Thursday, 7 March 2024

Middle East conflict

Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (17:21): (577) My adjournment today is for Labor Premier Jacinta Allan. The action I want from the Victorian government is to rip up the MOU with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. The Labor federal government has just handed a whopping $900 million to Elbit Systems, a company whose weapons and vehicles are being used to massacre Palestinian men, women and children trapped in Gaza. Here in Victoria the government has not only signed an MOU with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, they have also given Victorian taxpayer dollars to this company, Elbit Systems. Elbit produces 85 per cent of Israel’s attack and surveillance drones and up to 85 per cent of their land-based military equipment. It is also responsible for surveillance systems that uphold Israeli apartheid by preventing Palestinians from moving between Jerusalem and the West Bank.

If you look up Elbit online, you will find a company proudly boasting of ‘battle-proven and battle-tested machines’. What this actually means is that they test their weapons on Palestinians in Gaza, killing men, women and children and then selling those weapons around the world for profit. The same Elbit drones that killed hundreds of Palestinians in 2014 were almost immediately bought up by dozens of other countries, including Australia. The company has since made headlines for all the wrong reasons, from developing white phosphorus to doing surveillance for Trump’s border wall. Just two years ago the Myanmar junta used Elbit weapons to massacre more than 1500 people, including 100 ‍children, and none of this would be news to the Premier. Yet last week the federal defence department, under Labor minister Richard Marles, handed them a whopping $900 million to develop military vehicles, and in Victoria we continue to uphold an agreement with the Israeli defence ministry.

On 17 October the Premier moved a motion in this house that said this Victorian Parliament stands with Israel, just as Israel was about to start its invasion of Gaza. The Greens were the only ones to vote against it. Since then, over 100,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured. We have watched massacres of tens of thousands of civilians occur before our eyes. Forty per cent of people in Gaza are children under the age of 15. Tens of thousands of innocent children have been murdered. This is abhorrent, it is unconscionable and I cannot in good conscience stand here and do nothing while the Victorian state Labor government continues to partner with the weapons companies and the Israeli Ministry of Defense who are causing such unimaginable death and suffering. Enough has got to be enough. Surely Labor needs to find its backbone and stop giving tacit and active support to the slaughter of Palestinians.