NO War Machine!
Posted on 29 January 2018
(In Australia we want to be the good guys!)
Yesterday Malcolm Turnbull announced his government will be setting up a $3.8bn Defence Export Facility to promote the sale of our “defence” equipment overseas. This comes after Turnbull categorically stated in August 2017 that Australia would support the United States in a conflict with North Korea.
There’s a saying that goes: the way to make money during a gold rush is to sell the picks and axes. Turnbull’s position looks to all intents and purposes to be one whereby he is looking to make “Australia Great” through war-profiteering. In a world that is on the brink of self-destruction, what sort of person rubs their hands together gleefully at the thought of all the money to be made through suffering?
I agree with World Vision Australia’s advocate Tim Costello’s assessment: “The government says this is an export and investment opportunity, but we would be exporting death and profiting from bloodshed. There is only one purpose in making a weapon and that is to kill someone with it. Do we really want that to be what people think of when they see the brand ‘made in Australia’?”
Make no mistake this is not a new direction for the Australian government, who already have been participating as a leading broker of arms sales and providing military training for oppressive regimes.
Australians are getting sick and tired of being made the bad guys by a rapacious and militarily chauvinistic government.
Australians say NO!
NO to being torturers of people who through no fault of their own had to flee their countries.
NO to perpetuating the genocide of our indigenous peoples through impoverishment and mistreatment.
NO to bringing about the death of our Great Barrier Reef and our living world by subsidising failing coal and oil industries, while actively hobbling new renewables industries.
NO to the oppression of our young people, and thereby our future, through making housing and higher education inaccessible.
NO to removing financial safety nets such that our rights are abridged through a campaign of fear. “Don’t step out of line, or you’ll be sleeping on the streets.”
NO to allowing the accumulation of wealth into a few hands through privatisation, rather than enforcing the sharing of that wealth through taxation and fair-paying jobs.
NO to taking our tax paid state and national assets meant to be available to all, and ripping them from us without consultation or realistic compensation.
NO to underfunding, or not funding at all, essential services such as hospitals, medical support, schools, dentistry, mental health programs, country firefighting services, etc.
NO to profiting through turning people into killers and giving them the weapons to wreak misery and death.
NO! NO! NO!
Make Australia kinder!
That’s the only true greatness worth having.
Support the little battlers! Give everyone a fair go! Show your love for a sunburnt country by preserving it, not laying it to waste!
I want to feel like an Australian hero! Not ashamed of my country.
Let’s become proper heroes.
In Peace,
Katherine Phelps
BA (Hons), MFA, PhD
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