Even as the Albanese government was recognising a Palestinian state on the weekend, it was handing yet more taxpayer money to a company steeped in the blood of Palestinians: Elbit Systems.
Elbit is the largest Israeli arms manufacturer, mass-producing drones used by the Israeli Defense Forces to kill huge numbers of Palestinian civilians, and the drone used by the IDF to execute Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and her colleagues in 2024. It has a history of producing white phosphorus and was temporarily banned by Australia’s Future Fund in 2021 for producing cluster munitions. It has broken international sanctions to sell weapons to the Myanmar junta after the 2021 coup there.
None of that matters to the Australian Department of Defence, however. Earlier this week, Defence revealed it was paying $9.7 million for radios to Elbit Systems UK, the British subsidiary of Elbit that has attracted a storm of protesters at its plants across England against the Palestinian genocide. Defence commenced the contract with Elbit UK last week, after a tender process commencing in December 2024 — long after Elbit’s role in the execution of Frankcom by the IDF was well known.
Defence thus took a clear decision to reward a company connected with the killing of an Australian.
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This new funding for Elbit is only the most recent taxpayer handout to Elbit or its subsidiaries: in October 2024, Defence handed nearly $700,000 to Elbit’s Australian subsidiary for drone support systems; a month earlier it handed $38,000 to Elbit Australia for security systems; in April 2024, when Frankcom was executed, Elbit was, aptly, given $160,000 for explosives; it received $609,000 in February 2024, two contracts worth $3.7 million in January 2024 and a $14 million contract in November 2023.
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However, the largest recent contract was around $900 million for Elbit to supply turrets to infantry vehicles being built by South Korean company Hanwha, a contract the government was caught lying about in 2024. While the government claimed it had no involvement in Hanwha’s sub-contract, documents obtained by Crikey revealed that the government had closely vetted and approved the sub-contract process.
The government also recently handed $467,000 for missiles to another Israeli arms company, Rafael, which has also been targeted by protests in Australia and overseas.
The government’s enthusiasm for continued funding of companies deeply involved in Israel’s genocide in Gaza radically undercuts its posturing on recognition of a Palestinian state. While the recognition has attracted criticism from the Coalition and the Trump administration, it has not been accompanied by any concrete actions to deter the Netanyahu government from its avowed aim of destroying the possibility of a Palestinian state, through ethnic cleansing and colonisation of the West Bank and the extermination of Palestinians in Gaza.
Instead, the Albanese government has only strengthened its rhetoric, albeit still refusing to use accurate terms like “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions.
Indeed, by continuing to add to the profits of the Israeli arms manufacturing industry, and refusing to sanction the Netanyahu government, Labor’s defence against the charge that it is complicit in genocide looks increasingly thin. It may engage in the theatre of concern for Palestinians, but its inaction, and its spending, send a very different message.