Between tomorrow and Friday, the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) will host a weapons bazaar that ought to be called “The Merchants of Death”.

The times for these merchants are positively bullish, given that total global military expenditure exceeded US$2.4 trillion last year, an increase of 6.8 percent in real terms from 2022.

The introductory note to the event is mildly innocuous:

“The Land Forces 2024 International Land Defence Exposition is the premier platform for interaction between defence, industry and government of all levels, to meet, to do business and discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the global land defence markets.”

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The website goes on to describe the Land Defence Exposition as “the premier gateway to the land defence markets of Australia and the region, and a platform for interaction with major prime contractors from the United States and Europe”.

At the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre in 2022, the event attracted 20,000 attendees, 810 “exhibitor organisations” from 25 countries, and ran 40 conferences, symposia and presentations.

From 30 nations, came 159 defence, government, industry and scientific delegations.

Land Forces 2024 is instructive as to how the military-industrial complex manifests. Featured background reading for the event involves, for instance, news about cultivating budding militarists.

Where better to start than in school?

School military ‘pathways’
From August 6, much approval is shown for the $5.1 million Federation Funding Agreement between the Australian government and the state governments of South Australia and West Australia to deliver “the Schools Pathways Programme (SPP)” as part of the Australian government’s Defence Industry Development Strategy.

The programme offers school children a chance to taste the pungent trimmings of industrial militarism — visits to military facilities, “project-based learning” and presentations.

Rather cynically, the SPP co-opts the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) aspect of government policy, carving up a direct link between school study and the defence industry.

“We need more young Australians studying STEM subjects in schools and developing skills for our future workforce,” insisted Education Minister Jason Clare. It is hard to disagree with that, but why weapons?

There is much discontent about the Land Forces exposition.

Victorian Greens MP Ellen Sandell and federal MP for Melbourne Adam Bandt wrote to Premier Jacinta Allan asking her to call off the arms event.

The party noted that such companies as Elbit Systems “and others that are currently fuelling . . . Israel’s genocide in Palestine, where 40,000 people have now been killed — will showcase and sell their products there”.

Demands on Israel dismissed
Allan icily dismissed such demands.

Disrupt Land Forces, which boasts 50 different activist collectives, has been preparing.

Defence Connect reported as early as June 4 that groups, including Wage Peace — Disrupt War and Whistleblowers, Activists and Communities Alliance, were planning to rally against the Land Force exposition.

The usual mix of carnival, activism and harrying have been planned over a week, with the goal of ultimately encircling the MCEC to halt proceedings.

Ahead of the event, the Victorian Labor government, the event’s sponsor, has mobilised 1800 more police officers from the regional areas.

Victorian Police Minister Anthony Carbines did his best to set the mood.

“If you are not going to abide by the law, if you’re not going to protest peacefully, if you’re not going to show respect and decency, then you’ll be met with the full force of the law.”

Warmongering press outlets
Let us hope the police observe those same standards.

Warmongering press outlets, the Herald Sun being a stalwart, warn of the “risks” that “Australia’s protest capital” will again be “held hostage to disruption and confrontation”, given the diversion of police.

Its August 15 editorial demonised the protesters, swallowing the optimistic incitements on the website of Disrupt Land Forces.

The editorial noted the concerns of unnamed senior police fretting about “the potential chaos outside MCEC at South Wharf and across central Melbourne”, the context for police to mount “one of the biggest security operations since the anti-vaccine/anti-lockdown protests at the height of covid in 2021–21 or the World Economic Forum chaos in 2000”.

Were it up to these editors, protesters would do better to stay at home and let the Victorian economy, arms and all, hum along.

The merchants of death could then go about negotiating the mechanics of murder in broad daylight; Victoria’s government would get its blood fill; and Melbournians could turn a blind eye to what oils the mechanics of global conflict.

The protests will, hopefully, shock the city into recognition that the arms trade is global, nefarious and indifferent as to the casualty count.

Dr Binoy Kampmark lectures in global studies at RMIT University. This article was first published by Green Left and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Filed last October, a Freedom of Information request by Greens Senator David Shoebridge revealed that as much as A$600 million in public funds had found their way into defence company assets.  In December, it was reported that the 30 defence and aerospace companies featured, with some of them receiving the following: Thales (A$3.5 million), Lockheed Martin (A$71 million), BAE Systems (A$26 million), Boeing (A$10.7 million), Rocket Lab USA (A$192 million) and Elbit Systems (A$488,768).

The findings gave Shoebridge a chance to spray the board administering the fund with gobbets of chastening wisdom.  “The Future Fund is meant to benefit future generations.  That rings hollow when they are investing in companies making equipment that ends future generations.”

Some cleansing of the stables was on offer, and the choice of what was cleaned proved popular – at least for the Canberra security establishment.  In May, the Board upped stakes and divested from funds associated with the People’s Liberation Army of China.  Eleven companies were noted, among them Xinjiang Guanghui Energy, a natural gas and coal producer whose chairman, Sun Guangxin, teased US officials by purchasing ranches for reasons of building a wind farm in proximity to a US Air Force base in Texas.

Relevant companies included Jiangsu GoodWe and LONGi, both with expertise in the line of solar energy generation.  “Taxpayer funds and Australians’ retirement savings should never be invested in companies linked to serious human rights abuses, sanctions evasion or military suppliers to an authoritarian state,” gloated a satisfied opposition home affairs spokesman, Senator James Paterson.  The same, it would seem, would not apply to human rights abuses committed by a purported democratic state.

To that end, things are somewhat murkier when it comes to the companies of other, friendlier powers.  For some obstinate reason, Israel’s military poster boy, Elbit Systems, continues to make its presence felt in the field of Australian defence and finance.  Despite a spotty reputation and a resume of lethal drone production; despite the ongoing murderous conflict in Gaza, the Israeli defence company managed to convince the Australian government to throw A$917 million its way in a contract signed in February.  The contract, to be performed over a period of five years, will supply “advanced protection, fighting capabilities and sensors” for the Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) of Korean design.  With wonderful opportunism, the vehicles are being constructed in the same electorate that belongs to the Australian Defence Minister, Richard Marles.

And what of the near half-million dollars invested by the Future Fund in Elbit Systems?  In October 2023, a list of the Fund’s direct holdings in various companies was published.  It included Elbit Systems.  An odd matter, given that the company, since 2021, is precluded from investing in the fund given, as Shoebridge tells us, the ratification by Australia of various “military weapons-related conventions or treaties”.  The board, accordingly, had to furnish reasons “how it continues to invest in Elbit Systems despite the publicly announced direction it gave to withdraw those funds because of Australia’s international legal obligations.”

The internal correspondence of December 7, 2023, prompted by Shoebridge’s FOI request, including the prodding of Michael West Media, proved arid in detail. A Canberra bureaucrat in finance asks  an official associated or attached to the Future Fund (both names are redacted) to clarify the status of Elbit Systems in terms of the exclusion list.  The reply notes the role of “expert third party service providers” (who, pray?) who keep an eye on company activities and provide research upon which a decision is made by the Board every six months.

Elbit had been previously excluded as an investment option “in relation to its involvement in cluster munitions following its acquisition of IMI [Systems]”.  IMI, rather than Elbit, was the spoiling consideration, given its role in producing technology that violates the Convention on Cluster Munitions.  As of April 2023, Elbit was “no longer excluded by the portfolio.  This reflects the updated research of our expert research providers.”

The response is not obliging on the exact details of the research.  Banal talking points and information stifling platitudes are suggested, crude filling for the news cycle.  The Board, for instance, had “a long-standing policy on portfolio exclusions and a robust process to implement” them.  The policy was reviewed twice a year, buttressed by expert third party research.  Recent media reporting had relied on an outdated exclusions list.  The Board did not invest in those entities on the exclusions list.  For the media establishment, this would have more than sufficed.  The Board had said, and revealed, nothing.

Last month, Michael West noted that efforts to penetrate the veil of inscrutability had so far come to naught.  The Future Fund and its Board of Guardians persisted in their refusal to respond to inquiries.  “Since our last media request for comment, Israel has ramped up its war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.”  Given various interim orders by the International Court of Justice warning Israel of a real risk of committing genocide, even as it ponders South Africa’s application to make that finding, what are those expert researchers up to?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Initially staying close to Washington’s line that an immediate humanitarian ceasefire would only embolden Hamas to regroup (Australia abstained in its October 2023 vote on the subject), wobbles began being felt in Canberra.  The slaughter had been so immense, the suffering unsettling to those thousands of miles away.  In December 2023, Australia changed its tune – in a fashion – eventually voting in the UN for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire proposed by the “Arab Group”, a decision greeted with rage and opprobrium by the opposition.

In February, Guardian Australia obtained documents revealing advice given to Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong by officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  The advice is hardly filled with the stuff of courage and grit: “Given the improvements in the text and shifting positions of some like-mindeds [sic], we think it would be open to us to vote Yes this time” came one meek observation.  Australia would be in “good company” in doing so.  “Overall, we assess the number of Yes votes will go up (from 120 on the last resolution)”.

A vote for the resolution was not to be given without the thick varnish of qualification.  An explanation of vote (EOV) would have to accompany Australia’s position, being “very firm in articulating the deficiencies in the text”.  As another email states, “What remains problematic is that the resolution does not reference the 7 October attacks nor condemn (or even mention) Hamas, which perpetuates a trend of erasing Hamas from the record in UN decisions on the crisis.”  The EOV would have to be “firm about our concern that Hamas’s actions weren’t recognised and condemned in the resolution.”

This approach of nodding in one direction while waving a hand in the other has come to typify the slim, unimaginative armoury of Australian diplomacy.  When it comes to the substance of policy towards Israel, the military industrial complex, not dead Palestinians, tends to have the final say.

That final say in Australia has been formidable, in contrast to the decisions made by other countries to alter or adjust their arrangements with Israel.  In some cases, ties and relations have been severed, with embassy staff being recalled.  Having been put on notice by the International Court of Justice that its military actions in Gaza were not exempt from the operation of the UN Genocide Convention, Israel’s clients are also becoming more cautious in their dealings, knowing that complicity, aiding and abetting also fall foul of the Convention.

Last month, the aviation unit of Japan’s Itochu Corp announced that it was ending its strategic cooperation with Israel’s defence company, Elbit Systems Ltd which had begun with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in March 2023.  The company’s Chief Financial Officer, Tsuyoshi Hachimura, was clear about the role played by the World Court in reaching the decision.  “Taking into consideration the International Court of Justice’s order on January 26, and that the Japanese government supports the role of the Court, we have already suspended new activities related to the MOU, and plan to end the MOU by the end of February.”

Elbit Systems had little reason to be too disappointed.  Despite having its technology (the BMS Command and Control system) removed from Australian Army equipment three years ago for reasons of data security, the company now boasts a spanking new defence contract with the Australian government.  The contract is the largest made by the company since the Gaza conflict commenced with the October 7 attacks by Hamas.  On February 26, the company announced the award of a five-year “contract worth approximately (US)$600 million to supply systems to Hanwha Defense Australia for the Australian Land 400 Phase 3 Project.”  In less jargon-heavy terms, the project will “deliver advanced protection, fighting capabilities and sensors suite to the Redback Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV) for the Australian Army.”

Hanwha Defense Australia’s parent company is located in South Korea, but the manufacture of the IVFs, which will number in the order of 129 vehicles, will take place in Australia.  “The acquisition of these infantry fighting vehicles is part of the Government’s drive to modernise the Australian Army to ensure it can respond to the most demanding land challenges in our region,” said the Australian Ministry of Defence in December.  Elbit Systems promises that most of the work regarding its advanced turret systems will be done in Australia.

The Australian footprint of Elbit Systems, along with that of other Israeli defence companies, is only growing.  Despite having a gruesome, pioneering record of using lethal drone technology against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip well before the current Israel-Hamas war, Elbit Systems has been courted by Australian defence officials and contractors keen to see the brighter side of such applications.

The state of Victoria figures prominently in such arrangements, and maintains its memorandum of understanding with the Israeli Defence Ministry, one intended to be a “a formal framework that paves the way for continuing cooperation between the parties.”  Attitudes regarding the MoU post-October 7 have not waned in the state’s Labor government, despite pressure from various opposition parties to abandon it.

Victoria also hosts Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA)’s Centre for Excellence in Human-Machine Teaming and Artificial Intelligence in Port Melbourne, an initiative “developed in partnership with the Victorian Government.”  As ELSA puts it, “we develop new technologies, solutions and innovative products adapted for Australian conditions, and apply them across defence, homeland security and emergency services.”

Forget Wong’s wobbliness, the persuasive pull of the Genocide Convention, and Canberra’s concerns about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.  Cash, contracts and jobs drawn from the military industrial complex continue to sneak through the guards.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.