jet Skis, piloted by drunken bogans in high-vis Bintang singlets.

   Each Jet Ski is:

   •Armed with a modified nail gun

   •Outfitted with an Esky full of illegal fireworks

   •Piloted by a bloke named ‘Davo’ who ‘could’ve gone pro’ if it weren’t for the knee injury he got in Under-12 footy.

   This terrifying armada imposes peace through superior shitcuntery, from Christmas Island to Hawaii.

10. Australia Actually Gets the Submarines It Paid For. Lulz. Nah, prolly not.