I asked the director of the Australian War Memorial, Brendan Nelson, why the Memorial is accepting funding from weapons manufacturers like BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. In response, Brendan Nelson, wrote back that “We regard it as entirely appropriate that defence contractors support the Memorial in its mission.”
It is difficult to see how Brendan Nelson can maintain that position when the AWM says in its founding documents: “The Memorial’s purpose is to commemorate the sacrifice of those Australians who have died in war.” Its mission is to assist Australians “… to remember, interpret and understand the Australian experience of war and its enduring impact on Australian society.”
Accepting funding from arms manufacturers who profit from war, and allowing them to have theatres named after them , is vastly different to “commemorating the sacrifice of those Australians who have died in war.” It is accepting funds from those who profit from war
Pope Francis put the issue very clearly on 24 May 2017 after his meeting with President Trump. He said: “It’s hypocritical to speak of peace while funding the arms trade, which only serves the merchants of death, exacerbating wars, not fought to solve a problem, but to benefit the weapons industry.”
Pope Francis called for: “The elimination of the arms trade.” But the AWM is helping to promote the arms trade.It is benefitting from the weapons industry.
In this blog on 25 April 2017, “The AWM and weapons manufacturers,” Sue Wareham described the ways that the AWM had accepted money and in-kind support from weapons manufacturers as outlined below.
BAE Systems is a key weapons supplier to the Saudi Arabian Government. That government is being investigated by the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence for 282 alleged breaches of international law against Yemen. BAE Systems has a theatre named after it at the AWM. The theatre can be combined with a ‘VIP tour of the Memorials Galleries’.
Another funder is Boeing a major supplier of military aircraft around the world. It has had a defence partnership with Saudi Arabia for over 70 years.
Funds come from Lockheed Martin the world’s largest defence contractor. About 80 per cent of its revenue comes from military sales. It is supplying F-16 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.
Raytheon is the world’s largest producer of guided missiles and a AWM funder.
Thales is a French multinational company that designs and builds electrical systems for defence and other industries. It supports the AWM.
Northrop Grumman was the fifth largest defence contractor in the world in 2015. It supplies military aircraft, military vessels, missile defence systems and related products. Its name appears in the large advertisement of the AWM at the Canberra Airport with the caption ‘for we are young and free’. In December 2014, the AWM was the venue for the launch of Northrop Grumman Australia’s new corporate image.
The military/political/intelligence complex based in the United States that President Eisenhower warned us about is spreading dangerously around the world. It has become a “secret state” with countless examples of how it overthrows governments and influences others. The arms manufactures are key players in that complex. The AWM is just another naïve organisation that can be influenced and used for advantage and profit..
These “merchants of death”, as Pope Francis calls them, profit from continuing war . They demean the sacrifice of Australians who died in war.
The AWM has lost its way on many fronts. It refuses to acknowledge in any meaningful way the 30,000 indigenous people who were killed in defending their land against white settlers and their police allies. In relation to our population at the time this was the greatest loss of life in war in our history. But the AWM says the Frontier Wars are a matter for the Australian Museum What a disgrace that our indigenous people are shunned like this.
The AWM cannot give us enough of the Anzac myth and Gallipoli. But Australians and New Zealanders fought first together in the Maori Wars of the !850’s and 1860’s. But that does not fit with the 1915 myth so best we forget it.
And so the AWM’s failure continues by seeking and obtaining support from ‘the merchants of death’. With their global power and influence the arms manufacturers are winning in their struggle to keep the US and its allies like Australia continually at war. That is not what the founders of the AWM intended.
At the opening of the AWM in 1941 the Governor General Lord Gowrie said the Memorial would be…’not only a record of the splendid achievements of the men who fought and fell…but also a reminder to future generations of the barbarity and futility of modern war’.
Brendan Nelson should take stock. The AWM has lost its way.
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
7 responses to “JOHN MENADUE. By accepting funding from weapons suppliers the Australian War Memorial demeans Australia’s war dead.”
We have a death cult – ANZAC memorials are its shrines and RSL’s its temples
And pokie machines are its moneylenders?
As we are to-day listening to announcements of once again being arm-twisted by the US into joining their “war against terrorism” on the edges of the Pacific to our north!
Another gallery no doubt already being planned by Brendan N. to remember more Aussie “kids” deaths serving others vested interests – and will it too be sponsored by the US WMD industry – or one of its specific company names not yet claiming its commercial prominence in the AWM?
And as you so rightly point out, John – nothing to honour the tens of thousands of Indigenous warriors fighting against the invasions of their countries from 1788 onwards – and still taking place – young people thrown into Don Dale-gaols – or murdered by police or prison guards – locked up in percentages bringing shame on this country as other countries look on in horror – the very NT Intervention itself – lies upon lies in order to get hold of Indigenous land for mining rights! NELSON NEEDS TO GO! NOW!
I completely agree with your views on this stance of the AWM which is completely at odds with the moral purpose behind “lest we forget”.
To be consistent Nelson should push for a renaming of the AWM. The Australian War Museum has an honest ring to it, and there is at least a precedent in the Imperial War Museum.
If arms manufacturers can use the AWM to redefine “memorial”, perhaps their contributions should be acknowledged on a George Orwell Donors plaque at the entrance. “War is peace” sounds like an appropriate header.
It also drifts the nation further from recognition and respect for those who died in the only wars on Australian soil, against indigenous people. We have these mental blocks: first that war happens elsewhere and we intervene nobly… and second that we never had a genocidal civil war.
So, we continue to maintain ‘peace’ through the constant threat of war!