CANBERRA

A LEAKED REPORT from Australia’s top secret signals intelligence unit says that an artificial intelligence program using quantum computing has discovered that some of the many whales which pass the country’s east coast every year are singing in a code that easily translates into Mandarin, the main language of the People’s Republic of China.

“The thinking is that the Chinese have either captured or bred whales and trained them to send reports of what the see when they pass our coasts every year,” says former Aussie secret agent Baz Lazer, who once infiltrated a Khmer Rouge meeting disguised as a bowl of rice. “That could explain those Chinese ships around our waters a while back. They might have been dropping off whale agents or picking them up, or setting up receivers and transmitters. They’re awful cunning, the Chinese. Inscrutable, you know. And they know how safe their agents are. How’d allow whaling here? These cute bastards are treated like royalty when they may well be betraying us. God strewth!”