Page 154 - Australian Defence Magazine June 2021

152 DEFENCE BUSINESS VIEW FROM CANBERRA
JUNE 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
THE RIGHT TO PROTEST
A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | CANBERRA
Land Forces 2021 in Brisbane June 1-3 offers Australia’s the defence sector the long-awaited opportunity to get together in a convivial setting, check out the latest tech and make those ever useful connections.
COURTESY of COVID, not since the Pa- cific Maritime Expo in Sydney in Octo- ber 2019 has there been a large defence trade show. Avalon was to have been held in February but has now been postponed to November-December.
Equally deprived of the opportunity to get to the defence shows are the assorted protesters and activists who plan to make up for it at Land Forces by picketing and maybe trying to infiltrate the event at the Brisbane Exhibition Centre.
Land Forces of course presents a long- deferred occasion for the morally supe- rior to chant, dress up in weird outfits and wave placards in a forlorn bid to con- vince attendees and exhibitors that they are nothing but profiteering warmongers.
Your correspondent has no problem with people protesting for or against whatever rocks their world. Australians, being a contrarian lot, have a long his- tory of protesting against pretty much everything.
The ADF of course exists to safeguard the ultimate freedom of Australians to engage in lawful activities, including pro- test, even when it comes across as point- less, counter-productive and tiresome.
Defence expositions have routinely at- tracted protests. The gold standard re- mains the Australian International De- fence Exposition (AIDEX) in November 1991 where some 2,000 protesters block- aded the Canberra national exhibition centre.
AIDEX 1989 attracted protesters and suitably emboldened, protest organis- ers planned well ahead for AIDEX 1991, attracting 2000 protesters from far and wide, many from “mainstream” peace or- ganisations but some from the hard left not averse to a spot of biffo. There were more than 200 arrests.
Police were of course accused of heavy- handed over-reaction. Greens Senator, long time peace activist Jo Vallentine, observed that some of those protesting at AIDEX clearly operated on a different def- inition of peaceful protests than she did.
The ACT government pulled the plug on further AIDEX events and there was no AIDEX 1993.
LEFT: Australians are getting more comfortable with protests with Black Lives Matter (pictured here in Brisbane) and the March for Justice in the past 12 months alone.
ANDREW MERCER VIA WIKICOMMONS