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In 1788, England hatched a devious plot: one by one, they rounded up tens of thousands
of local criminals onto ships, sailed them out into the middle of the Indian Ocean, and
sunk the ships, killing everyone onboard.
The ships—and the innumerable bodies trapped inside them—remain hidden for eternity at
the bottom of the sea right here, where Australia would be… if it existed at all.
That’s right, Australia doesn’t exist.
It never existed.
The entire fictional landmass is at the center of the largest cover-up in human history.
And sure, now you’re probably thinking, “But I’ve been to Australia!”
Wrong—you’ve actually been to the Eastern Patagonian Desert in Argentina after being
tricked by a cabal of corrupt airline pilots sworn to covering up 18th-Century England’s
sixty-seventh worst genoci… wait, hold on.
I’m sorry, guys, I think my new intern has been feeding me research from conspiracy theory
sites again.
And, believe it or not, this isn’t the only widespread conspiracy theory about Australia
not existing—a lot of people, even some Australians, believe that Australia isn’t
a country but is, actually, an American corporation.
The weird thing is, it turns out that they’re actually kind of right, but in order to explain
exactly how—and in order to determine whether or not Australians should be jumping in the
ocean and swimming to the nearest real country—we need to talk about how Australia became a
company in the first place.
The year is 2009.
Barack Obama has just been sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.
Peanut Corp is being implicated in the deaths of nine Americans and the poisoning of 600
more.
You are alone in your room, recovering from the swine flu, playing Wii Sports Resort on
mute as your mother weeps in the living room, unsure if your family will ever be able to
recover from the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.
By June, all of these connected dots will eventually culminate in Australia’s incorporation
in the United States.
Well, I mean, except for the Obama thing, and the peanut thing, and the swine flu thing,
and the Wii thing… really, just the recession thing.
The recession is what will lead to Australia’s eventual incorporation in the United States.
You see, when a country’s economy starts to collapse, the idea of drawing all of your
money out of your bank account and investing it in gold and man-killing crossbows before
the bank collapses starts to sound really appealing.
Suddenly, everyone is kicking down the door of the nearest Wells Fargo, draining the banks
of all of their money, and things get… really bad.
Like, “a whole bunch of people lose their entire life’s savings because the banks
ran out of money and shut down” bad.
Knowing that this sort of “run on the bank” could happen in their country if the downturn
reached them, Australia promised all of its citizens that even if all of the banks collapsed,
the government would be able to pay back any of the money that they weren’t able to withdraw
in time.
With this sort of reassurance, there would be no reason for people to panic and, hopefully,
the “run on the bank” would never need to happen in the first place.
Now, that sounds good, but it also sounds good when you tell a girl at a bar that your
favorite hobby is skiing down a giant mountain of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck—the problem,
however, is the same: when you need to prove it, where’s that money gonna come from?
Australia couldn’t just print more money—well, I mean, they could, but then you run the risk
of crazy hyperinflation like the Weimar Republic and lesson one of history is that you really,
really don’t want to be the Weimar Republic—so they decided that if it ever came to it, they
should just borrow the money from someplace else.
Specifically, American companies.
Now, it’s not quite that simple—lending money to a country instead of a company comes
with certain risks.
For example, if I lent money directly to Australia, Australia could just pass the “Sam is a
total rube and no one ever has to pay him his money back” law.
So, in order to follow the same regulations as other American companies, Australia had
to register as a corporation with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, creating its very
own prospectus, business plan, budget outline… basically, everything a real American corporation
would need to secure investors.
So, what does this mean for Australians?
Is Australia not a real country?
Are Australians all just American employees?
Are evil American investors pocketing Australian taxpayers’ hard-earned money?
Yes, yes, and y—wait, sorry, that was my conspiracy theorist intern again.
The real answer is, of course, no.
The Australian Treasury owns the corporation in full, the shares are not available on any
stock exchange, and the prospectus prohibits any share of the company from being traded,
sold, or compensated with dividends.
And let’s be honest, it’s not like investors are jumping to cash in on a company whose
most popular product is a middle aged guy with a big knife, anyway.
The point is, Australia’s incorporation is largely a precautionary measure to protect
its own citizens, and in fact, the company has never once needed to be used because its
very existence successfully prevented the disaster it was built to remedy.
Now, if you’re an Australian watching, you might be frustrated to learn that your country
is an American corporation when you still don’t have access to every American movie
and TV show on your Netflix servers.
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