If Scott Morrison set the standard for political mendacity, his successor Anthony Albanese and his ministers are going to give it a red hot go.
The Albanese government is handing more than $900 million to Israeli arms company Elbit Systems, which, among other products used in the mass slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli Defence Forces, manufactured the drone the IDF used to murder Australian Zomi Frankcom.
Remember Frankcom? Labor hasn’t said a word about her since it promised back in April that there’d be a “review” of the IDF’s murder of her along with her World Central Kitchen colleagues as they delivered aid in Gaza.
The prime minister was asked by the Greens in Parliament yesterday about why Labor wouldn’t cancel the Elbit contract. Here’s the question in full (for reasons that will become apparent):
This year, Labor awarded a $917 million contract to Israeli weapons corporation Elbit Systems, the same company that made the drone that Israel used to bomb the World Central Kitchen convoy and kill Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom. Elbit is one of the largest suppliers to the Israeli military as it carries out a genocide in Gaza. Elbit Systems is already blacklisted in other countries for violations of humanitarian law. Why won’t the government cancel the Elbit Systems contract?
In response, the prime minister engaged in the sort of evasion and casuistry that would have made Morrison proud. Asked only, and entirely, about the Elbit contract, Albanese didn’t even mention Elbit. “It is a fact that there have been no weapons or ammunition exported to Israel in the last five years,” he said, going on to accuse the Greens of peddling misinformation about arms exports.
That was, as anyone who can read can see, completely unrelated to the question he was asked. Arms exports to Israel are literally the exact opposite of Australia buying arms from Israel. When the Greens’ Max Chandler-Mather asked Albanese to actually answer the question, Tony Burke leapt up to claim again that the Greens were peddling “misinformation” and said “people heard the question was much broader than that, and the prime minister’s being relevant.”
That was, as is obvious from the question above, bullshit. But Labor Speaker Milton Dick, ridiculously, agreed. “He is talking about the relevant topic. Under the standing orders, he is being directly relevant, so he is in order.”
Albanese, Burke and Dick were all pretending that Chandler-Mather had asked a completely different question. “The member talks about the F-35 program…” lied Albanese. The member had said nothing about the F-35 program.
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy was then invited to help Albanese out, but could only get out a couple of words before his time was up. So Conroy came back at the end of question time to talk — finally — about the Elbit handout. “The Commonwealth has a contract with Hanwha Defence Australia to build infantry fighting vehicles in Australia,” said Conroy. “Hanwha Defence Australia has contracted to Elbit to build the turrets of those vehicles in Australia without the Commonwealth being a party to that contract.”
This is the serious position of the Albanese government — that it has nothing to do with who makes the crucial parts of its infantry vehicles. The South Korean company Hanwha decided to sub-contract $900 million to Elbit with seemingly neither the knowledge nor the interest of the government.
This must come as a shock to Elbit, which boasted on its website earlier this year it was “awarded a contract worth approximately [US]$600 million to supply systems to Hanwha Defence Australia for the Australian LAND 400 Phase 3 Project … This milestone reaffirms our commitment to delivering advanced, mission-critical solutions to the Australian Army.”
But nothing to do with the government, it seems. Conroy, his gormless boss Richard Marles, Albanese and Australia’s defence chiefs presumably only learnt of Elbit’s involvement in that media release.
Perhaps Albanese and his ministers can check Austender. There — doubtless to their surprise, since it’s nothing to do with them — they’ll see that Elbit Systems has received $19.25 million in direct defence contracts since October 7 last year. That’s part of $33.4 million in contracts awarded to the company since Labor came to power.
Why the lies and absurd evasions? Is it because those charges of being complicit in genocide start to look a little more substantial when you’re handing so much money to a firm that makes its money from shooting, incinerating and burying Palestinians?
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