Ferra Engineering at Tingalpa makes a crucial part for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter aircraft that enables Israel to drop bunker buster bombs on Gaza. The Australian government purchased these war machines from the Lockheed Martin and the F-35 entered service at Williamstown in 2021.
Ferra Engineering are licensed to make weapons of war by state and federal governments. The Queensland government has entered a race with other states to make Queensland the premier arms manufacturing centre in the region. Queensland already makes Bushmaster armoured vehicles that were gifted to Ukraine in a war of attrition with Russia after it invaded that country in 2022.
Ferra Engineering has has ties with all the major arms manufacturers involved in the genocide in Gaza and the bombing of Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Iran.
Those weapons manufacturers that Ferra Engineering has agreements with are: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Thales … Using the aerospace industry as a cover Ferra’s main objective to provided high solutions to the war machine of settler states like US, UK and Australia.
About 80 people turned up at a picket outside Ferra Engineering at 344 new Cleveland Road Tingalpa on the morning of 24 January 2024. We blocked the entrance to the building from 8 am till 11 am.
There were about 30 police in attendance. There were no arrests as the picket was covered by the Peaceful Assemblies Act 1992 that protects public gatherings such as this.
One of the speakers at the picket was Elise who spoke strongly against this weapons manufacturer. Here is what she had to say.
“Companies that are complict in the genocide through, you know, profiting from war, despots, companies like Ferra are not welcome in Brisbane. And they’re not allowed to hide in these cushy suburbs, where people have no idea what they’re doing. I think being here, even if we’re not in there, and we’re not necessarily causing that economic damage right now, we are bringing attention to the fact that you can’t hide from that truth, so how is it that these people, the workers, the CEOs, or whatever, people who are profiting making millions, if not billions, of the death of innocent people are allowed to do that peacefully up, people are being bombed for over 100 days. [Shame] They manufacture terror they manufacture violence and warfare. How are they allowed to do that? [Shame] I think you have to also remember that Palestine is not just a human rights issue or like a peace issue. It’s a feminist issue. It’s a climate issue. It’s a queer issue. It’s a it’s a refugee issue, because we know that there’s going to be so much follow on from this, there’s going to be so many consequences down the line. And we also have to be ready to unite and to be there when all of these following consequences are going to materialize. And that means it’s going to be a marathon, not a sprint. I think everyone already knows that.”
One of the consequences that happened almost immediately was a member of the local community at Tingalpa got up and spoke at the microphone, saying that it’s all very well for people from the inner city to come out to the suburbs, and to protest in the way that we were and to say that local people aren’t aware of what is going on in their midst. She said there are a lot of things that we didn’t know about. I certainly didn’t . And that the local community did know about and that they had been very upset by the fact that there was a weapons manufacturer right in their midst, in in that area.
The chairperson of the rally immediately outed himself as being a member of that local electorate and he called out the local member Ross Vasta for visiting this factory and giving Ferra the okay and supporting them in their enterprise of profiteering off the misery of other people.
Ian Curr
25 Jan 2024