The silence of the national broadcaster on the genocide in Gaza

We post this speech given by Margaret Pestorius of Wage Peace on the steps of the ABC in Brisbane on Sunday, the 29th of June 2025. During the speech Margie called on the ABC to stop acting as a public relations firm for the weapons industry with Israel. The strategy outlined by the spokesperson for Wage Peace to make the ABC accountable was:

1. Public Protests: Organize demonstrations directly in front of ABC offices to draw public attention to their lack of investigative reporting.
   
2. Media Pressure: Amplify the criticism through alternative media platforms like Declassified Australia, which is already exposing gaps in mainstream reporting.
   
3. Demand Transparency: Call for the ABC to:

• Investigate weapons export supply chains
• Disclose connections between media and defence industry think tanks
• Report proportionally on Australia’s multi-billion dollar weapons export industry
• Challenge government statements about “non-lethal” weapon components

4. Support Investigative Journalists: Encourage and protect journalists within the ABC (eg Antoinette Latouf) to report critically on weapons trade and potential war crimes.
5. Public Education: Continue raising awareness about how Australian-made weapon components are used in genocide like Gaza, forcing public discourse.
6. Challenge ABC Leadership: Pressure management to expand investigative reporting beyond current limited coverage and break ties with defence industry-funded sources.

The key is persistent, public pressure to transform the ABC’s current approach from what was described as a “public relations firm for the weapons industry” to genuine investigative journalism.

Also speaking at the ABC was Michelle McDonald, who is the Director of News and Community Engagement for the Anglican Church Southern Queensland. Michelle criticised ‘Mass Murdoch‘ for its conflict of interest and complicity in the genocide.  – Ian Curr, editor. 3 July 2025.

–oOo–

“The ABC Must Tell the Truth About the Weapons Export Industry”

We are here on Yuggera territory. And I reckon no Australian institution, much less the ABC, has ever  told the whole truth on Aboriginal Land. The ABC is failing us. The ABC Must Tell the Truth About the Weapons Export Industry.

The ABC does not do enough, to help the public understand how Australia is involved in the international weapons trade, especially the role of the weapons trade in the bombing of Gaza.

Every month, weapons built or assembled here — or    components — move through the US, Germany, and direct channels to Israel.

And the ABC says almost nothing.
The ABC is failing to report proportionately.
The weapons exports industry in Australia has exploded in recent years — but the ABC is silent on how  Australia’s weapons supply chain is directly implicated in the assault on Gaza.

The government is spending about $40 to $50 billion a year in addition to the usual defence force budget on the military export business. But we hear virtually nothing of this massive spend.

The ABC is silent on how the US and Israel use our components and our complicity to sustain their wars. The F-35 parts, the steel, wing kits for bombs, drone parts.

They’re silent on what’s being exported, where it’s going, and whether it violates international humanitarian law. They are silent on the structure of the industry, it’s emerging role in the economy, it’s relationship to US equity funds much less the actual movement of equipment.

Understanding requires history, context, different voices.and perspectives. The ABC is failing to investigate war crimes. Why aren’t we told which companies are supplying plated steel, transponders for drones, bombs, armoured vehicle parts? Why no recent stories on the massive billion dollar contract for Elbit Systems in Australia?

We are so grateful for the work of Declassified Australia which has become one of the best sources we have. Because the AbC is not doing its job. But there’s also Michael West media and even Crikey.

Why no follow-up or investigation on the German weapons corporation Rheinmetall?  Rheinmetall received $45 million in Federal and State subsidies to build the bomb factory in Maryborough. And presumably as much or more for the factory at Redbank.

These subsidies are for export businesses. They are not subsidies to build Australian owned equipment.
The ABC is failing its own Charter.

Its Charter says it should inform the Australian public — not protect the state, not sanitize militarism, not ignore genocide.
Where are the questions about Australia’s obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty?

The Arms Trade Treaty is explicit about how weapons are defined … And the definition includes components and parts of supply chains.

Where are the reports on  US-Australian arrangements which allow weapons tranfer into Gaza, or the many ways Australia is complicit — through exports, manufacturing, funding and silence?

The ABC is failing to distinguish ‘defence’ from ‘export’.
This isn’t about defending Australia. This is about feeding an industry — a weapons industry — that’s profitable when people elsewhere die. And the ABC refuses to say so clearly.

Instead, we get from them the voices of Pentagon-controlled think-tanks like ASPI, the Australian Strategic Policy “‘Institute.”  ASPI operatives are part of a vast set of think tanks obscuring the appalling actions of the United States of America. It’s those ASPI operatives who are interviewed and quoted in ABC stories — without ever revealing it’s board is stacked with BOEING, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and it’s funded by the US State Department.

The ABC is failing to investigate power. Why doesn’t it tell us about Accurus, the private equity weapons firm that bought Ferra ENGINEERING? FERRA Engineering used to make steel components for medical equipment. But it’s been bought by a private equity company which specialises in death, in aerospace components. Accurus, a company with no moral standards, no ethical foundation. It’s business is profit via genocide. It REQUIRES a genocide.

ABC give us information about that. Help us understand the intersection between private equity, the government weapons companies, and this genocide and the next.

Why doesn’t it question how steel is flown into Maryborough from Germany and then flown back out again — after being turned into the cruel, ubiquitous 155mm artillery shells?

That business in Maryborough entirely exports BOMBS to Germany. That business received 45 million in subsidies, which has gone to a family trust partnered with a foreign weapons conglomerate.

The ABC could investigate how did it happen that a bomb factory that employs just 50 staff received almost $1 million per created job. How does that even happen?

The ABC has one defence reporter — Mr Andrew Greene. He files a couple of articles a week. He’s thorough on each.
He’s persistent — but structurally, he is unsupported. His pieces are not backed by other ABC platforms and programmes because a lot of the depth of the ABC has been stripped. So his work goes unnoticed by radio, for example.

Unfortunately, he was recently stood down after accepting a $16,000, arms industry-funded junket to Germany. It’s a sign of the amount of money rollicking around.

Money that should be rolled back into the climate transition… To EarthCare not warfare. Their investigative teams? Missing in action. We need explanations so that people understand the NATURE AND EXTENT of the industry.

Four Corners has done one major story on the weapons industry in five years. 7.30 has done around 10 stories in that time. That’s once every five months.

This is a multi-billion dollar machine, and the ABC gives it the attention of a niche hobby – as if it’s an extension of amateur drone clubs. Ooo… Flying cameras!

The ABC is failing to reflect public interest. They won’t talk to activists or scholars from the peace movement. Because we talk outside the proscribed discourse. They won’t talk to Palestinian-Australians, or Yemenis, or survivors of war who know what these weapons do. They don’t ask whether the ADF’s procurement plans are even about national security — or just cover for building an export economy.

They operate within a discourse shaped by US military dominance — where dissent is marginalised, and even public broadcasters are afraid to name how that alliance controls what can and cannot be said.

So when Defence Minister Richard Marles told the ABC that Australia’s contribution to the F-35 warplane was “non-lethal”?

They printed the quote.
They didn’t challenge it.
They didn’t investigate it.
They let a lie stand — and called it journalism.
The ABC is not neutral.
Its silence is political.
Its avoidance is structural.

Its reporting is not proportionate to the scale of the violence we are complicit in or the scale of the growth of the weapons industry. Their editors stand inside a proscribed discourse that procludes truth telling and thereby stops us understanding what the hell is going on.

So we’re saying this clearly: The journalists at the ABC must do better. The ABC must stop acting like a public relations firm for the weapons industry. They will have to risk their career positions and stand for something.

They must organise amongst themselves so they have internal and external support and report courageously on Australia’s role in arming genocidal wars — including the ongoing assault on Gaza.

It must prioritise truth, not access.
It must listen to the public, not the Pentagon.
Because we deserve to understand what’s being done in our name — and with our money.

And until the ABC starts telling the truth, we will. On the streets, in our communities, in front of their offices. We will tell the truth they are too afraid — or too compromised — to say out loud.

No more silence. No more lies. No more complicity.

Margaret Pestorius,
29 June 2025.