Margie Pestorius

Introduction

Wage Peace makes this submission to the AUKUS Inquiry with a focus on the weapons exports industry. We focus here today on the role of the AUKUS arrangements in allowing weapons export industry growth, influence, and enmeshment in the Australian economy resulting in dangerous harm.

Wage Peace look for new opportunities to involve ordinary people in campaigning and we seek to change the fundamental values that this society is based on. We act for earthcare not warfare.

We acknowledge the genocide of First Nations Peoples that occurred across this Great South Land. We recognise their survival and authority. And we intend to restore right relationships.

We consider AUKUS to be an economic program that reduces regulatory frameworks that were formerly in place – even precariously –  to contain military exports. We argue that AUKUS loosens and removes regulatory frameworks, making the export of weapons to a wide range of nation states and other entities easier and more accessible.  Australia’s compliant relationship with the US and its military forces is the foundation for Aukus. The US has an appalling record of destruction and harm.

We understand that earlier versions of AUKUS arrangements have been in place for many years. As the Weapons Exports Industry has expanded in Australia, we observe that it encountered constraints in regulatory frameworks in both the US and Australia. These constraints were not acceptable to industry corporations because they constrained profit and growth opportunities.

We propose that AUKUS sits most importantly in the economic sphere, as a business or trade agreement. We think this element should be constantly stressed and made primary in almost all political discourses to enable widespread understanding of the nature of the agreement. 

We suggest that AUKUS is an extension of the Weapons Exports Industry Program set up in 2017 by Prime Minister Turnbull and Defence Minister Pyne. And as a “Peace Movement” looking to dismantle, abolish, remove, scrap Aukus – it needs to be recognised as such. This submission is therefore somewhat addressed to other parties in the peace movement.

Weapons Exports Program 2017

The weapons exports industry was redesigned around 2016 under Defence Minister Christopher Pyne, who is currently a Nioa Board Advisor . The pathway for the new integrated design was prefigured by figures such as Lockheed Martin Australia President Kim Beazley (US Ambassador and and governor of Western Australia) with Boeing Australia President Brendan Nelson.

Michelle Fahy (Declassified Australia, 11 Dec 2022) traces Beazley setting up the model of embedding industry insiders inside government functions. Pyne’s 2016–17 architecture essentially codified as departmental structure what Beazley had already been doing informally as an individual operator. Seccombe, M. (“Brendan Nelson’s gravy sandwich,” 7am, 27 Jan 2020) tells the story of Nelson awarding a massive $8bn contract to Boeing against the advice of both RAAF officials and Department of defense officials. Nelson then gradually makes his way into Boeing’s upper echelons of control.

All these people were so-called defence ministers who later positioned themselves at the centre of the Australian weapons exports industry. They designed the system, then they advise on how to make it work for corporations. They serve the corporations for their own enrichment. 

Indicators that the export system they set up in 2017 (announced by Turnbull) is an economic system, and not a defence or “security” system include the following:

• Explicit, numeric export and growth targets, not defence-need targets
• Sales driven by market diversification, not alliance or self-defence logic
• Policy language centred on industrial competitiveness and “sovereign capability” as an economic asset

The 2017 announcement by Turnbull was explicitly aimed at increasing weapons exports and trades. Australia would move up to being in the “top 10 weapons exporters”. As soon as he became Defence Minister, Pyne visited Israel and UAE repeatedly to explore what sort of infrastructure was required. He immediately beefed up funding and restructured the Defence Exports Office (DEO).

A “top 10 exporter” goal is a trade-competitiveness benchmark, similar to targets set for wine or beef exports: It is not derived from Australia’s own strategic threat assessment.

At that time we noticed that Government-issued media releases frequently indicated the above. Sometimes there were four paragraphs in media releases from the Department at that time. The first claimed the allocation of funding was for industry development – for exports and trade. The second paragraph would refer to developing capabilities. The third was for jobs which is also a trade and economic capability. And the fourth paragraph might briefly mention defence. (See for example: Turnbull Government, “Launch of job-creating Defence Export Strategy,” Defence Ministers/Export Finance Australia, 29 Jan 2018; Price, M. & Birmingham, S., “Hundreds of jobs to flow from first Defence Export Facility loan,” Defence Ministers, 13 Aug 2019; Conroy, P., “More than $3.4 million in grants for Australian Defence Industry Manufacturing,” Defence Ministers, 6 Feb 2024.)

$270bn was allocated to boost the industry – an average of $27bn per year over 10 years. We presume annual spending was lower in the first few years (likely under $20bn per year), then rose to roughly $40bn per year, and in this last phase potentially to around $50bn per year. We are now in year 8, and what we see now is an allocation of about $50bn per year for the foundational infrastructure and continued direct and indirect subsidisation of the weapons exports industry.

 Aukus Pillar 2 opens whole new arenas of weapons production. The Submarines have been slated at about $10bn a year over 30 years. Facilitation of submarine supply chain infrastructure is just a fifth of the total spend. 

As the Submarine Program is rolled out, it more clearly resembles the Lockheed Martin’s F35 exports program: diversified supply chains, weapons factories in every city,  facilitated think tanks and institutional justification of the program (but no actual defence product), with the capture of state bureaucracies, the ALP and sequential governments. (Note ex defence minister Stephen Smiths role as the Aukus focussed Perth USAsia Centre- government funded business facilitation related to submarine and other Aukus business exports).

In fact Morrison’s signing of the AUKUS agreement marks a shift regarding the submarines  from DEFENCE purpose to EXPORTS SUPPLY CHAIN and NUCLEAR WASTE purpose.  The purpose of ” submarines ” changed.  The Acquisition was a no longer for defence but to obfuscate other activity.

It should be noted that this implicates every admiral, and naval captain involved in the fake ‘acquisition’. Because they know the real purpose. They know that no submarine is forthcoming.  For them personally,  presumably the purpose is for those men to have “careers” inside the ADF and afterwards in the weapons industry. We see already this month someone in WA who has gone “too far” in the game and is being court marshalled for being too obvious with the state capture.

Fake acquisition is also at the heart of the F35 program. The purpose of the F35s was always contested. At the time of acquisition, it was claimed they are unsuitable for Australia because they only fly 1200km without requiring refueling. There are only 7 refueling  tankers — and they are not very stealthy. F35s can’t even fly to Norfolk Island! F35s require 5 hours maintenance for every hour that they are flown. Random parts fail randomly and need to be resupplied from just in time supply chains and warehouses across the world. They don’t appear to be very useful if you were actually defending  5 major cities from an attack.

But we do know that F35s are suitable for  Israel to bomb and expand US power in the so-called Middle East. Business is good with an ongoing genocide in Palestine and ethnic cleansing in Southern Lebanon. Even this week we have reports of dozens of parts going from Australia to Israel to keep the F35s bombing. Yes that is an EXPORT. 

.Australia makes parts specially for the Israeli F35s.  Ferra is the only maker of those parts IN THE WORLD. And it makes parts for US F35 too — and for Canada’s f35s and the Netherlands. Dozens of them. It’s an export program.

The Submarine program, is well underway in terms of building the foundation for exports.Unfortunately for the complicity officers, the Submarine project is incredibly OBVIOUSLY not for Australian defence.  We propose that we stop speaking of it as a defence project. But as a weapons parts supply project to boost failing US production (Hardaker, D. 2023 https://www.crikey.com.au/topic/sinking-the-aukus-myths/ )

An Economy Based on Weapons Exports

We argue that AUKUS is an ECONOMIC program located in the Military Industrial Complex and should be approached and referred to as such. We propose that organisations associated with the Peace Movement cease referring to it as a “defence program”. In order to address it and remove it from the society, we must understand its nature and purpose.

Aukus removes regulatory mechanisms that were in place in the US and in Australia to produce the  the ultimate objectives of economic enmeshment, control, and profit. Dangerous genocide and ecological collapse are also inevitable outcomes. 

Here are a couple of examples of the removal of regulatory frameworks in the USA and in Australia. They are well documented by others.

AUKUS, for example:

• (in the US) exempts Australia and the UK from the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) licensing requirements, to ease transfer of controlled goods and technology from the US to Australia and the UK. This exemption is subject to Australia and the UK implementing a comparable export control framework and reciprocating with similar export exemptions.
• (in Australia) facilitates technology transfer between AUKUS nations by creating an AUKUS licence-free environment. The DTC Amendment Act removes the red tape in defence trade and streamlines Australia’s export control regime by introducing an export control framework that is comparable to that of the US.

AUKUS sits in the heart of harmful predatory capitalism. Its industries demand as few impediments as possible.

Economy of the Occupation to an Economy of Genocide

Albanese in her 2025 report “Economy of the occupation to economy of genocide” (Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur) sets out the following elements that make an “economy”:

• A profit-generating system, not just a set of transactions. This amounts to an integrated apparatus where military industry, technology, finance, and academia are bound into the infrastructure of the occupation/genocide.
• Corporate actors as economic agents with obligations, not passive bystanders. Associated companies profit as decision-making actors, creating legal exposure and potential corporate/executive responsibility.
• Measurable financial gain as evidence of the system’s logic-financial upside correlates with violence, indicating a self-reinforcing profit structure.

We know that with business as the driving force there is a separation from ethics and responsibility. We can easily see the outcome of this in Gaza where no one weapons corporation, or government, or university, or weapons enmeshed think tank has been able to step and stop a genocide. As Pope Leo has noted in his recent book:  “Here the question is not merely efficiency of new tools, but also the risk that technology, detached from ethics and responsibility, will render decisions about life and death more rapid and impersonal, and will present the use of force as an immediate and viable option”. (Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026), chap. 5, “The Culture of Power and the Civilization of Love,” nn. 182–228. 

The weapons export industry production arenas have expanded in recent years. The AUKUS “Pillar 2” arenas are examples of just the most recent production arenas following the 20 year long “pilot” F35 program and the initial period of the easy and foundational items: armoured steel, big diesel trucks, munitions. “Production arenas” for subsequent products have been constantly expanding using the F-35 production system as a model.

A Dozen Production Arenas

New production arenas include land, sea, air and cyber domains. Aukus Pillar 2 explicitly refers to funding for  the development of later stage and more complex production arenas. It’s certainly gone far beyond Land Sea and Air acquisitions:  One way of categorising may be as follows:

• Lockheed Martin F-35 program
• Submarines
• Missiles and rockets
• Drones (weaponised and surveillance/ land sea air)
• Armoured trucks
• Ships and planes (two massive arenas)
• Surveillance and related technologies
• Bombs and explosives
• Weapons systems interfaces
• Radar and communications technology
• AI and data infrastructure and use.
• Development of bases and attack-oriented infrastructure designed for American use

This is not an exhaustive list.

Wage Peace proposes that all of these arenas are primarily weapons exports industry arenas. They serve the weapons exports industry corporations first and foremost in terms of the flow of government money.

Some products make end use with horrific harms. F35s were used in Gaza and ARE used in Lebanon and in Iran to kill people and destroy eco systems with massive contamination outcomes.  Many of the arenas such as “bombs”  require a genocide to boost profitability. For example before the Ukraine war and the Gaza genocide, 155mm shells were stockpiled. These artillery ammunition stockpiles were almost entire used up to completely and unnecessarily pulverise Gaza. Companies such as Rheinmetall and Noia now make money from replacing those stockpiles.  

Furthermore, those same companies require fake wars and conflicts to provide cover for their business model. An example of this is the “China Threat Narrative” which now permeates mainstream media due to the activity of pentagon and weapons industry corporation dominated think-tanks such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.  The China Threat Narrative contributes to the discursive and cultural conditions which provide the justification for the massive weapons industry spend.

We would say their ACTUAL business model is:

• get massive subsidies and injections of funds from the tax base to build infrastructure
• build a set of institutions arguing for war to justify the building of institutions that support the weapons export industry and the spending of millions.
• build pointless expensive polluting products
• sell them
• blow up the products with extensive human and ecological harm
• shelve the ones that unfortunately didn’t really work like various ships (for example: the Hunter Class frigates) and helicopters (tigers and taipans).

Australia’s weapons-exports program is sustained by a system of institutional facilitation designed to endure across changing governments.

• A dedicated Defence Exports Office and aligned Defence bureaucracies that steer export facilitation over time.
• Senior ADF generals and high-ranking officers positioned to define which weapons programs can be plausibly argued as “defence”, providing public legitimacy while their predominant orientation is to serve export-market priorities.
• Pro‑US / pro‑Israel think-tanks and selected media/academic figures are used to promote a defence rationale for production that is actually primarily export-oriented.
• Expanded defence R&D funding (via for example DSTO) diverting resources away from civilian research bodies like CSIRO.
• Deepening university-weapons industry partnerships, including new or expanded corporate links (examples Boeing-linked activity at UQ, BAE at Adelaide university), and broader “weapons/space washing” inside university programs.

These institutional ties have been described in Australia and in the International sphere by William Hartung (https://open.spotify.com/episode/5P6mLeFxLDghaUuCAYPGeT), Michelle Fahy, Andrew Feinstein (Feinstein, A., Holden, P., & Pace, B. (2011). The shadow world: Inside the global arms trade. Hamish Hamilton), with campaigns by Campaign Against the Arms Trade UK and World Beyond War, USA. Each of these authors and campaigns have described the global military industrial complex in similar ways to this submission.

Material Outcomes

1. Genocide

2. The flow up huge amounts of money to elites, billionaires, corporations and private equity companies.

3. Ecocide and ecological destruction.

4. A crackdown on dissent and civic activity by ordinary people opposing genocide.

Eight years into this weapons-exports program, the outcomes are concrete: weapons and components flow into an active genocide. The list of provisions includes armoured steel (Bisalloy), optically-automated weaponised turrets (EOS), drone parts, chemicals for explosives, drone defence systems and various F‑35 parts.  Public money is channelled from the Australian tax base into weapons companies and private equity, consolidating wealth upward in the hands of mega finance and billionaires. Ecological contamination increases, and Australian land is converted into infrastructure for attack-oriented basing and weapons storage, including the hosting of U.S. assets such as B‑52 bombers and US nuclear submarines in preparation for future geopolitical wars. US weapons bases.

The enforced building of this industry requires the repression and submission of ordinary Australian people who actively oppose the transfer of wealth and/or the genocide. Since the build up of this industry people have increasingly opposed it. Members of our networks have been arrested, silenced, raided, beaten, pepper sprayed, punched, threatened, vilified, arrested, charged. In most part for holding banners, leafleting and chanting in locations where weapons are being made.

Conclusion

The economic view enables more widespread choosing of targets so that ordinary people can be involved in a broad scale politics. The economic view enables us to identify and go after the “wraiths”: those powerful, potentially harmful actors whose agency is masked by scale, complexity, and layers of institutions—so you encounter their effects more than their faces.

In 2023, David Hardaker wrote a series of articles for Crikey about the influence of the weapons industry in the initiation of AUKUS. He traced the undue – soft power – influence of Crosby Textor (Hardaker, D https://www.crikey.com.au/topic/sinking-the-aukus-myths/  Hardaker, D. https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/06/02/ct-group-crosby-textor-uk-prime-ministers/). Crosby Textor’s CEO was Yaron Finkelstein who became Morrison’s private secretary. Mark Textor – worked for the nuclear industry in the 90s.  (Note that Finkelstein now works in Jillian Segal’s office in the same sort of position as her private “advisor”.) 

Wraith-like creatures that inhabit this world include

• Nuclear corporations. Their influence is often indirect and hard to trace: they supposedly do not have business in Australia — but there influence is at the heart of AUKUS. They are operationalising project plans and gaining influence. Their harms such as ecological disaster, waste burdens, safety trade-offs) can be dispersed across time and geography, so the actor behind it is hard to “see” day to day. But their industry is dead without a waste dump and the some State Actors want to renew nuclear weapons.
• Private equity — the actors are invisible. Control is frequently exercised through ownership structures rather than public-facing leadership. Decision-making can happen behind boards, holding companies, and management contracts, while the visible front is a brand, a CEO, or a subsidiary. The incentives (short time horizons, extraction, risk shifting) can be felt without a clear person to point to. They are seemingly so far from the problem.
• Billionaire psychopaths  (ultra-wealthy ideological actors) — they can shape outcomes without showing up as formal decision-makers: funding think tanks, political campaigns, media ecosystems, “philanthropic” vehicles, and strategic litigation. Their presence is real in the effects (policy drift, agenda-setting), but the hand behind it can remain obscured.

We believe the economic view is necessary to allow ordinary people to understand the complexity of the arrangements. We are an organisation that believes that ordinary people will act, when ordinary people understand clearly what is happening and face the truth. Without the economic view we have considerable confusion. The myths of war, violence and the place of men in the “protection of society” predominate the discourse even when people know “the submarines will never arrive”. 

When we face up to the corporations, we can see that the current version of the ALP is not going to change its stance. Its people are enmeshed in this industry economically and institutionally. But with the confusion laid on by discourses of ‘defence’ we remain in an organisational quagmire. It will require a whole of movement response to this 10 year plan regarding institutionalisation of the weapons exports industry and the accompanying militarisation of our society.   

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Appendix: 

View of Ordinary People: Stacy on Twitter

There are people everywhere who see this perspective. As an acknowledment to the many ordinary people – each incredibly thoughtful and creeative – on twitter and instagram and taking action at the weapons dealers and confronting the weapons exhibitions and standing up to the universities, we include this long tweet from stacy. Thanks to all of them. Ordinary people talking from this perspective but ignored by the politicians and those focussed on Labor as an outcome. 

To the Canberra elites milking AUKUS for every dollar:

You lot have been cashing in hard. Former PMs, defence ministers, staffers, admirals all spinning through the revolving door into lobbying firms, boards, and advisory gigs. Pyne & Partners, TG Public Affairs, CMAX, Bondi Partners. Morrison advising AUKUS-linked funds. Beazley, Conroy, Fitzgibbon, Hockey, Sinodinos, Binskin at BAE, the list goes on. Defence contracts, consulting fees, board seats. Heaps of money flowing while the rest of us get the bill for $368 billion.

You think this gravy train runs forever under your control. It doesn’t.

Section 219 of the US NDAA locks Israeli defence tech, IP, supply chains and data fusion deeper into the American systems that AUKUS forces Australia to plug into. Pillar II tech AI, autonomy, cyber, sensors, networks gets shaped upstream in Washington and Tel Aviv. Your “sovereign industry participation” becomes secondary. Australian firms and the lobbyists who feed off them get pushed down the priority list when the big decisions on standards, production and data sit with a US executive agent pushing Israeli integration.

You lose real choice. The systems Australia buys and co-develops will carry foreign dependencies you don’t control. Updates, sustainment, export rules, operational priorities decided elsewhere. Your clients get locked into someone else’s industrial base. The consulting and lobbying work that relies on Canberra having leverage starts drying up once that leverage is gone.

Patterns scream it. Same as the submarines themselves Australia pays, America and Britain decide the terms, and local influence shrinks. Now it spreads to the software and industrial layers. The money you make off “maximising Australian participation” evaporates when participation is no longer Australian to maximise.

Keep cheering the “partnership.” Just don’t act surprised when the decisions that hit your pockets get made without you. You sold the sovereignty. Now the bill is coming due

Stacy