Tuesday, 27 August 2024

Land Forces International Land Defence Exposition

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (17:18): (1068) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Premier. Recently my Greens colleague Ellen Sandell in the other place asked the Premier if the government would cancel their sponsorship of a weapons expo here in Melbourne that will feature and promote weapons companies, such as Elbit Systems, who are providing the means to bomb Palestinians. During the exchange the Premier said that she disagreed that war is made possible by weapons, that it is the humans who make these decisions, not the weapons. The argument the Premier used to justify Labor’s support of weapons companies is the same argument used by conservatives against gun control – we have heard it before: guns do not kill people, people kill people. We know why that statement is wrong.

Our governments once cared that access to weapons purely designed to kill, like guns, caused more extreme violence and more devastating attacks, and so we as a country introduced some of the most successful gun control policies in the world – laws we are all proud of as a nation. But the Premier and Labor now deny how the continued support of companies that are manufacturing weapons that only exist for the mass slaughter of human beings just leads to more extreme violence. Instead, Labor are supporting weapons companies and are entering into an MOU with Israel because:

Globally countries are investing significant funds to protect their national interests with military capabilities aligned to this environment.

This MoU is a pathway for meaningful cooperation between Israel and the State of Victoria to capture and share these opportunities.

This is from a government document about the MOU obtained by the Greens through an FOI request. Labor saw countries investing in their military capabilities and wanted to ‘capture and share these opportunities’. Weapons designed to kill which should be met with horror are instead seen as an opportunity, and Labor justify this using conservative rhetoric about how it is not actually the weapons making it possible to kill tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Right now tens of thousands of people are fleeing and sheltering, petrified for their lives in Gaza. My grandma used to talk about the sound of shells falling and the horror and fear they experienced when their towns were bombed in Jaffna in Sri Lanka. With the mind of a child, I tried to picture an empty shell – something else, something more innocuous and less harmful – in the vain hope that she was not describing an actual bomb. But I could not deceive myself or protect myself from the truth. At our primary school we did not have fire drills; we had bomb drills. Once you see the face of war, your life is never the same.

So please listen to the community. Listen to us when we plead for peace and disarmament. Premier, will you stop supporting weapons manufacturers who are profiting off the death and destruction of Palestinians and cancel your government sponsorship of the Land Forces weapons expo?