There has been widespread condemnation of the disgraceful federal election campaign conducted by the Labor-Coalition duopoly. Even 91̳ of the mainstream media have felt compelled to criticise the extent to which “representative democracy” has been replaced almost entirely by snake-oil pork-barrelling, taking the John Howard doctrine of “non-core promises” to a level which defies any reasonable definition of “democracy in practice”.
We have seen the major parties’ abysmal expansion of uncosted populist promises, their failures to address key issues of socio-economic inequality and continuing environmental destruction, their scare campaigns about confected threats, and even the adoption of the neo-fascist Trumpian agenda, or collusion with its objectives.
But the most disgraceful aspect of this campaign, which condemns it to an unprecedented ignominy, is the deliberate censorship of Australia’s contribution to genocide.
It is the issue the polls do not mention.
In a betrayal of the values and principles, rhetorically claimed as central to democratic governance and the rule of just law, the Labor-Coalition establishment has provided overt and covert support for an ongoing genocide which while most of the mainstream media hides, social media doesn’t.
The investigative research of a number of courageous people has gradually revealed, over many months, some of the ways and means that Australia has continued to materially support the genocide in Gaza throughout 2024 and 2025, evidence generally studiously ignored.
The most recent evidence published in detail on , and , over the last two weeks, demands widespread public distribution, but only seems to have happened in one instance, by the ABC.
Australians should be told, not kept in the dark, that weapons manufactured here and materials used in armoured vehicles have been sold to Israel during 2025, in direct contravention of Australia’s international legal responsibilities.
In June 2024, the advised member states “to cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel” and that “arms manufacturers supplying Israel … should also end transfers, even if they are executed under existing export licenses.
“These companies, by sending weapons, parts, components, and ammunition to Israeli forces, risk being complicit in serious violations of international human rights and international humanitarian laws … An end to transfers must include indirect transfers through intermediary countries that could ultimately be used by Israeli forces, particularly in the ongoing attacks on Gaza”.
The Anthony Albanese government have consistently ignored these instructions, even as senior Israeli officials have explicitly stated that their intent is to kill or remove all Palestinians from Gaza, to create Trump’s vision of Gaza as the “Riviera of the Middle East” and to incorporate all other occupied Palestinian territory within an Eretz Israel, as well as parts of Lebanon and Syria.
It is not only that Australia has done nothing to oppose the mass murder of more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 20,000 children; it is not only that over the whole election campaign an average of 100 children a day have been murdered, including over the Anzac weekend; it is not only that Australia does nothing to stop the deliberate starvation campaign now creating widespread famine described by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East as “beyond catastrophe”; it is not only that the political establishment has expressed no opposition to the now total destruction of , reduced to a complete wasteland; it is not only that the Labor-Coalition is silent about Israeli forces in south Lebanon systematically destroying all Christian, Muslim and other cultural and historical heritage sites they come across, including an ancient heritage site dedicated to Simon Peter.
It is not only that the Labor-Coalition establishment has done nothing to oppose all this barbaric criminality, but it has played a significant enabling role and continues to do so.
It is unknown how much material support for Israel’s systematic destruction of Palestinian society in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as the destruction of south Lebanon — which includes the destruction of both Palestinian Lebanese communities — has been supplied by Australia, directly or indirectly, since October 2023, in contravention of international law.
It has been made known (especially through the research of ) that Australia is integrated into the supply chains for parts and components for which have played a dominant role in the massacres and mutilations of well over 150,000 civilians in Gaza; that Australia has continued to to Israel during 2024 in support of its ethnic cleansing; that Australia has actively supported US-UK-Israeli military operations against Yemen in support of Israeli objectives to create Eretz Israel; that Australia contributed $800 million to the US military machine in February after Trump had announced his grand plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza; that Australia increased trade with Israel by 20% during 2024, providing a large range of goods in breach of the July 2024 that it must “abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with Israel … which may entrench its unlawful presence in the territory [of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem]”.
The latest revelations indicating, in particular, sales to Israel this year of Australian-made powerful anti-personnel, anti-drone, anti-building automatic cannons, is a telling piece of evidence directly implicating the Albanese government in complicity in Israeli objectives to destroy Palestine.
The fact that these revelations and the broader picture of Australian support for genocide have been written out of the election campaign as an unmentionable issue says much about the depth of destruction of the moral compass at the centre of Australia’s increasingly decrepit “representative democracy”.
[Peter Henning has authored three books on Tasmanians during World War II, the last being Veils and Tin Hats about Tasmanian nurses at war. He writes for .]