In a development that has the chattering classes reaching for the smelling salts faster than you can say ‘geopolitical embarrassment’, an Australian ex-minister has opened a crowd-funded investigation into the Aukus submarine deal. Yes, you heard that correctly. A crowd-funded investigation.
Because apparently, when the fate of nuclear submarines and billions of taxpayers’ pounds hangs in the balance, the only recourse left is to pass the hat around like a charity appeal for a particularly expensive hip replacement. The honourable gentleman, one Stephen Smith (as if the universe couldn’t get more on the nose), has launched this probe with the stated aim of ‘scrutinising’ the deal. Scrutiny.
What a quaint concept. In an era where governments sign multibillion-pound contracts with the speed of a gin-addled fishmonger forgetting his trousers, someone has finally remembered the existence of due diligence. But of course, since real accountability requires pesky things like parliamentary oversight and civil service integrity, we must instead rely on the kindness of strangers and their spare change.
The Aukus pact, for those who have been living under a rock or, more likely, in a brewery, is the trilateral agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to deliver nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra. A deal so secretive it makes the Freemasons look like open-book telly presenters. A deal so complex it requires the transfer of technology, the building of new infrastructure, and the collective forgetting of how many zeros are in its price tag.
And now, a former minister has decided that the best way to ‘probe’ this is to ask the internet for money. Delightful. One can almost hear the ghost of Bill Hicks weeping into his whiskey.
The sheer, glorious absurdity of it all is enough to make a satirist’s heart soar. We have reached a point where serious geopolitical affairs are being investigated via GoFundMe. What’s next?
A Kickstarter to find out if the Prime Minister actually knows which end of a submarine goes in the water? A Patreon to audit the MoD’s paperclip budget? The crowdfunded probe is, let’s be honest, the only logical conclusion to a world where ‘transparency’ has become a buzzword mouthed by politicians while they sign nondisclosure agreements in invisible ink.
Smith, who once held the defence portfolio himself, surely knows the murky depths into which he now peers with a miner’s lamp. But instead of wielding a parliamentary committee or an official enquiry, he has resorted to the digital tin cup. It is either a stroke of genius or the last gasp of a man who has given up on institutions.
Probably both. The sum being sought is, naturally, not inconsiderable. But when weighed against the cost of a single submarine’s toilet seat, it is a pittance.
A rounding error. A coffee budget for the Admiralty’s secret Starbucks run. Yet this is the point.
The very act of crowdsourcing the investigation is a metaphor for our times: public trust has been outsourced to the public itself. The government, with its secrets and its submarines, has left the citizenry no choice but to pool their pocket change for the truth. It is both inspiring and pathetic.
In a better world, Smith would be leading a fully-funded Senate select committee with subpoena powers. In this world, he is a man with a Twitter account and a PayPal link. But let us not be too cynical.
Perhaps this is the new model of accountability. Perhaps future generations will look back on this moment and say, ‘Ah yes, that was when democracy finally learned to micro-transaction.’ Or perhaps it will just be another footnote in the long, sad history of deals made in back rooms and paid for with borrowed money.
Either way, please enjoy the show. And if you wish to contribute, do so freely. Just remember: your donation might not buy a submarine, but it might buy the answer to why we’re buying them in the first place.
