How the Department of Defense evades responsibility for the link with Israel’s Elbit

Trying to figure out the government’s position on the flow of millions of taxpayer dollars to Israel’s Elbit Systems, particularly in the wake of the company’s role in the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom, has been difficult, to say the least. minimum

In June, Green MPs tried in Parliament to pursue the delivery of more than $900 million to Elbit as part of a contract with South Korean company Hanwha for infantry vehicles. In response, senior Labor ministers, right up to the Prime Minister himself, aided and abetted by Chairman Milton Dick, refused to answer the questions and repeatedly tried to divert to other issues. The working line, when ministers were finally forced to answer questions, was that Hanwha’s contract with Elbit was none of the government’s business.

It took persistent questioning of Defense Industry Minister Pat Conroy by the ABC’s Patricia Karvelas several days later to elicit anything more. Conroy initially tried to run the same line of attacking a Greens straw man, until Karvelas cornered him. He was forced to admit that whoever Hanwha subcontracted to was in fact fully controlled by the government.

Conroy then turned to another straw man: “If they’re saying we shouldn’t contract with Israeli or Jewish companies, which is what they’re implying, they’re effectively calling for a boycott of Israeli and Jewish companies. This is not our policy. This is not the policy of the Australian Government.”

Except that the boycott of Israeli or “Jewish” companies was not the problem (Conroy clearly wants to link the Greens to anti-Semitism). Rather, it was why the government was so richly rewarding an arms company complicit in the massacres of so many thousands of Palestinians and the murder of an Australian. Conroy’s alternative position was that the responsibility for atrocities such as the killing of aid workers lay with the Israel Defense Forces, not the companies that supplied their weapons. “The responsibility for how the weapons are used is the responsibility of the defense force in question, in this case, Israel,” Conroy said. “Does it mean, for example, that Qantas and Virgin should be banned from buying 737s from Boeing, because Boeing has sold F15 fighter jets to Israel?”

To point out the obvious problem with this claim, Qantas and Virgin are not the Australian government. And the line that the government doesn’t boycott companies because of how other governments might use their products fits very strangely with the government’s boycott of Huawei products because of claims that the Chinese government could use information gathered from these devices. Or, similarly, the government’s refusal to allow TikTok on government devices.

Especially given that Elbit is accused not only of complicity in the genocide and the murder of an Australian aid worker, but of placing a backdoor in the software provided for the Defense Force’s battle management system Australian

Conroy’s interview was, by Australian standards, an unusually candid moment around defense recruitment. The Defense Department itself completely blocks any attempt to get information about serious issues surrounding its spending of billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Their laughably so-called “media unit” refuses to answer any questions. Its freedom of information area closes and drags away requests on matters such as Elbit or the corruption revealed by Australia’s National Audit Office’s notorious review of its dealings with defense contractor Thales, as much as possible, or insist that even strictly targeted requests are too much. great to consider. Defense Minister Richard Marles’ office, regarded by current and former Labor MPs as a buffoon, is no better in its willingness to respond to media enquiries.

This is despite extensive evidence from one of Defence’s few sources of accountability, the auditor-general, that the Department of Defense is the most scandalous, conflicted and incompetent department in the Commonwealth, whether it is the frigates of the Hunter class, or ADF Health or Rehabilitation Services, ANZAC frigate service contract or base services.

The department relies on the fact that there are now few journalists who specialize in defense – apart from the ABC’s excellent Andrew Greene (who recently revealed that precisely no action would be taken on the unethical conduct revealed in the audit de Thales)— to cover his incompetence and corruption. and that there is a collection of former Defense officials now ensconced in think tanks and academia always ready to jump to the aid of the media and call for even more money to be wasted on systems weapons

Contrast that with the United States, where a large audit office, the Government Accountability Office, relentlessly investigates every department, including the Pentagon, and issues a steady stream of reports, sometimes with multiple reports on the Department of Defense for weekand congressional committees are publicly calling out Pentagon chiefs and contractors over acquisition systems and weapons, it’s serious.

In Australia, scandal and corruption in defense spending passes with minimal accountability and no consequences, including the generous reward of companies that help murder Australians.