Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to a question without notice asked by Senator Shoebridge today relating to the Middle East.

Defence officials have quietly told Australian defence manufacturers that they can no longer export directly to Israel. The Greens have been calling out Labor's complicity in Israel's genocide for two long years. While Israel has rained devastation upon Gaza and has murdered Palestinians in their thousands, this government has proudly proclaimed its friendship with Israel and continued on with the two-way arms trade. This directive to the defence industry is one step forward, but this shows the power of the people, the power of the people's movement. The pressure of hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets has finally propelled this government into some small action. We know that this is the action of a government desperate to escape accountability before an inevitable finding of genocide from the world's top court.

We also know that this is not enough. This will not affect the flow of the F-35 jets, whose supply chain Australia remains happily embedded in. It will not hold Israel to account for the ongoing genocide against Palestinians. It will not open up the aid channels that remain blocked. It will not secure any genuine peace, self-determination or justice. It will not do any of those things, because it leaves the real mechanisms of violence and oppression untouched.

On the one hand, the Labor government quietly directs defence companies to stop their direct exports to Israel while at the same time they intimidate people who are calling out the war machine and the corporations profiting from death and destruction. In Sydney this morning, the voices of conscience in this nation turned up to stand against a state government sponsored arms expo which hosted Israel's largest weapons companies. Right on cue, though, protesters were pepper sprayed, arrested and intimidated. What was their crime? Standing up for peace, standing against war, standing for the Palestinian people. Targeting peaceful protesters while rolling out the red carpet for war profiteers is an inversion of justice.

What message does this government send to the world, to Palestinians and to Australians with its meaningless words, toothless actions and endless demonisation of pro-Palestine protesters? It says that you can tinker around the edges of the arms trade, but you must leave the real pathways of death and destruction and their profits untouched. It says you protect the weapons conference but abandon the Palestinians targeted by the war machine. It says you talk about justice while deep in contracts with weapons companies who profit off death. Today's violence against protesters at the arms expo in Sydney is not incidental; it is emblematic. It is a warning that the state will protect the weapons corporations, not the oppressed. It will silence the protesters, not the perpetrators.

It is not too late for action. Sanction Israel now. Send the war criminals to The Hague, and free Palestine.

Question agreed to.