Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters
Inside the heavily guarded, aseptically cool halls of the Indo-Pacific International Maritime Exposition, Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles, describes it as, for some in the room, “a kind of Disneyland … the happiest place on Earth”.
Standing outside, facing barricades and a broad line of armed police, those protesting the very presence of the arms conference in Sydney view it is anything but.
“War criminals are not welcome here,” rings the chant. “Shame, shame, shame.”
Some protesters carry doves on sticks, others signs condemning those inside: “You can’t bomb the truth away.”
Suddenly, the confrontation turns violent. “Police attacked us from all different angles,” protesters will later say. Officers were “set upon”, according to police.
Demonstrators are pepper sprayed. There are injuries on both sides.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
Inside, Marles continues: “Over the course of the next three days, this is an invaluable and incredibly worthwhile opportunity, because it is a moment where we can compare notes with our fellow navies around the world around shared challenges, but it’s also a moment when we can speak to industry about the kind of capabilities that we will need to see.”
He says the Indo-Pacific exposition will showcase “an incredible display of what our industry can produce; awesome power, ingenious autonomous systems and craft of all shapes and sizes which span the breadth of the beautiful, the menacing and the extremely cool.
“And all of it is on display, the very best of human ingenuity.”
The protests and the platitudes: these are the two sides of Indo-Pacific 2025, acutely controversial as war rages undimmed in Ukraine and a fragile ceasefire officially “holds” in Gaza, despite continued bombardment.
It is no mere disconnect. These are two worldviews that can barely comprehend, let alone understand, each other: two irreconcilable universes.
Behind the barricades inside the Indo-Pacific event, there are meetings under way behind closed doors, and invitation-only briefings, as well as presentations open to all “badge types” on military strategy and technological developments.
The vast exhibitors’ hall is a constantly moving sea of colour and noise.
Some of the largest, richest weapons manufacturers in the world are here. They employ baristas to hand out free coffees alongside the branded pens.
This event is demonstration, too, of how tightly enmeshed Australia is in the global arms industry. Distant conflicts are not. There is here.
Elbit Systems Australia, the Australian arm of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, has a stall, in bright yellow livery, in the centre of the hall. There are meeting rooms behind opaque yellow glass.
In April 2024 the Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom was killed by an Israeli drone strike while working in Gaza. Israeli defence sources told the newspaper Haaretz the missiles had been fired from a Hermes 450 drone, which is produced by Elbit Systems.
In a room on level three, Lockheed Martin is part of a “pitch to the primes” networking event, hosted by Australia’s defence department. Lockheed Martin is the main manufacturer of the F-35 strike fighter, used, the Israel Defense Forces state, to “strike terror targets and assist ground forces in very close proximity strikes” in Gaza.
More than 70 Australian companies have contributed to the F-35’s global supply chain. In excess of 700 of the fighter jet’s “critical pieces” are manufactured in Victoria alone, according to that state’s government. Australia also hosts a regional distribution hub for F-35 parts.
A UN commission of inquiry found that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. A report by the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories cited Australia as one of several states which “continue to transfer F-35 parts, heavily used in the genocidal destruction of Gaza”.
“These actions, despite clear obligations and compounding concerns, indicate an intent to facilitate Israeli crimes,” wrote Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.
Back in the vast central hall, Raytheon (newly rebranded as RTX Corporation) dominates a prominent corner. Its stall has a model guided-missile launcher and missiles on display.
Raytheon is involved in the production of the GBU-12, a 500lb laser-guided bomb which, Amnesty International reported, was used in a 2022 airstrike on a detention centre in Sa’ada, in Yemen, which killed nearly 100 civilians.
The Australian government’s future fund – the country’s sovereign wealth fund, which includes the superannuation of federal public servants – holds an investment of more than $179m in the company.
The same detention centre in Sa’ada was struck again in April this year, with more than 60 civilian detainees killed, part of an assault the US military labelled Operation Rough Rider.
Last month an Amnesty investigation described the strike as an “indiscriminate attack” on civilians – with no military objective – that must be investigated as a war crime.
“We take all reports of civilian harm seriously and are working to release the assessment results for Operation Rough Rider soon,” a spokesperson for US naval forces central command said.
After the strike, Houthis displayed debris, likely from two, 250-pound precision-guided GBU-39 small-diameter bombs used by the US military.
The major producer of the GBU-39 is Boeing, another stall-holder at Indo-Pacific. The company extols its “global control, global reach and global strike”.
There are drones in the exhibitors’ hall, full-scale models of missile launchers, and the weapons they fire.
The language is precise. And bloodless.
These weapons are discussed as “capabilities”, “assets”, “solutions”, “systems”.
They are “mission-ready” and “deployable” but there’s no mention of against whom they should be deployed.
This industry operates, of course, in the real world. National defence is a fundamental obligation of governments, and the march of technology is all but irresistible.
Bombs are made to be dropped but there’s an erasure here of upon whom they will fall.
Outside, after the protests of the arms’ conference’s first day, there is little sign of large-scale resistance. A protest banner hangs briefly from a road overpass on the final afternoon. Then police swarm and it’s gone.
Hundreds of bored officers stand at barricades, standing in tight knots, guarding nothing. They scroll their phones, or pat the horses still standing in the sun.
A tiny white plane scrawls a wedding proposal across the sky and it momentarily diverts attention from the carnival inside. Everybody looks the other way.
