The Department of Defence continues to funnel taxpayer money to Elbit Systems, the company that manufactured the drone used by Israeli forces to murder Aussie aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six others in Gaza in April.
Last week, Defence handed a $38,000 contract to Elbit Systems of Australia, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems (the Australian arm doesn’t even have its own separate website), a company with a long history of human rights scandals via its provision of weapons both to the Israel Defense Forces and autocratic regimes elsewhere. Like most Defence procurements, this one — for “Security Equipment Installation Services” — was a limited tender, meaning Elbit faced little or no competition.
The latest contract, along with a contract handed by Defence to Elbit just a week after Frankcom’s murder, is on top of a massive $900 million contract for Elbit that the Albanese government has desperately sought to pretend it has nothing to do with.
The news comes as the Land Forces 2024 defence expo, sponsored by Defence and the Victorian government, gets underway in Melbourne in the face of what are expected to be huge protests. Present at the expo will be Australian sponsor NIOA Systems, which provides sniper rifles to the IDF used in a string of apparent war crimes by IDF snipers, with an NIOA executive to speak to the expo on “Planning for an Australian Multi Rocket Motor and Warhead Manufacturing Capability.”
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