Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Israeli weapons companies, like Elbit Systems and Rafael, are in Sydney right now, showing off their instruments of death at the Indo-Pacific defence expo and maximising their profits, which are funded by enabling a genocide. Outside that expo, hundreds of people have gathered to protest. They marched from Tumbalong Park to Town Hall, calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza, and good on them for doing it. When they got to the expo, they were met with pepper spray. They were met with arrests, and they were met with police lines defending the weapons dealers.

That's what happens when the state and federal Labor governments throw their lot in with the arms industry. The New South Wales Labor government is literally a sponsor of that expo, and, federally, Labor continues to approve weapons sales to Israel. Now they're unleashing police violence against people standing for peace. That's the modern Labor Party for you.

Protesting against genocide is not a crime. Demanding justice for Palestinians is not a crime. But, under Labor, dissent is being criminalised to protect the profits of war. Every shove, every spray of capsicum, every arrest is in defence of those who profit from death and genocide. That's not keeping the peace. That's protecting the war. We will not be quiet and we will not be intimidated. Silence in the face of genocide is complicity. Exporting weapons to Israel to be used in a genocide is complicity in that genocide.