What is Land Forces Expo?
Land Forces Expo is an international industry event to showcase equipment, technology and services for the armies of Australia and the Indo-Asia-Pacific. South Australia hosted the event in 2018.
In June 2021, it will be held in Brisbane. Its primary goals are to provide an effective platform for the exchange of ideas on key land forces issues (war games) and to take the Australian (weapons) industry to the world by bringing the world to Australia. It is an Arms Trade Fair showcasing products of war, supposedly in the name of national security. In reality, it is a huge multimillion-dollar commercial venture where the manufacturing and associated companies are the real winners and “doing business is easy”!
Who We Are
A group of citizens from a range of peace, faith and academic backgrounds, organisations and networks such as Just Peace, Wage Peace, Quakers Queensland, Peace Convergence, Friends of the Earth, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and United Nations Assoc Aust Qld (UNAAQ) who are deeply concerned about the rise and financial and humanitarian cost of militarism in Australia.
Our Aims
- Raise public awareness about this event
- Seek to ban the Expo using nonviolent action
- Expose companies in Brisbane engaged in weapons designing, engineering and/or manufacturing and seek the cessation of these lucrative business contracts
- Redirect the national conversation to one of forging a new economy with a focus on cooperation, mutual self-interest and creative nonviolence in international, national and local endeavours.
Our Focus
These weapons are used predominantly by military forces in authoritarian regimes, and ‘democracies’ on their own people to suppress labour, climate and democracy movements. They are used to restrict the civil rights of ethnic groups and the self-determination movements of Indigenous people. They aid the militarisation of fossil fuel and other land-based resource extraction. These weapons are sold to police forces for use in their militarised wings against civilian populations. They are also used to wage war.
Weaponising Brisbane’s industries
What Australians need to understand:
- War-making and weapons manufacturing and trading takes precedence over funding crucial social areas such as public housing, health, employment and education initiatives
- Australia currently pours a staggering $98.9m a day into our so-called defence forces and related agendas
- Growth in militarism is not helpful for peace and security. A regional arms race is about money for weapons corporations and not defence
- Australia’s national security is better served through adopting an independent foreign policy; relationship building with all our Asian neighbours; managing conflicts without violence; finding diplomatic solutions rather than depending on militarism; creating a culture of peace e.g. adding Australia’s signature to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
- For sale and on display will be tanks and armoured vehicles; ammunition; guns; attack helicopters; weaponised land-based robots; missiles; computer/digitised interfaces for sending rockets and ammunition; camera laser systems for canons and drones to “enhance lethality” and weaponised flying drones. These weapons will kill men, women and children like yourself, but this will be euphemistically called “collateral damage”
If you are interested in participating in any of our actions please contact LFEinfo@gmail.com
Landforces leaflet pages 1 and 2 together Final
