It (Lake Argyle) was made, less than fifty years ago, out of thousands of stones, blasted from a mountain on Miriwoong Country in the largest non-nuclear explosion in history” – Alana Hunt.
DURING THE LAST 18 or 19 days of the federal election campaign, Australia’s settler colonial ally is slaughtering, starving, torturing, blowing up, sniping, killing. In day five hundred and fifty-eight (558) of the genocide in Gaza, the Federal seat of Griffith seems to be safe. We do not appear to have any weapons companies inside our electoral boundaries. Just outside, on the other side of the river, there are 1,500 people employed in Boeing’s core business of creating warheads, bombs, missiles, helicopters, and fighter jets.
But this is not a story about the the election campaign or reformism.
You doubt me this
BOEING has weapons engineering operations across Brisbane. It has seven floors at 150 Charlotte Street and 123 Albert Street in Brisbane’s CBD. At Amberley, it has a military science research facility. It has a factory at Alderley. A research facility at the BOEING Institute at the University of Queensland. BOEING is embedded in the Queensland Government. It gets massive funding in contracts from the federal government. And BOEING’S operatives at the university push for war with China.
But this is not a story about the military industrial complex.
This week, China divested from BOEING.
Just outside the boundaries of Griffith at Tingalpa lies a weapons factory called FERRA Engineering that supplies Israel with 1,000-pound JDAM bomb kits, which are GPS-guided. They are shipped to the United States which makes them into these weapons of mass destruction that have annihilated 90% of the Gaza Strip.
In an ongoing trial concerning a protest at FERRA Engineering, prosecutor Harry Coburn made the following claim in his statement of particulars to charges of unlawful assembly and entering with the intent to commit and indictable offence:
“The defendant and at least two other persons were present together for a common purpose, namely a protest. The nature of the common purpose is at law immaterial to the charge. However, it is understood that this protest related to the ongoing Palestine-Israel conflict and that the business “Ferra Products” provides components to Defence organizations within Australia and the USA.”
The prosecutor made this vanilla description of the machines employed by FERRA Engineering years to create bomb parts that are a fixed to F-35 Fighters and the 1000 pound bombs:
“For the purpose of the charge ‘Machinery’ or ‘Machine’ refers to Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines programmed to machine different parts for aerospace drilling or cutting large volumes of steel or aluminum away from a formed piece.“
Meanwhile, the electors of Griffith are more worried about aircraft noise.
Who will stop these barbaric acts?
CALTEX freely operates in Australia. It’s parent, CHEVRON, is fueling the genocide in Israel. Australian politicians should be sanctioning CALTEX. There should be no fuel for genocide. Australian Coal and gas exports provide the apartheid regime with the energy needed to dominate the Palestinians, the Lebanese, the Yemenis, the Syrians, the Iraqis, and so on.
But this is not a story about the Arab states and their complicity.
There is no mention of any of this in the media. No mention on the campaign trail, no mention in the letter I received yesterday from a resident of Camp Hill Palestine is far away. The big corporations that support Israel flourish here in Australia. Union Aid Abroad provides food packs for starving Palestinians in Gaza. World Central kitchen had its Australian aid worker murdered by the IDF. Israeli soldiers visit our shores on R and R from the genocide. There are murmurs but that is all. There are no indictments as there are in Britain. There is no criminal court prepared to intervene. There is no heed given to the International Court of Justice. There are no judges who speak up in Australia.
But this is not a story about the failure of the legal system to address war crimes.
I know only two politicians who have spoken out. Max Chandler Mather is struggling to hold his seat in Griffith because the LNP is running dead and the Labor Party is pushing hard against him. Another resident in the seat of Griffith wrote this: “you might have seen that the major parties backed by billionaires and big mining corporations are spending a lot of money to paint the Greens as a risk when the truth is the only ones on your side.” Remah Naji is running for the Greens in the seat of Moreton and, if elected, would become the first Palestinian woman to be elected to any Australian Parliament.
Meanwhile the Queensland government is cracking down on peaceful protest against the genocide.
More politicians need to speak out and to act. Boeing, Boeing, you can’t hide you’re supporting genocide. Caltex, Chevron, you can’t hide you’re supporting genocide. Free Palestine.
This is a story about us and what we are going to do to stop the genocide.
Ian Curr, 17 April 2025
