Wage Peace - Disrupt War

Strategic, bold, direct and discursive action to disrupt militarism in Australia and our region.

Margie Pestorius

Wage Peace Submission to the AUKUS Inquiry, August 2026

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.

EarthCareNotWarfare

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.   

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

Blockade Bisalloy: A Report from the ‘Gong

At Wage Peace, we are trying to orient you, our many new friends, to what is happening in resistance to the weapons industry across the country. We hope that you will get from our website – and other platforms – a brief introduction to what is happening in the weapons industry AND the people’s resistance to it.

You can find out about the Bisalloy campaign at Woolongong Friends of Palestine Instagram . That page has an excellent and short overview of Bisalloy’s complicity by Senator Shoebridge on the Picket July 27, 2025. And this piece from Yaakov Aharon at Michael West Media – A Protest Speech version! and Michael West Media written version!

It is clear the weapons industry is mostly profitable at the point at which a genocide occurs. The Racist State of USA, in supporting the apartheid State has dozens of corporations profiting from genocide. People in Australia a standing up against this morally corrupt fabricators and manufacturers across the country. Bisalloy is one of the few directly arming Israel with steel.

This article below, published by Heatwave, is an important contribution to the movement discourse on the tactic named in Australia “the Community Picket”. Born from union discourses of last century, when unions still ran strikes with picket lines from time to time, the Community Picket is half blockade, half driveway occupation. Community Pickets have taken place in a half dozen locations across the east coast of the continent, most notably where the F35 components are being made for the dangerous supply chain.

Blockade Bisalloy: A Report from the ‘Gong

In Australia, as across the world, a massive wave of struggle rose against the genocide in Palestine, comprised of a wide constellation of political groups and practices. Compared to previous iterations of Palestine solidarity here, this wave has been more widespread, involving a broader range of tactics. -Heatwave, June 7, 2025

Head to the rest of the article over here at HEATWAVE.

By Two Wollongong Friends of Palestine

We arrived at 5:45 a.m. It was an overcast morning in November, but unlike last time the sky was already light, dawn had just passed. We were in the middle of a regional industrial zone that was already alive with machinery churning, trucks arriving and departing, and workers from various sites smoking or drinking coffee at the gates. As we walked down the road to Bisalloy Steels, where the picket would be, a friend struck up a conversation with some men on the street. They had heard about the picket happening down the road, but weren’t too keen on discussing the basis of it: better things to do with their short time on ‘smoko’. In the distance we could see some comrades already gathered at the gates of Bisalloy. 

It felt good to see their numbers already growing. In the week leading up to the picket, we had received intel from workers and unions at Bisalloy that the company was saying they had to cross the picket line. The night before we again had it confirmed that operations would continue, the bosses having issued an ultimatum that if workers didn’t cross the line, they’d have to take leave or go unpaid. So we had expected there would be some conflict today, most likely with the police as they sought to break the picket. We came prepared, with pallets and other materials to reinforce the barricades. 

But as we arrived it was impossible not to notice how quiet it was. The usual industrial clamour of the steel treatment plant, the hiss and stamp of the machinery, was silent beyond the fence. All doors were closed, signals that no work was underway were lit up, and no one was inside. Few police were visible, scattered up and down the street. A piece of paper on the office door proclaimed, “Closed for the day for annual company picnic”.

Head to the rest of the article over here at HEATWAVE.

Acknowledgement and thanks to Heatwave

Heatwave is a multi-media project dedicated to sharing experiences and strategizing together in preparation for the next round of struggles to break free from the infernal prison of capital. As the world burns and the political horizon grows increasingly grim, we seek to connect comrades around the globe and contribute to building a mass movement powerful enough to incinerate that prison. In its ashes, we will build a world based on the classic principle from each according to their ability, to each according to their need — a life worth living on a thriving planet.

A sign of the staunch diversity and openness by which this tactic provides for community involvement. Picket Bisalloy!

The ABC Must Tell the Truth About the Weapons Export Industry

Speech given at ABC Brisbane to the Justice for Palestine Magandjin Rally July 2025

Margaret Pestorius

We are here on Yuggera territory. And I reckon no Australian institution – specially not the ABC – has ever has never told the whole truth on Aboriginal Land.

The ABC is failing us. The ABC does not do enough, to help us understand how Australia is supporting and facilitating the international weapons trade, especially never the role of the weapons trade in the bombing of Gaza. Every month, weapons built or assembled here — or    components — move through the US, Germany, and direct channels to Israel. And the ABC says almost nothing.

The ABC is failing to report proportionately. The weapons exports industry in Australia has exploded in recent years — and is directly implicated in in the assault on Gaza.

The government is spending about $40 to $50 billion a year: In addition to the usual defence force budget on the military export business. But we hear virtually nothing of this massive spend. The ABC is silent on how the US and Israel use our components and our complicity to sustain their wars. The f35 parts, the steel, wing kits for bombs, drone parts.. They’re silent on what’s being exported, where it’s going, and whether international humanitarian law is violated .

They are silent on the structure of the industry, it’s emerging role in the economy, it’s relationship to US equity funds much less the actual movement of equipment. These are things we need to understand the bigger picture.

Understanding requires history, context, different voices.and perspectives.

The ABC is failing to investigate war crimes.

We are so grateful for the work of Declassified Australia which has become one of the best sources we have. Because the AbC is not doing its job. But there’s also Michael West media and even Crikey has run some excellent investigative reporting.

Why no follow-up or investigation on the German weapons corporation Rheinmetall?  Rheinmetall received $45 million in Federal and State subsidies to build the bomb factory in Maryborough. And presumably as much or more for the factory at Redbank.

These subsidies are for export businesses. They are not subsidies to build Australian owned equipment.

The ABC is failing its own Charter. Its Charter says it should inform the Australian protect the statec — not truth, not sanitize militarism, not ignore genocide. Where are the questions about Australia’s obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty?

The Arms Trade Treaty is explicit about how weapons are defined … And the definition includes components and parts of supply chains. Where are the reports on  US-Australian arrangements which allow weapons tranfer into Gaza, or the many ways Australia is complicit — through exports, manufacturing, funding and silence?

The ABC is failing to distinguish ‘defence’ from ‘export’. This isn’t about defending Australia. This is about feeding an industry — a weapons industry — that’s profitable when people elsewhere die. And the ABC refuses to say so clearly. Instead, we get from them the voices of Pentagon-controlled think-tanks like ASPI, the Australian Strategic Policy “‘Institute.”  ASPI operatives are part of a vast set of think tanks obscuring the appalling actions of the United States of America. It’s those ASPI operatives who are interviewed and quoted in ABC stories — without ever revealing it’s board is stacked with BOEING, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and it’s funded by the US State Department.

The ABC is failing to investigate power. Why doesn’t it tell us about Accurus, the private equity weapons firm that bought Ferra ENGINEERING? FERRA Engineering used to make steel components for medical equipment . But it’s been bought by a private equity company which specialises in death: in aerospace components. Accurus, a company with no moral standards, no ethical foundation. It’s business is profit via genocide. It REQUIRES a genocide.

AbC: Give is information about that. Help us understand the intersection between private equity, the government weapons companies and this genocide and the next.

Why doesn’t it question how steel is flown into Maryborough from Germany and then flown back out again — after being turned into the cruel, ubiquitous 155mm artillery shells?

That business in Maryborough entirely exports BOMBS to Germany. That business received 45 million in subsidies which has gone to a family trust partnered with a foreign weapons conglomerate.

The ABC could investigate how did it happen that a bomb factory which employs just 50 staff received almost $1 million per created job.

How does that even happen?

The ABC has one defence reporter — Mr Andrew Greene. He files a couple of articles a week. He’s thorough on each. He’s persistent, his work is good — but structurally he is unsupported. His pieces are not backed by other ABC platforms and programmes because a lot of the depth of the ABC has been stripped. So his work goes unnoticed by radio for example.

And unfortunately, he was recently stood down after accepting a $16,000, arms industry-funded junket to Germany. It’s a sign of the amount of money rollicking around.

Money that should be rolled back into the climate transition… To EarthCare not warfare.

Their investigative teams? Missing in action.

We need explanations so that people understand the NATURE AND EXTENT of the industry. Four Corners has done one major story on the weapons industry in five years. 7.30 has done around 10 stories in that time. That’s once every five months. This is a multi-billion dollar machine, and the ABC gives it the attention of a niche hobby – as if it’s an extention of amateur drone clubs. Ooo… Flying cameras! We can now see in Gaza what the drone hobby has turned into – quadcopters killing children.

The ABC is failing to reflect public interest. They won’t talk to activists or scholars from the peace movement. Because we talk outside the proscribed discourse. They won’t talk to Palestinian-Australians, or Yemenis, or survivors of war who know what these weapons do. They don’t ask whether the ADF’s procurement plans are even about national security — or just cover for building an export economy.

They operate within a discourse shaped by US military dominance — where dissent is marginalised, and even public broadcasters are afraid to name how that alliance controls what can and cannot be said.

So when Defence Minister Richard Marles told the ABC that Australia’s contribution to the F-35 warplane was “non-lethal”? They printed the quote. They didn’t challenge it. They didn’t investigate it. They let a lie stand — and called it journalism.

The ABC is not neutral. Its silence is political. Its avoidance is structural. Its reporting is not proportionate to the scale of the violence we are complicit in.

Their editors stand inside a proscribed discourse that procludes truth telling and thereby stops us understanding what the hell is going on.

So we’re saying this clearly: The journalists at the ABC must do better. The ABC must stop acting like a public relations firm for the weapons industry.

They will have to risk their career positions and stand for something. They must organise amongst themselves so they have internal and external support and report courageously on Australia’s role in arming genocidal wars — including the ongoing assault on Gaza. It must prioritise truth, not access. It must listen to the public, not the Pentagon.

Because we deserve to understand what’s being done in our name — and with our money.

And until the ABC starts telling the truth, we will. On the streets, in our communities, in front of their offices. We will tell the truth they are too afraid — or too compromised — to say out loud.

No more silence. No more lies. No more complicity.

Margaret Pestorius

Legal Observer Report: The Policing of the Disrupt Land Forces (DLF) (2024 Naarm) Protests

Legal Observer Report: The Policing of the Disrupt Land Forces (DLF) Protests

DOWNLOAD THE PDF HERE

Melbourne Activist Legal Service – MALS – completed this comprehensive report following Land Forces 2024. We appreciate their work very much. It should be noted that they also assisted greatly with coordinating general legal services to the people harmed, maimed, arrested and charged.

Wage Peace with many people on the ground in Naarm coordinated activist care and support.

Summary

The Land Forces Exposition (the expo) took place at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) from 11 to 13 September 2024. The expo is promoted to be the “largest defence industry event ever held in Australia”.1 It invites international military, defence and weapons contractors and manufacturers to demonstrate their products and services to thousands of individuals in the defence, government agency, business, academic, scientific and other related weapons sectors.

The Naarm-Melbourne anti-war community organised to protest the expo from 10 to 13 September in a movement known as Disrupt Land Forces (DLF). The coalition comprising of over 50 organisations and independent individuals used a variety of mediums, including attempting to create traffic disruptions in the streets around the MCEC, picketing and blockading the expo, marches and rallies, music and artistic performances, and candlelight vigils.

Melbourne Activist Legal Support (MALS) fielded trained legal observer teams at multiple protest events across each of the four days. Anti-war protests and resistance are not new to Naarm-Melbourne. From the moment that the expo was announced to be held, negative and sensationalist responses from the Victorian government, Victoria Police, and media paved a stigmatising platform to justify extraordinary levels of force to be used by police against protesters. This preemptive response included invoking special weapons and anti-terrorism legislation to equip police with broad powers.

Commentary by the media, politicians, and police—specifically events on Wednesday 11 September 2024—have overwhelmingly focused on the actions of protesters engaging in violent or confrontational behaviours. There has been minimal scrutiny or focus on the use of force and violence by police, including coordinated tactical manoeuvres, and the disproportionate levels or forms of violence facilitated by an arsenal of weaponry, with state and media sanctioning. There has also been a dearth of commentary and analyses by these institutions on the tactics and decisions by the police and their impacts on creating, instigating, and escalating violence and tensions in the events that occurred on Wednesday 11 September 2024. This includes the increased levels of risk of harm to members of the public that arise from uses of force and violence by the police, including the use of weapons, chemical irritants, and potentially lethal weapons.

This report details MALS areas of concern from observations across the four days of protests, including police use of force and weaponry, special powers, arrests, treatment of legal observers, media narratives and strategic misinformation.

Nupress in the F35 Supply Chain

Stop Arming Israel – Arms Embargo Now – No Weapons for Genocide

Why are we picketing Nupress? 

Nupress supplies five critical parts and ground equipment for the F-35 war plane. Israel has one of the largest fleets of F-35s in the world. Nupress parts go into a global pool that Israel gets priority access to. Israel has used F-35s in countless massacres of Palestinians, and in Lebanon and Yemen. The organisation, Workers in Palestine, has named Nupress as a company complicit in the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians.

What is a community picket?

Community pickets are a collective form of direct action. They are powerful because of the community that shows up and the clarity of the cause. Supplying components to machines that are used to cause mass casualties and death is something that must be opposed, on both moral and legal grounds. 

What will happen at a community picket? 

Community members will take up space around the Nupress factory to form a barrier to vehicles and workers. This may be physical e.g. through interlinking arms, or symbolic e.g. through holding placards, speaking to workers, chanting, etc. This picket will involve all these tactics which means people can choose what is safe for them. In this way, the picket is inclusive of families with young children and people with a disability, for example. 

How do decisions get made? 

We use a democratic process to decide the best ways to disrupt production at Nupress. We encourage people to be informed, ready to discuss tactics and be involved in decision making.

How will we organise at the picket? 

There are different roles including worker liason, media liaison, police liaison, safety officer, etc. A convenor will initiate decision making processes for example how long to hold the picket. Affinity groups can act independently whilst ensuring respect for other tactics and groups. The key thing is holding firm to the goal of disrupting production at Nupress, in solidarity with Palestinian struggles and as a response to the call to end military supply to the genocide.