Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Hansard source

Later today Quakers Australia will be launching their report Australia's opaque arms trade & obligations under international law. This follows a powerful joint statement by 60 civil society organisations, all calling for one simple thing: accountability in how this country conducts its military trade. According to their statement, Australia's military exports may have doubled in the last three years. Why 'may'? Because there is such an impenetrable cloud of secrecy around our defence exports that even policy experts describe the system as, at best, opaque and, at worst, negligently poor.

We do not know the specifics of what has been exported, but we know that exports have been made to countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the Philippines, Sudan, South Sudan, Israel and Indonesia.

Australia has an obligation to ensure that weapons and other military materiel produced here do not end up contributing to human rights abuses. We've heard from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence time and time again that Australia does not export weapons to Israel. I would say to the government: look at the R400. This is a weapon system produced by EOS, a company headquartered a few minutes away from Parliament House. This weapon has been sold to Israel, and we cannot deny what is already on the record. I'm hoping to soon reintroduce, along with Senator Thorpe, the genocide red-lines bills package, which will work to address the nebulousness of our defence exports and block exports that are not in line with Australia's humanitarian international obligations or that risk contributing to human rights violations, including genocide. There's the moral issue, and it's not going away, and I thank Quakers Australia their leadership.