I’m guessing that anyone who reads Pearls and Irritations knows that Land Forces, Australia’s largest weapons expo, was held in Melbourne from 11 to 13 September in the face of strong opposition. Given the blanket coverage, it’s likely the great majority of those in the city also knew this was happening, as well as a great many across the country. Going by the coverage by the likes of Al Jazeera and BBC, and feedback we’ve had from Mexico, Indonesia, Colombia, and more, it’s reached plenty of international audiences as well. The country’s largest weapons fair has been well and truly held up to the light.
This was first published on Pearls and Irritations, 20th September, just following the Disrupt Land Forces Expo. Since then there have been some major wins. Written by a close associate of the Wage Peace team it outlines the importance of physical disruption to interrupting the social license of the “Harms Dealers”.
As has the role Victoria’s Labor Government played in supporting and funding this, and the participation of the biggest weapons corporations coming to town to promote and sell instruments of mass slaughter in billion-dollar deals. This includes Israeli corporations, who — from first-hand accounts — were actively highlighting the fact that their equipment has been used on Palestinian civilians, in war crimes, at a time of genocide in Gaza, as part of their sales pitch.
Without the Disrupt Land Forces mobilisation, this level of exposure would not have taken place, and the deals would have gone ahead in a quiet ambience of corporate comfort.
A great many people worked for months to make this happen. Or rather, they worked for years: this is the third Disrupt Land Forces, with previous ones in Brisbane in 2021 and 2022. Those were, in turn, built on sustained practices of direct action fostered over years by multiple movements – peace and anti-militarism, [First Nations justice], environment campaigns, and others in international solidarity. These practices were developed by key groups and individuals who saw Australia’s accelerating militarisation over the last decade and more, and began working in response.
This is not just disruption for effect: in Aotearoa, campaigners used disruption to shut down the weapons expo there, the National Security Forum, in 2019; it hasn’t come back since. Campaigners in the UK have forced the closure of the weapons factories of several Israeli corporations. Back in the 1990s, the AIDEX weapons fair was cancelled in Canberra after a blockade by thousands.
Now, in Melbourne, we closed key streets for four days. We raised the cost for the government, to around $30 million – now they’re considering not holding such an event in the same place again. After disrupting the previous two expos in Brisbane, we have started to shift it out of Victoria as well.
This is a beginning, not an end. Direct action, with exposure as its first step, has a track record.
And we need it. Australia’s new wave of militarisation is profound, and its full scope is perhaps still not properly appreciated. Whether it’s offering increasing stretches of land up north for US troops in their “pivot to Asia” over a decade ago; or aiming to become a top-10 global military weapons exporter; or wholesale subsidising of and subordination to the US military with AUKUS, the scope is immense.
We now have all the biggest multinational weapons corporations setting up shop here, expanding and building the tools for mass killing, and sending both those weapons, and those profits, overseas. Any serious analysis of this business makes clear that profit, not defence — however you define that — is their motive; how can it not be, for listed companies. Even for those with a “defence” world view, this primacy of profit is a fundamental conflict of interest; repeated reports of large-scale corruption, from bribes and fraud all the way through to the endless “revolving door” jobs for mates, highlights the point.
And Gaza. Tearing the mask right off to show what this truly means. The spreading realisation that has grown by day, by week, and by month, of just how deeply integrated Australia is in this genocidal assault. The clear view of the role of weapons corporations, and the support they receive from the state, that makes possible — inevitable — exactly this genocide and others. The war on Gaza is their business model. It’s what they export.
That is why we called for an arms embargo on Israel, and an end to the arms trade. To stop the current genocide, and prevent the next from starting.
In November 2024 the Victorian Government has also pulled out of a partnership, with significant money flow, with Israel weapons dealer Elbit.
Disrupt Land Forces, or DLF, was an invitation to collaborate, with over 50 groups and many individuals joining and taking on their own actions, able to get support from the whole. We had two principles – no harm to living things, and no policing of each other: if you didn’t personally like a particular approach or strategy that others were using, ask them about it rather than judging.
Wednesday, the first day of the expo was dramatic. We gathered to try and physically stop delegates from entering to make their billion-dollar deals, but then had police horses and the riot squad charging us, firing foam bullets and flash grenades, and releasing OC spray sometimes so thick it became a burning pink blanket. News stories hyperventilated about violent protesters injuring police; take a look at the broadcast footage though and almost all you see, is police being violent to us instead.
Funny, that. Anyone up for an inquiry there?
It was a joy, a pleasure, to finally get to oppose this awful weapons fair. It felt good to stand up and say what we were there for. And most of all, it felt wonderful to do this with a large number of people. This was community creation: in between rolling high-energy and often intense actions, we gathered at our base, shared and planned, learned and created; the kitchen crew was celebrated, feeding bodies and souls. And while some of the street actions got the mainstream headlines, in this space, and others like it over previous months, is where we connected and strengthened the very meaning of why we were here.
The DLF launch happened in June, and featured stories from many frontline communities – those forced into confrontation with the military system just to preserve their lands and lives. We heard First Nations stories in Naarm; stories from Palestine; from West Papua, Western Sahara, Iran, the Philippines, Chile, and the Mapuche peoples of southern South America. And while the expo started on Wednesday, our events began on Sunday, with the Peace Fire at Camp Sovereignty in the centre of Naarm. Elders from Victoria and several places across the continent came to tell the truth about the colony’s Frontier Wars, and about the ongoing repression, and resistance, of First Nations people here. Other Peace Fires were lit in West Papua and around this continent, and streamed to us online, their stories also shared.
A chant over months of solidarity with Gaza has been, “we are all Palestinians”. These stories told something of how much that resonates for communities across the world, how many layers of meaning that sentence can hold.
The dramatic headlines are, perhaps, all most people saw, but DLF events were far more varied. A couple of examples: Thursday night one group held a Vigil for Gaza by the river, in which those present wrote the names of children lost to the genocide on small paper kites on display. Friday, we wheeled out a West Papuan canoe, modelled on the one refugees travelled in to get to Australia in 2006, and performed a traditional dance, marking this government’s complicity in and contribution to that ongoing brutal occupation in our near neighbourhood. Friday also closed with several of us dressed up in a zombie dance, mirroring the business of death inside the expo, with others waving Wanted posters of the bosses from weapons corporations like Thales, Boeing, Elbit Systems, Rheinmetall, Lockheed Martin, and more.
In the lead-up to the mobilisation, one of the organisers pointed out how this was a chance for those of us in more privileged positions, to put our own bodies on the line for a change. More than 150 of us were injured, a couple badly enough to need hospital treatment. (Again: inquiry, anyone?) This is serious harm; and yet at an important level the danger for most was still symbolic by comparison: the tear gas and rubber bullets fired at us on Wednesday are a world away from the devastating destruction of Gaza, West Papua, and so many other places under assault. But to do this even in a small way was affirming: a determination to stand with communities whose places have become frontlines because of the very weapons being sold here. Driven by love and by rage, solidarity as an act of care.
Exposure is the first step. We need to take this further. The invitation to join is always open.
Disrupt Land Forces is running an appeal to support those arrested and charged, or fined during the mobilisation.
You can donate here:
Disrupt Land Forces Legal Costs
