UPDATE: On 4 May 2026, the National Anti-Corruption Commission announced that deputy commissioner Nicole Rose had resigned.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission’s performance since its inception has been widely condemned. The leadership of Commissioner Paul Brereton, in particular, has drawn heavy criticism.

The mismanagement of his conflicts of interest, firstly in relation to Robodebt and then his potential conflict arising from defence-related investigations, have undermined the reputation of an institution whose success relies on its transparency and accountability, as have the NACC’s inordinate secrecy and its refusal to hold any public hearings to date.

As a result, greater responsibility for NACC investigations has been placed in the hands of its three deputy commissioners. However none of these deputies has been a judge or senior legal professional. By comparison, the dozens of assistant commissioners who’ve served the NSW ICAC, for example, have overwhelmingly been SC or KC, and many were also judges.

Indeed, the NACC’s three current deputy commissioners as a group represent the least qualified combination of deputies permitted under the NACC Act.

This months-long investigation by The Point raises major concerns about the suitability of all three deputy commissioners, casting serious new doubt on the legitimacy of the NACC as currently constituted.

Following the March publication of the NACC’s long-awaited Robodebt report, the Centre for Public Integrity, while welcoming the report, raised concerns that go to the heart of the NACC’s credibility. It said the protracted Robodebt episode had highlighted “ongoing structural concerns” about the design of the NACC: “In particular, we note the absence of a transparent (emphasis added), arms-length and merit-based appointment process for the Commissioner. Without a clearly independent appointment process, governments cannot readily point to an objective mechanism to reassure the public when trust is challenged.”

Those same concerns about the appointment of the commissioner apply equally to the appointments of the deputy commissioners.

Two current NACC deputy commissioners were appointed to the NACC straight from jobs into which they had been parachuted by Coalition governments: Nicole Rose and Ben Gauntlett were both “captain’s picks” into public roles that ordinarily required the use of a transparent merit-based selection process. In neither case did the Coalition do this.

Deputy commissioner Rose, the delegated decision maker who decided not to investigate the Robodebt Six, has a diploma of hotel management as her highest academic qualification. She was handed two CEO roles, at AUSTRAC and CrimTrac, by then Justice Minister Michael Keenan, ahead of vastly more experienced candidates, including a judge, barristers, and a former police commissioner.

Deputy commissioner Gauntlett, meanwhile, was handpicked by Scott Morrison’s coalition government as disability discrimination commissioner, a move that was condemned by numerous human rights legal experts at the time for not being an open merit-based selection process as required.

Until the Government delivers “a powerful, transparent and independent NACC – one with teeth”, as promised by prime minister Albanese – the NACC will continue to be a running sore in the nation’s integrity framework, mistrusted and maligned by the public. It could be argued that the NACC was set up to fail.

Nicole Rose was appointed NACC deputy commissioner by the Albanese Government for a five-year term commencing 1 July 2023. She was previously the CEO of AUSTRAC, Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulator and financial intelligence unit, and before that the CEO of another law enforcement agency, CrimTrac. (When CrimTrac was folded into the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, Rose was for a short period deputy CEO of ACIC.)

“Ms Rose brings to the NACC diverse experience in law enforcement, intelligence and regulatory environments,” states her brief bio on the NACC website. While true, a deeper look at her work history raises serious questions about her appointment by the attorney-general, not just to her current position, but also to her previous two roles.

In February 2020, the Daily Telegraph published an investigation by senior reporter Natalie O’Brien into Rose’s AUSTRAC appointment, revealing “the meteoric rise of a woman with limited police experience to the top of Australia’s financial crimes watchdog ahead of candidates with decades of law enforcement and legal experience”.

Based on freedom of information (FOI) documents solicited over months (and still available), the article describes how Rose “was parachuted into the job running the $75 million agency in a ‘unique’ behind-the-scenes deal” in 2017.

There were 22 candidates for the position: “eleven had law enforcement backgrounds including a commissioner and deputy commissioner, and one was a judge”. Rose, who was then on a secondment to the Attorney-General’s Department, was listed in the job advertisement as the contact person for inquiries about the application process. She was also on the four-person panel that interviewed the seven shortlisted candidates.

The panel recommended three candidates as “highly suitable” for the role.

Yet, two months after the interviews, Minister Keenan bypassed the process and appointed Rose CEO on the grounds that she was an “eminent person”.

The Daily Telegraph described the appointment as “a back room deal”, in part because the FOI documents provide no explanation as to how or why this decision was made.

After it became aware of the growing controversy, the Attorney-General’s Department provided the following statement: “Whilst it may not be readily apparent from the documents, the (former) Minister for Justice recommended the appointment of one of the candidates found highly suitable by the panel. However, before that proposal could be finalised, the candidate was no longer available… The Minister for Justice subsequently exercised his option to appoint an eminent person.”

Despite requests by the journalist for documentation or further information about this unusual decision, including why the two other “highly suitable” candidates weren’t approached, no explanation was ever provided.

A few days after publication of the article, Labor senator Louise Pratt raised the matter with Rose in Senate Estimates: “How is it that you are responsible for the recruitment process but actually end up with the job at the end of the day?” and “Can you please take us through the process that you were asked to undertake in order to recruit for this statutory appointment.”

Rose replied, “There was a recruitment process. I suggest that the attorney-general’s [department] be approached as they ran that recruitment process … I did not apply for the job. I was approached by the minister sometime after that process was complete.”

Detailed questions had been put to the Attorney-General’s Department, and Rose, by journalist Natalie O’Brien at the time, but both declined to respond.

The Point approached the NACC for a response to the Daily Telegraph’s account, including whether Commissioner Brereton or Deputy Commissioner Rose contested any of the facts relayed about Rose’s AUSTRAC appointment (noting that the account remained on the public record).

The NACC replied, “Deputy Commissioner Rose was appointed as a Deputy Commissioner … following a rigorous merit-based selection and vetting process managed by the Attorney-General’s Department.”

It also stated (without providing evidence) that the “Daily Telegraph articles published in 2020 contain false and defamatory information. The baseless claims made by the journalist were dealt with by the then responsible Minister, and in Senate Estimates at the time.”

Natalie O’Brien rejects these imputations, saying the article was vetted by lawyers, and was watertight. Furthermore, “we received no complaint about inaccuracy or defamation at the Telegraph when we published. The ‘allegations’ were upheld for all to see in the [FOI] documents.” Those FOI documents remain accessible and support her account.

*

This information didn’t raise any red flags in the Attorney-General’s Department as it considered appointments for the new National Anti-Corruption Commission. But what preceded Rose’s AUSTRAC appointment was even more alarming.

FOI documents revealed that Justice Minister Keenan had also appointed Rose as CEO of CrimTrac in 2015, after stating, as reported by O’Brien, that he wanted to “directly appoint” a new head “without conducting a full selection process”.

Rose was hand-picked to run the $80 million agency starting April 2015. CrimTrac was established in 2000 to provide national, technology-based policing information systems, such as DNA and fingerprint databases, to state and territory police. Its biggest project in 2015, by a significant margin, was the creation of the $52 million Biometric Identification Solution (BIS), a new identification capability to recognise fingerprints, palm prints and facial images. The project turned into a $34 million disaster.

The 2019 post-mortem on BIS by the auditor general noted: “none of the milestones or deliverables met”. The contract, which was signed and managed by Rose, “did not explain the milestones and performance requirements in a manner that was readily understood and applied”, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) stated.

The Point does not allege that Rose was responsible for the failures that led to the termination of the BIS. However, this information shows that it was known within Minister Keenan’s portfolio that BIS was in deep trouble before he appointed Rose into the second job as CEO of AUSTRAC in 2017.

Under Rose, CrimTrac started a tender process for the BIS in June 2015 and signed a contract with NEC Australia in April 2016.

The project was in trouble almost immediately, with the ANAO finding that “the first contract milestone (and arguably the most important), Solution Design, was supposed to be completed by June 2016, two months after the contract was signed. This milestone was not met and project monthly reports began being reported as ‘red’ (‘requires corrective action’) shortly thereafter, in August 2016.” The project would never get back on track.

CrimTrac was folded into the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) in July 2016 following a merger with the Australian Crime Commission, and the newly amalgamated agency was tasked with delivering and maintaining national information sharing systems. According to the ANAO report, “There was awareness at all levels within ACIC that BIS was encountering serious difficulties.”

Nevertheless, Rose, now deputy CEO of ACIC, wrote in CrimTrac’s final annual report in September 2016, “The new Biometric Identification Services will deliver an improved tool to Australian policing agencies that will contribute to the effectiveness of operational policing, improve safety of frontline police and enhance community safety and security … The service is expected to start in mid-2017.”

By June 2017, however, more than a year after the BIS contract was signed, “a PwC review commissioned by ACIC reported that the program was yet to define a robust governance structure with roles and responsibilities across the project and that decision-making governance was unclear.” The result: CrimTrac and NEC Australia were in a running dispute over where responsibilities lay amid ongoing failures to hit targets.

Four months later, in October 2017, having abandoned the AUSTRAC executive recruitment process, Minister Keenan appointed Rose as AUSTRAC’s new CEO.

CrimTrac’s BIS project was officially terminated in June 2018.

The process of appointing deputy commissioners to the new NACC in 2023 was overseen by Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, with proposed candidates requiring the approval of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Anti-Corruption Commission (PJC-NACC).

Dr Ben Gauntlett commenced his five-year term as deputy commissioner of the NACC on 1 July 2023. He had previously spent almost five years as disability discrimination commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), where he was “a champion for increasing meaningful employment opportunities for people with disability, increased access to accessible housing for people with disability, greater community awareness of disability rights and disability discrimination, and strengthened legal and policy frameworks to protect disability rights.”

Gauntlett was one of two commissioners appointed to the AHRC “without an open, merit-based selection process”, wrote the Australian Human Rights Institute (AHRI) in 2019.

Also critical of the appointment was the executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, Hugh de Kretser: “The Morrison Government has undermined the independence and effectiveness of the Commission.”

AHRI director Professor Justine Nolan warned that the appointment put Australia’s status on the international stage at risk. “The Australian Human Rights Commission’s current ‘A status’ means it has full participation rights at the UN Human Rights Council … Australia’s ‘A status’ is now in jeopardy, thanks to the government’s handpicking of commissioners.”

Her fears were warranted: the relevant international body didn’t immediately reaccredit Australia’s human rights commission as an A-status organisation, instead deferring consideration of its re-accreditation application for 18 months. A black mark for Australia.

Unlike Rose, Gauntlett did have academic legal qualifications, but his general background as a barrister followed by almost five years as a human rights commissioner was hardly ideal for a senior role at the NACC, and included little experience fighting corruption.

When the NACC began considering the Robodebt Six referrals, Gauntlett was tasked with “considering options for dealing with the public official who was not a public servant”, according to NACC Inspector Gail Furness in her October 2024 report on the NACC’s original decision not to investigate the Robodebt referrals.

This “public official” was recently revealed to be former prime minister Scott Morrison. Inspector Furness added that Gauntlett “circulated various drafts of his review of the options for dealing with [Scott Morrison]” between January and March 2024, and his work on it had commenced as early as November 2023.

Deputy commissioner Rose confirmed in her formal decision letter (setting out reasons the NACC would not open an investigation into the Robodebt referrals) that she had received Gauntlett’s work in relation to Morrison and that she was “assisted in my decision-making by his memorandum”.

Gauntlett was thus placed in a position of influence in the NACC’s decision-making process around Morrison less than six months after he had left a role for which he was hand-picked by Morrison’s government. (There is no evidence, and it is not alleged, that Gauntlett was in any way influenced or acted with impropriety.)

In response to questions, the NACC replied that Gauntlett’s appointment as disability discrimination commissioner was “consistent with legislation that existed at the time”. (To address public concerns about the controversial human rights commissioner appointments, in October 2022 parliament passed legislation requiring all Commissioner roles to be publicly advertised and merit tested.) The NACC added that it was “confident its Deputy Commissioners made all appropriate declarations of actual or perceived conflicts of interest concerning their involvement in the Robodebt referrals.”

The third deputy commissioner is Kylie Kilgour, who commenced in February 2024.

In October 2024, NACC Inspector Gail Furness found that Commissioner Brereton had engaged in officer misconduct for not having appropriately managed his Robodebt conflict of interest. The NACC accepted the Inspector’s recommendation that it revisit its decision not to investigate the Robodebt referrals by appointing an independent person to reconsider it.. The NACC appointed former High Court Justice Geoffrey Nettle KC to do this. He found that each of the six referrals raised a corruption issue and should be investigated.

The NACC decided it would, finally, investigate the Robodebt Six, and in February 2025 announced this in a media release, which ended with an ambiguous line: “The Commissioner and other Deputy Commissioners who were involved in the original decision not to investigate the referrals will not participate in the investigation.” It was not clear whether this included Kilgour or not.

As has been reported previously by Michelle Fahy and Elizabeth Minter, Kilgour was involved in the NACC’s original decision not to investigate the Robodebt referrals. She worked alongside Commissioner Brereton and deputy commissioners Rose and Gauntlett crafting the public statement that explained why the NACC would not investigate the Robodebt Six officials.

Kilgour was also involved in the editing of, and discussions regarding, the letters that were sent to the six officials advising them they were not going to be investigated. She was included in emails dating back to March 2024 from Commissioner Brereton outlining changes he wanted made to the public statement and the letters to the officials.

Despite this history of involvement, the NACC later announced that Kylie Kilgour would lead the Robodebt investigation.

Anthony Whealy KC, chair of the Centre for Public Integrity, said that all of the NACC’s deputy commissioners were “arguably tainted” and should not be involved in any way in the Robodebt investigation. (In May 2025, investigative journalism site Undue Influence put a series of questions about the matter to the NACC. It refused to answer any of them.)

Kilgour’s role sits under Brereton and alongside Gauntlett and Rose, and she was privy to the NACC’s considerations, but there were further reasons to be concerned about her appointment to run the new investigation.

An FOI disclosure related to Kilgour’s appointment as deputy commissioner and the vetting process managed by the Attorney-General’s Department revealed a conflict declaration by Kilgour of an affiliation either related to herself or her immediate family. The detail was redacted, but the Attorney General’s Department stated that “any such conflicts of interest have been managed in accordance with the Commission’s policies and procedures. She has no conflicts of interest in relation to the people subject to the Robodebt Royal Commission referrals.”

The following is not included in that FOI, but Kilgour is married to Tom Bentley, the long-time (2007-2013) deputy chief of staff to Julia Gillard. Gillard was the Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations when Robodebt Six member Kathryn Campbell was appointed deputy secretary of that department in May 2010. Bentley was still working for Gillard when, as prime minister, she announced in December 2010 that Campbell would become the secretary of the Department of Human Services – the role in which Campbell became heavily involved in the creation of the Robodebt scheme. If the NACC has been dogged by perceptions that it’s too enmeshed in the club of Canberra mandarins who all knew each other, the appointment of Kilgour was unlikely to disprove them.

The Point does not allege any wrongdoing by Kilgour or Bentley, or that Kilgour had an undisclosed conflict of interest. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that it took the government nine months to provide the FOI documents, and when it did they were heavily redacted.

*

A final example of the lack of transparency by the Attorney-General’s Department raises serious concerns about its role in the appointment of senior NACC officials.

Kilgour was not the Albanese Government’s first choice to fill the vacancy left by the departure of interim Deputy Commissioner Jaala Hinchcliffe in February 2024. The government had nominated NSW Supreme Court Justice Stephen Rothman. But the parliamentary committee that oversees the NACC rejected Rothman upon learning of his long-term Labor and union connections – which included twice running for office as a Labor candidate, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

How did a candidate with Rothman’s partisan background get through the supposedly robust and transparent selection process? The Sydney Morning Herald reported that pertinent information about the candidate’s background “was either not gathered in the departmental vetting process or knowingly withheld from MPs required to tick off or veto the nomination”.

According to PJC-NACC committee member and Greens senator David Shoebridge, the Attorney-General’s Department gave committee members “sanitised” documents about the candidate “rather than the original version provided by the candidate”. Helen Haines, deputy chair of the PJC-NACC, was contacted in relation to this article but declined to comment.

*

Shoebridge believes that “after almost two years in operation [the NACC] has produced more scandals than anti-corruption findings.”

“From appointments to secrecy to its disrespect for whistleblowers and complainants, it’s hard to point to a single part of the NACC that is delivering for the public.”

One can only speculate why the Albanese Government chose candidates that had been previously appointed via such compromised recruitment processes for these top roles at the NACC. Dozens of highly experienced, credentialed and well-regarded candidates would have been queueing up to be involved in Australia’s inaugural federal anti-corruption body.

Compare the composition of the NACC with that of the NSW ICAC, for example. The current commissioners sitting under the Chief Commissioner at ICAC are Helen Murrell SC and Paul Lakatos SC. Murrell is a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the ACT with decades of experience as a judge in various courts, as head of several tribunals, and as a senior barrister. Lakatos is a former judge of the NSW District Court, also with decades of experience as a barrister and counsel assisting, including for the ICAC.

“The government of the day chooses who is appointed to the NACC, and by extension they must take responsibility if their appointees’ qualifications and experience are not sufficient for the role,” says Bill Browne, Director of the Democracy & Accountability Program at the Australia Institute. And given that a single deputy commissioner could be responsible for running a major corruption inquiry, “it would make sense for deputies to have commensurate legal experience.”

*

After almost three years of mismanaging the Robodebt case, the NACC published its final findings in March in a convoluted 445-page report. The NACC conducted no public hearings – on the grounds that even these circumstances were not “exceptional” enough to warrant them.

Kathryn Campbell and Scott Morrison were cleared, along with two other senior executives. Deputy Commissioner Kilgour – who has never been a judge or even admitted to the bar, although she is a former deputy commissioner of Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) – effectively declared that Robodebt royal commissioner and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland Catherine Holmes got it wrong in many of her damning judgements about the parties responsible.

Journalist Rick Morton, who literally wrote the book on Robodebt, said the reasons given by Kilgour “in many of these scenarios are risible and, to borrow one of her phrases, tax credulity”.

For example, Kilgour excused the behaviour of some of the most senior public officials referred for potential corrupt conduct but “inexplicably” criticised the exact same conduct from other public officials also referred.

Morton wrote that, “at times in her report, Kilgour displays a naive understanding of the real-life behaviour of senior public servants, wondering aloud in her official report how or why such officials could ever do the wrong thing while at times finding they did just that.”

The NACC did find that two executives acted corruptly, but it will not be referring them to the Commonwealth Director for Public Prosecutions.

After all the pain and heartache borne by the victims of the Robodebt scheme, after a royal commission, a successful class action, two senate inquiries, an ombudsman’s investigation, a Public Service Commission taskforce, and an eventual NACC investigation, not a single person will face charges over Robodebt. The worst case of maladministration in Australian Government history, costing billions of dollars, not to mention the lives lost and hundreds of thousands of people left scarred by the experience, has ended with a whimper.

The one national institution tasked with ensuring integrity in the public sector by detecting and preventing corrupt conduct involving public officials has done nothing of the sort.

Following the NACC’s announcement of the resignation of Deputy Commissioner Nicole Rose, the Centre for Public Integrity called on Attorney-General Michelle Rowland to implement a best practice, transparent appointment process for her replacement.

Read the Centre for Public Integrity’s statement in full here.

“The National Anti-Corruption Commission will only succeed if the public has absolute confidence in its independence. That confidence has been shaken. This appointment is an opportunity to restore it — and it must be done properly.”

The Hon Anthony Whealy KC
Chair, Centre for Public Integrity

The National Anti-Corruption Commission’s performance since its inception has been widely condemned. The leadership of Commissioner Paul Brereton, in particular, has drawn heavy criticism.

The mismanagement of his conflicts of interest, firstly in relation to Robodebt and then his potential conflict arising from defence-related investigations, has undermined the reputation of an institution whose success relies on its transparency and accountability, as have the NACC’s inordinate secrecy and its refusal to hold any public hearings to date.

As a result, greater responsibility for NACC investigations has been placed in the hands of its three deputy commissioners. However none of these deputies has been a judge or senior legal professional. By comparison, the dozens of assistant commissioners who’ve served the NSW ICAC, for example, have overwhelmingly been SC or KC, and many were also judges.

Indeed, the NACC’s three current deputy commissioners as a group represent the least qualified combination of deputies permitted under the NACC Act.

This months-long investigation raises major concerns about the suitability of all three deputy commissioners, casting serious new doubt on the legitimacy of the NACC as currently constituted…

Two current NACC Deputy Commissioners were appointed to the NACC straight from jobs into which they had been parachuted by Coalition governments: Nicole Rose and Ben Gauntlett were both “captain’s picks” into public roles that ordinarily required the use of a transparent merit-based selection process. In neither case did the Coalition do this.

Deputy Commissioner Rose, the delegated decision maker who decided not to investigate the Robodebt Six, has a diploma of hotel management as her highest academic qualification. She was handed two CEO roles, at AUSTRAC and CrimTrac, by then Justice Minister Michael Keenan, ahead of vastly more experienced candidates, including a judge, barristers, and a former police commissioner.

Deputy Commissioner Gauntlett, meanwhile, was handpicked by Scott Morrison’s Coalition Government as Disability Discrimination Commissioner, a move that was condemned by numerous human rights legal experts at the time for not being an open merit-based selection process as required.

Until the Government delivers “a powerful, transparent and independent NACC – one with teeth”, as promised by Prime Minister Albanese – the NACC will continue to be a running sore in the nation’s integrity framework, mistrusted and maligned by the public. It could be argued that the NACC was set up to fail.

Read the full story at The Point.

Lockheed Martin Australia has just poached its new CEO straight from the Australian Government’s weapons buying group, Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG).

This latest appointment continues the global weapons giant’s long-standing practice of recruiting its local chief executives from the ranks of senior Australian military and defence officials.

Jeremy King, who was head of the Joint Aviation Systems Division in CASG until December, according to his LinkedIn, started his new job with the world’s largest weapons-maker earlier this month. At most, the gap between jobs was six weeks.

Lockheed Martin Australia has $4.7 billion in current contracts with the Australian Government. (Source: Finance Department Austender website, 27.1.26.)

After a transition period working with Lockheed Martin’s current Australian CEO, Warren McDonald – who served in the Royal Australian Air Force for more than 40 years before jumping to Lockheed – Mr King will assume outright responsibility as Lockheed’s new chief executive on 23 February. He will report to the president of Lockheed Martin International, Jay Pitman.

“Jeremy’s exceptional depth of experience in large-scale defence acquisitions, combined with his long-standing commitment to customer-centric leadership, make him the ideal candidate to drive Lockheed Martin’s growth in Australia and New Zealand,” said Mr Pitman.

Mr King said he was honoured to join Lockheed Martin. “I have served the Australian Defence Force for more than 30 years, leading major capability programs such as the MRH-90 and Chinook projects. I am eager to leverage my [extensive experience] in leading Lockheed Martin’s efforts in Australia and New Zealand.”

Movements through the revolving door are not illegal. Undue Influence is not alleging or implying illegal activity by any named person nor by Lockheed Martin. The issue under scrutiny – yet again – is the legal ability of powerful corporations to gain access to top-level decision makers via such senior revolving door appointments.

Revolving door database

Jeremy King will become a late entrant to the revolving door database, which we are now working full-time to complete. As with all our work, the database has required a huge amount of time in fact-checking as we strive to locate evidence for each data point. This is no easy task given the secrecy of the defence department and the arms industry.

We are confident Undue Influence readers will consider this project to have been worth the wait. It will be a unique and powerful public resource that maps how – and how extensively - the revolving door system has operated in the Australian military-industrial complex in recent decades.

To our many new subscribers in recent months, welcome. This long-running research project has meant we have been posting less often than usual. Please stick with us! We’ll be back to normal in a few months with many fascinating posts to come.

AUKUS: ‘High probability of failure’, former top UK official

Can the mismanagement of Australia’s largest ever defence procurement – set to cost hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars – reasonably be blamed on “a great deal of naivety”?

To remind readers, it is clear that Australia’s political and military leaders put no guardrails in place to protect the almost $10 billion of Australian taxpayers’ money that is being transferred to the US and UK to help their nuclear shipyards grow and maintain employment - whether Australia gets its nuclear-powered submarines or not. (See the below link for details if you missed this news.)

Defence Minister Richard Marles has also refused to say whether Australia will be refunded the money if either the US or UK, or both, fail to deliver.

On top of these disturbing revelations, a former top British defence official has now warned (paywalled) that because of the shambolic state of the UK’s submarine service, AUKUS is likely to collapse.

Retired rear admiral Philip Mathias said he feared that Australians were not adequately informed about the troubles plaguing the British navy.

“It is clear that Australia has shown a great deal of naïvety and did not conduct sufficient due diligence on the parlous state of the UK’s nuclear submarine program before signing up to AUKUS – and parting with billions of dollars…”

RADM Mathias was formerly a director of nuclear policy with the UK Ministry of Defence and a nuclear submarine commander. He told The Nightly earlier this month that AUKUS was agreed to by enthusiastic politicians and policy advisers who did not appreciate the capacity constraints in delivering the project.

“Whilst the US may sell some [nuclear-powered submarines] to Australia, there is a high probability that the UK element of AUKUS will fail, making the international row in 2021 over the cancellation of the plan for Australia to build French-designed submarines look like a non-event.”

Global arms trade: business is booming

The combined arms sales revenue of the world’s largest arms-producing and military services companies (SIPRI Top 100) was $971 billion (US$679 billion) in 2024, the highest level ever recorded by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

Lockheed Martin continues to rank head-and-shoulders above second-placed rival RTX (Raytheon), raking in $92.5 billion (US$64.7 billion) in arms sales in 2024. RTX earned $62.4 billion (US$43.6 billion).

UK weapons giant BAE Systems, lead contractor of AUKUS as well as the contentious $65 billion Hunter class frigate program, which is currently under investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Commission, has moved up to 4th place from 6th, earning $48.4 billion (US$33.8 billion) globally.

Boeing, meanwhile, has dropped out of the top 5 - to 6th - after several years of slippage from its formerly entrenched No. 2 position; no doubt giving former Australian defence minister, leader of the opposition, war memorial director Brendan Nelson – who now lives in London running Boeing’s ex-US global operations – a few headaches. (Dr Nelson also appears in the revolving door database.)

Boeing remains the Australian Defence Department’s second largest contractor, however, with $1.2 billion in local turnover last year, trailing Australia’s largest defence contractor, BAE Systems, by $1 billion in its 2025 revenue. (See the recently released ADM 2025 Top 40 - paywalled.)

Israel’s arms industry is booming, in part due to its campaign of genocide in Gaza. The total arms revenue of the three Israeli arms companies in the SIPRI Top 100 rose 16 per cent to $23.2 billion (US$16.2 billion) in 2024, compared with a 5.9 per cent rise in revenue by the industry overall. SIPRI reports that the Israeli weapons boom can be attributed “both to Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza and high global demand for Israeli military equipment such as advanced UAV [drones] and counter UAV capabilities”.

From billions to trillions: Trump plans 50% Pentagon budget increase

Independent US watchdog Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has attacked Donald Trump’s plans to increase the Pentagon’s budget by 50 per cent to US$1.5 trillion. In a 10 January update, POGO said such an increase would “only be a dream for the defence contractors who profit from the irresponsible, inefficient, incredibly wasteful misuse of your hard-earned tax dollars — and a nightmare for the American people. The Pentagon has never passed a financial audit. What it desperately needs is oversight, transparency, and reform. Not a comically large cheque.”

The POGO update comes hard on the heels of the release of the book The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home by William Hartung and Ben Freeman.

Two chapters in the book that look particularly interesting are: “The Militarization of American Science: Buying the Ivory Tower” and “Capturing the Media: How Propaganda Powers the War Machine.”

William Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Ben Freeman is director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute and a faculty member at the Institute for Defense and Business, where he teaches seminars on the defence budget process and the foreign influence industry.

Mr Hartung also co-authored the 2011 book Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

New doco, Cover-Up, on Seymour Hersh

The legendary American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is well into his ninth decade and is continuing to hold power to account.

A riveting documentary about Hersh’s long career in investigative journalism exposing the war crimes and other sins of the US government and its military and intelligence services is now out on Netflix.

Cover-Up was produced and directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus. It opens with Hersh’s exposure of the US military’s massacre of civilians at My Lai during the Vietnam War and the ensuing cover-up. The film also covers his scoops during the Watergate scandal, his period at The New York Times (and why he left), and his exposure of the US military’s torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. There are personal insights into his childhood, early career and marriage. It’s a rich and fascinating portrait of one of the greatest investigative journalists of our time.

Aged 88, Hersh continues to publish weekly reports on Substack.

In February 2023, he reported that it was the USA, not Russia, that blew up the Nord Stream pipelines – a report that was strenuously denied by the Biden administration.

Hersh explains in the closing minutes of the documentary why he continues his investigative work despite the heavy toll it has often taken on him:

HERSH: We’re a culture of enormous violence. It’s just something brutal; [but] there’s a level you just can’t get to…

POITRAS: So why do you keep doing the work?

HERSH: You can’t have a country that does that. That’s why I’ve been, sort of, on the war path ever since [My Lai]. You can’t have a country that does that and looks the other way.”

Shortly before the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, director Laura Poitras said: “[Hersh] was horrified by the [My Lai] massacre but didn’t want to pin it just on the soldiers. He looked at the chain of command and to expose the chain of command. And I think that’s why he’s continually obsessed by going back to these stories because of these cycles of impunity… It drives Sy and is a source of profound moral outrage.”

Watch Cover-Up trailer.

The National Press Club of Australia lists 81 corporate sponsors on its website.

Twenty-one of them (listed below) are either part of the global arms industry or actively working on its behalf.

Ten are multinational weapons manufacturers or military services corporations. They include the world’s two biggest weapons makers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon (RTX); British giant BAE Systems; France’s largest weapons-maker, Thales; and US weapons corporation Leidos – all five are in the global top 20. BAE Systems, which is the largest contractor to the Department of Defence, received $2 billion from Australian taxpayers last year.

In 2023, these five corporations alone were responsible for almost a quarter – 23.8 per cent (US$150.4 billion (A$231.5 billion)) – of total weapons sales (US$632 billion (A$973 billion)) made by the world’s top 100 weapons companies that year.

Last year, UN experts named Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, RTX (Raytheon) and eight other multinationals in a statement, warning them that they risked being found in violation of international law for their continued supply of weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces. The experts called on the corporations to immediately end weapons transfers to Israel. None has done so.

Another of the Club’s sponsors – Thales – is being investigated by four countries for widespread criminal activity in three separate corruption probes. In a fourth, long-running corruption case in South Africa, the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, is now in court, alongside Thales, being tried on 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, corruption and money laundering in connection with arms deals his government did with Thales.

Global expert Andrew Feinstein has documented his extensive research into the arms industry. He told Undue Influence that wherever the arms trade operates, it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”.

Undue Influence asked the Press Club’s CEO, Maurice Reilly, what written policies or guidelines were in place that addressed the suitability and selection of corporations proposing to become Press Club sponsors.

Mr Reilly responded: “The board are informed monthly about…proposals and have the right to refuse any application.”

National Press Club board

The National Press Club, established by journalists in 1963, is an iconic Australian institution. It is best known for its weekly luncheon addresses, televised on the ABC, covering issues of national importance, after which the speaker is questioned by journalists.

The Club’s board has 10 directors led by Tom Connell, political host and reporter at Sky News, who was elected president in February following the resignation of the ABC’s Laura Tingle.

The other board members are: vice president Misha Schubert (CEO, Super Members Council of Australia; formerly with The Age and The Australian); treasurer Greg Jennett (ABC); Steve Lewis (senior adviser, SEC Newgate; formerly with NewsCorp and the Financial Review); Jane Norman (ABC); Anna Henderson (SBS); Julie Hare (Financial Review); Andrew Probyn (Nine Network); Gemma Daley (Media & Government Affairs, Ai Group); and Corrie McLeod, the sole representative from an independent media outlet – InnovationAus.

At least two board members have jobs that involve lobbying.

Long-term board member Steve Lewis works as a senior adviser for lobbying firm SEC Newgate, which itself is a Press Club sponsor and also has as clients the Press Club’s two largest sponsors: Westpac and Telstra. SEC Newgate has previously acted for several Press Club sponsors, including Serco (one of the arms industry multinationals listed below), BHP, Macquarie Bank, Tattarang, and Spirits & Cocktails Australia Inc.

Gemma Daley joined the board a year ago, having started with Ai Group as its head of media and government affairs four months earlier. Ms Daley had worked for Nationals’ leader David Littleproud, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and former treasurer Joe Hockey and, before that, for media outlets the Financial Review and Bloomberg. Ai Group has a significant defence focus and promotes itself as “the peak national representative body for the Australian defence industry”. The group has established a Defence Council and in 2017 appointed a former assistant secretary of the Defence Department, Kate Louis, to lead it. The co-chairs of its Defence Council are senior arms industry executives. One of them, Paul Chase, is CEO of Leidos Australia, a Press Club sponsor.

Undue Influence asked Ms Daley for comment on several aspects related to her position on the board, including whether she has had to declare any conflicts of interest to date. She responded: “Thanks for the inquiry. I have forwarded this through to Maurice Reilly. Have a good day.”

Given the potential for conflicts of interest to arise, as happens on any board, Undue Influence had already asked the Press Club CEO what written policies or guidelines existed to ensure the appropriate management of conflicts of interest by board members and staff.

Mr Reilly responded:

The Club has a directors’ conflict register which is updated when required. Each meeting, board members and management are asked if they have conflicts of interest with the meeting agenda. We have a standard corporate practice that where a director has a conflict on an agenda item they excuse themselves from the meeting and take no [part] in any discussion or any decision.

Undue Influence is neither alleging nor implying inappropriate or illegal behaviour by anyone named in this article. Our objective, as always, is to shine a light on, and scrutinise, the weapons industry’s opaque engagement in public life in Australia.

Selling “access”

While Mr Reilly declined to disclose the Club’s sponsorship arrangements with Westpac and Telstra, citing “commercial in confidence” reasons, The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier this year that Westpac paid $3 million in 2015 to replace NAB as the Press Club’s principal sponsor.

The SMH article, “Westpac centre stage at post-budget bash”, on Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ National Press Club address in the Great Hall of Parliament House in late March, added:

[Westpac] … gets more than its money’s worth in terms of access. New-ish chief executive Anthony Miller got the most coveted seat in the house, between Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese… Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles were also on the front tables.

Westpac occupied prime real estate in the Great Hall, with guests on its tables including Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Glyn Davis, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and Labor national secretary and campaign mastermind Paul Erickson…

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was on the Telstra table.

Mr Reilly told Undue Influence that all the other corporate sponsors pay $25,000 per year, with a few paying extra as partners in the Club’s journalism awards.

The 21 arms industry and related sponsors therefore contribute an annual $525,000 to the Press Club’s coffers.

“The National Press Club of Australia proudly partners with organisations that share our commitment to quality, independent journalism,” says the Club’s website.

“Aligning your brand with the National Press Club is an opportunity for unparalleled engagement in the Australian political debate and announces that your organisation is part of the business culture in Canberra.”

In response to Undue Influence’s questions about the Club’s cancellation of a planned address by the internationally acclaimed journalist Chris Hedges (covered below), Mr Reilly stated that: “For the avoidance of doubt [sponsors] do not receive any rights to speak at the club [nor are they] able to influence decisions on speakers.”

Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.

When the Club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on 10 September, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.

Compare this with two addresses given by $25,000 corporate sponsors – Kurt Campbell (former US deputy secretary of state, now co-founder and chair of The Asia Group) who gave an address on 7 September; and Mike Johnson, CEO of Australian Industry and Defence Network (AIDN), who gave an address on 15 October. Neither the Press Club nor the speakers disclosed the companies’ sponsorship of the Press Club.

While both speakers are considered experts in their field, the sponsorships should have been disclosed as a matter of public accountability.

“Priority seating and brand positioning”

On its website, the Club also promotes additional benefits of corporate sponsorship, including, “Brand association with inclusion on our prestigious ‘Corporate Partners’ board and recognition on the National Press Club of Australia website”.

The Club also promises corporate sponsors that they will receive “priority seating and brand positioning” at its weekly luncheon addresses, as the following examples show. (As principal sponsor, the logo of Westpac appears on every table and on the podium.)

The local subsidiary of British giant BAE Systems has benefited handsomely from its modest $25,000 annual sponsorship. It had the best table – behind the microphone from which journalists asked questions – at then defence minister Peter Dutton’s address in November 2021. The BAE logo appeared on the national public broadcaster - which has strict rules against advertising - eight times during the half-hour question period following Mr Dutton’s address, giving BAE Systems extended ‘brand positioning’ with its target market: senior politicians, defence public servants and military officers.

On 28 November 2023, Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy spoke about AUKUS. The logos of Press Club sponsors DXC Technology and Deloitte were also well-situated for the camera during question time. Both companies are significant contractors to the Defence Department. Deloitte also works for the weapons industry, including BAE Systems.

Cancelling Chris Hedges

The Press Club recently drew significant attention to itself after it cancelled a planned address by the Pulitzer-prize-winning American journalist, and former long-term war correspondent, Chris Hedges. Mr Hedges reported for The New York Times for 15 years, from 1990-2005, including long stints as its bureau chief in the Middle East and in the Balkans. He was to have appeared at the Press Club on 20 October.

However, in late September, Press Club CEO Maurice Reilly cancelled Mr Hedges’ appearance. This occurred two weeks after the Club was sent details of what Mr Hedges proposed to cover, including a link to an article he had entitled The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists. In that article, Mr Hedges wrote:

Israel has murdered 245 journalists in Gaza by one count and more than 273 by another… No war I covered comes close to these numbers of dead. Since Oct 7 [2023], Israel has killed more journalists “than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined”.

Mr Hedges also intended to cover what he has described as the “barrage of Israeli lies amplified and given credibility by the Western press”, examples of which he provides in the above article.

Following a scathing post from Mr Hedges about the Press Club’s cancellation of his address, and significant public disquiet, the Press Club issued a statement denying it had come under external pressure to cancel his address. Inexplicably, the Press Club also denied it had confirmed the Hedges address. This claim was easily checked and soon reported to be false. Undue Influence has seen the emails showing that the Press Club had confirmed the address.

Numerous members of the public posted their concerns on the Press Club’s Facebook page. Here are three examples:

National Press Club funded by companies profiting from genocide

In July, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, issued a report explaining how the corporate sector had become complicit with the State of Israel in conducting the genocide.

Ms Albanese highlighted Lockheed Martin and the F-35 program, which has 1,650 companies world-wide in its supply chain. More than 75 of those companies are Australian.

Her report also noted that arms-making multinationals depend on legal, auditing and consulting firms to facilitate export and import transactions to supply Israel with weapons.

Four of the world’s largest accounting, audit and consulting firms – all of which have arms industry corporations as clients – are sponsors of the Press Club: KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte and EY. Until recently, PwC counted among them.

EY (Ernst & Young) has been Lockheed Martin’s auditor since 1994. EY is also one of two auditors used by Thales, and has been for 22 years. Deloitte has been BAE Systems’ auditor since 2018. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) – a Press Club sponsor until 2024 – has been Raytheon’s auditor since 1947.

Lockheed Martin’s supply to Israel of F-16 and F-35 fighter jets and C-130 Hercules transport planes, and their parts and components, along with Hellfire missiles and other munitions, has directly facilitated Israel’s genocide.

Raytheon’s (RTX) supply of guided missiles, bombs, and other advanced weaponry and defence systems, like the Iron Dome interceptors, also directly supports Israel military capability.

In England, BAE Systems builds the rear fuselage of every F-35, with the horizontal and vertical tails and other crucial components manufactured in its UK and Australian facilities. It also supplies the Israeli military with munitions, missile launching kits and armoured vehicles, while BAE technologies are integrated into Israel’s drones and warships.

Thales supplies Israel’s military with vital components, including drone transponders. Australian Zomi Frankcom and her World Central Kitchen colleagues were murdered by an Israeli Hermes drone, which contain Thales’ transponders. Yet, echoing Australia, France claims its military exports to Israel are non-lethal.

National Press Club sponsors from military-industrial complex

* Source: Department of Finance, Austender records online

# Rankings compiled by SIPRI at December 2023 (published December 2024)

^ NOTE ON US COMPANIES: The Defence Department procures weapons/military goods directly from Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon) and other US corporations via the US Government’s Foreign Military Sales program. The value of FMS contracts is not included in the table.

Note on the use of the word ‘genocide’

Three independent experts appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Commission – the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel – issued a report in September that concluded Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. One of the Commissioners – Chris Sidoti – speaking at the Press Club recently, said the Commission’s report will remain the most authoritative statement on this issue until the world’s highest authority, the International Court of Justice, makes its ruling.

11.11.25 This article was updated to remove a sentence that incorrectly overstated that the arms industry contributed 23% of the Press Club’s total sponsorship revenue in 2024. Undue Influence apologises to our readers and the Press Club for this error.

Of course such an arrangement hasn’t been seen elsewhere! Most other countries wouldn’t agree to hand over this massive sum without ensuring there were provisions for a refund should the promised submarines fail to arrive.

In an inept performance in Senate Estimates in June 2024, Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, head of the Australian Submarine Agency, woodenly refused to answer a straightforward question from Greens’ Senator David Shoebridge about whether the agreement Australia has struck with the US contains a clawback provision should the promised submarines fail to be supplied.

Mead’s performance, as recorded in Hansard, is mordantly comical:

It is thus obvious that Australia has no contractual way of recovering its money should the current or a future US President block the transfer of the submarines, as the US President is entitled to do under US legislation.

Australia is certainly ‘very unique’ in its willingness to part with almost $10 billion (the UK is getting a similar amount) in public funds with no strings attached.

Australia made the first payment of $800 million to the US in February and quietly transferred the second payment, a further $800 million, in July. It has committed to paying a total of US$2 billion ($3 billion) by the end of 2025, with the remainder to be paid over the decade to 2035‒36.

Under the AUKUS deal, both major political parties have committed to spending vast public resources with no consultation and minimal transparency and accountability.

Even though the Australian National Audit Office has exposed, in report after report, serious probity breaches in defence procurement, including unethical conduct between global weapons companies and the Australian government, these transgressions are routinely ignored. The weapons deals continue regardless.

The big winners from AUKUS so far have been nuclear submarine manufacturers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Australia has committed to providing almost $10 billion to boost the output of these companies, helping secure jobs for workers in America and the United Kingdom.

As there are no clawback provisions in either of these agreements, should President Trump ditch AUKUS, or if the submarine manufacturing capacity in the US and UK doesn’t sufficiently increase, Australian taxpayers will be picking up another multibillion-dollar defence tab with nothing to show for it. We’ve already shelled out $3.4 billion for no submarines, following former PM Scott Morrison’s shredding of the pre-AUKUS French submarine contract.

This is far from the only example of waste, misdirection and incompetence in Australia’s dealings with the global arms industry. Take the Albanese government’s engagement with global arms giant Thales. In October last year, the government signed up Thales to a further munitions manufacturing contract and a ‘strategic partnership’ in the new domestic missile-making endeavour, the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise.

The new deal with Thales was struck despite the fact that Thales is currently being investigated by four countries for widespread criminal activity in three separate corruption probes. The accusations range from suspected corruption of a foreign public official, criminal conspiracy and money laundering relating to the sale of submarines and the construction of a naval base in Brazil; suspected bribery and corruption across four Thales entities in the UK and France relating to an arms contract in Asia, involving bribery, influence trafficking, handling stolen goods and money laundering; and suspected corruption and influence peddling, criminal conspiracy and money laundering linked to the sale of military and civilian equipment to an undisclosed country (case opened June 2023).

A fourth Thales corruption case is currently in court in South Africa. The country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, is being tried on 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, corruption and money laundering in connection with Thales. Zuma is accused of accepting 500,000 rand ($43,000) annually from Thales from 1999 as a bribe, in exchange for protecting Thales from an investigation into an arms deal supplying military hardware to South Africa.

The Defence Department claimed, in a written response to a Question on Notice from Greens’ senator David Shoebridge in 2023, that it was ‘not aware’ of the South African corruption case involving Zuma and Thales. This claim, if true, exposes a serious failure of due diligence by Defence in relation to one of its top contractors, raising questions about the efficacy of Defence’s monitoring and prevention of corruption in this high-risk industry.

In late June, Defence quietly cancelled its new munitions contract with Thales, just eight months after it was signed. It said there had been notable changes in the global defence industrial base that required the department to reassess its munitions manufacturing approach. The cloud of corruption hanging over Thales, which was public knowledge at the time the Defence Department signed the contract, was not noted as a factor.

The Thales example illustrates how a key democratic accountability mechanism, the National Audit Office and its reports, is routinely ignored. That includes an audit report last year on the former Coalition government’s 10-year munitions contract with Thales, which detailed ‘unethical conduct’ and serious conflicts of interest in the procurement process, amongst other irregularities. Despite the scathing audit report being released just months earlier, the above deal went ahead nonetheless, with Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy soft-pedalling these accusations when they were put to him in a National Press Club address in October 2024.

How is it that such imbroglios occur again and again? Australian governments are highly susceptible to the ‘revolving door’ process in which politicians, the military and public servants move effortlessly between government, lobbying and the industry itself.

In what follows, no suggestion is being made of unlawful activity by any person named, nor that any of the appointments noted was unlawful.

The problem for Australia is not one of legality but of the perfectly legal influence of industry insiders within government, the lack of transparency, and the absence of management of the ‘revolving door’.

The revolving door

The ‘revolving door’ describes the movement of public officials into related private roles, and industry executives into related public roles. It is a widespread problem that undermines democracy, yet in Australia it remains unmonitored and unpoliced.

A large number of Australia’s senior government ministers and their staffers, military officers, and defence department officials move through the revolving door into paid roles with the weapons industry. Such moves are not illegal but they require a robust management framework—with rules that are enforced—to mitigate the inherent conflicts of interest. Australia’s feeble attempts at managing the revolving door have been completely ineffective.

Take the case of former defence minister Christopher Pyne, who discussed his future with EY Defence while still in parliament, then nine days after leaving politics, accepted a position with them.

Former ASIO boss Duncan Lewis joined the Thales Australia board just five months after leaving ASIO, having spent five years as its Director-General.

Within days of retiring from parliament on health grounds, former Labor MP Mike Kelly went directly from the powerful Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to work for shadowy US-based data-mining and surveillance company, Palantir Technologies.

Brendan Nelson, former Liberal leader and defence minister, resigned as director of the Australian War Memorial to join Boeing (a major defence contractor). Prior to his resignation from the memorial, Nelson had also worked secretly for Thales for five years as a member of its ‘advisory board’, a role he claimed to have, in effect, undertaken for free, saying he donated his fees to the Memorial. At the same time, he was publicly defending the memorial’s controversial acceptance of donations from weapons companies, which included Thales. (This unusual relationship was covered in a program on the War Memorial by the ABC’s Four Corners.)

Allan Hawke, a former defence secretary, left public life and joined Lockheed Martin’s board, as did numerous other senior officials.

In the lobby

Numerous former senior politicians are now working as lobbyists for the weapons industry. Examples include: Liberals Christopher Pyne (Pyne and Partners), Joe Hockey (Bondi Partners), Arthur Sinodinos (The Asia Group) and David Johnston (TG Public Affairs); and Labor’s Kim Beazley (TG Public Affairs), Joel Fitzgibbon (CMAX Advisory), Stephen Conroy (TG Public Affairs) and Mark McGowan (Bondi Partners).

There are also plenty of former senior military officers pulling strings on behalf of weapons companies too. Examples are listed below.

The federal register of lobbyists provides some transparency, but does not cover the majority of people who lobby politicians. The register applies only to third-party lobbyists. These people operate as paid professionals, either individually or as an employee of a lobbying firm, on behalf of clients. Third party lobbyists make up just 20% of all lobbyists. The remaining 80% include, amongst others, company CEOs and people employed by corporations as ‘government relations’ advisers. This enables employees of major weapons companies to lobby politicians easily and legally, with zero transparency.

Reverse cycle: private to public

The government’s engagement with UK weapons giant BAE Systems’ local subsidiary best illustrates how this works.

The government gave former senior BAE Systems executives influential behind-the-scenes roles both before and during the tender process for Australia’s largest ever surface warship procurement, the $46 billion Hunter class frigates, a contract BAE went on to win. Few of these roles were publicly acknowledged.

BAE Systems was awarded the frigates contract by the Turnbull government in mid-2018. The names of the people appointed to an expert advisory panel to oversee the tender evaluation process were not made public. Here’s why: serious conflicts of interest. Two of the four-person panel had previously worked for BAE Systems, one of them as recently as 14 months earlier, as BAE’s Australian Maritime Director. After BAE won the contract, that same former BAE executive was selected by the defence department to be its lead negotiator, sitting across the table from his former employer.

Earlier, under the Abbott government, the former chief executive of BAE Systems Australia was appointed to the four person panel that designed Defence’s new procurement system, which ended up embedding the arms industry more deeply into Australia’s arms procurement process. He had ended his 37-year-long weapons industry career just nine months earlier. Although he was named, the government did not supply any biographical details. It did not tell the public that he had just spent a decade running BAE Systems Australia, one of Australia’s top defence contractors, followed by two years running BAE Systems Saudi Arabia. This former BAE Systems CEO was also hired by Christopher Pyne to help write Australia’s new shipbuilding plan, under which BAE Systems later became a big winner.

Lockheed Martin locks on target

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has put the issue of the extensive influence on the Australian government of Lockheed Martin—the world’s largest arms manufacturer—under the spotlight.

Lockheed Martin manufactures the F-35 fighter jet, which it supplies to the Australian Air Force, and which has also been used by Israel in its relentless bombing of Gaza.

As a member of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 consortium, Australian industry provides parts and components into the F-35 global supply chain. As at June 2024, more than 75 Australian firms were contracted in the F-35 supply chain and had earned $4.6 billion as a result. Lockheed Martin has stated that every F-35 in the air today—including Israel’s—contains Australian-made parts and components.

Lockheed Martin utilises the revolving door heavily in the US. Until recently, it had openly adopted the same strategy in Australia. From October 2013 until the end of 2021, the board of Lockheed Martin Australia boasted multiple former senior Australian public officials: at least two at any one time, more often three, and even four during one 20-month period.

They included a roll call of defence heavies from past decades, such as Chris Ritchie, the former Chief of Navy; Allan Hawke, Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Paul Keating and a former defence secretary; Kim Beazley, Australian ambassador to the US, a former defence minister and leader of the opposition; Geoff Brown, a former chief of Air Force; and Amanda Vanstone, a former Howard government minister.

The Lockheed Martin Australia board was quietly purged of its remaining two revolving door appointments (Brown and Vanstone) in mid-December 2021. The reason was not made public.

While this was a positive outcome, in democratic terms, one downside has been that Lockheed’s engagement of senior influencers has now gone dark. We know, by his own admission, that Kim Beazley returned to working for Lockheed Martin Australia as an adviser after he completed his term as WA Governor, but no details are available as to what his role entails. Generally, ‘advisers’ and ‘advisory boards’ assist with political strategising and lobbying.

On top of its former influential board members, three former senior Australian Defence Force officers have worked as chief executive of Lockheed Martin Australia. These include:

Raydon Gates, who retired from the navy in late 2008, after 40 years. In early 2011 he was appointed as Lockheed’s first local chief executive, a position he held for almost six years.

Vince di Pietro retired from the navy in March 2016, after 40 years. Five months later he joined Lockheed Martin and soon after became its chief executive for two and a half years.

Warren McDonald was deputy chief of Air Force until mid-2017 when he became the Defence Force’s inaugural chief of joint capabilities. He left the military in December 2020, after 41 years. Seven months later, he joined Lockheed Martin’s leadership team, taking over as chief executive in late 2021. He remains Lockheed Martin’s ANZ CEO today.

In 2024, Lockheed Martin Australia recorded a huge 29 per cent increase in its turnover from the previous year (from $423 million to $548 million) under the leadership of CEO Warren McDonald.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, released a report in July addressing the ‘economy of genocide’ in which she makes special note of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program.

She called on countries to cut off all trade and financial ties with Israel, including a full arms embargo, and withdraw international support for what she terms an ‘economy of genocide’.

Francesca Albanese said that arms companies had turned near-record profits by providing Israel with cutting-edge weaponry to unleash 85,000 tonnes of explosives—six times the power of Hiroshima—to devastate Gaza, killing and injuring more than 179,411 Palestinians.

Australia’s refusal to cease the supply of parts and components into Lockheed Martin’s F-35 global supply chain places the nation at risk of being found complicit in Israel’s genocide.

Complicity in the world’s worst international crime is just one of the democracy-undermining consequences of Australia’s deep enmeshment in the US and broader Western military industrial complex.

This feature article started life as a talk to Australia’s Online Quaker Meeting mid-year. I later expanded it for ARENA Quarterly’s Spring 2025 issue, which was delivered to bookshops last week ($20). It is also online at Arena.

Extract from the story, which was published on 1 October:

Detailed shipping records seen by Declassified Australia show the most recent shipment of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel left Sydney two weeks ago destined to Tel Aviv, exported in the cargo bay of a scheduled passenger flight from Sydney International Airport.

Declassified Australia has examined the details of confidential shipping records listing a total of 68 shipments of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft parts flown from Australia directly to Israel between October 2023 and September 2025.

The multiple F-35 parts and components being sent to Israel are bypassing the two main centralised distribution hubs for F-35 parts in the US and Netherlands by being sent as cargo on commercial passenger flights from Australia to Israel.

The shipping records show that the number of Joint Strike Fighter parts shipments made directly to Israel from Australia spiked immediately after the commencement of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza on the evening of 7 October 2023, with 10 separate shipments being made from Australia to Israel in the one month of November 2023 alone.

Of the 68 documented shipments, 51 are marked with the final receiver being at Nevatim with postcode 8955000, located in Israel. This corresponds with the address of Nevatim Airbase, located in Israel’s Negev desert, and the base for the Israeli Air Force’s three F-35 squadrons.

The number of parts exported may be much higher than the 68 shipments detailed. A comparison to opaquely named items on two lists of export approvals obtained previously by Declassified Australia show at least another 24 identically named parts were shipped during the same period. This covert trade is now seen as far more extensive than as first reported in July by Declassified Australia.

—> Read the full story from Declassified Australia.

This important new evidence substantiates early reporting last year by Undue Influence

Extract from our May 2024 article, Australia and the F-35 supply chain: in lockstep with Lockheed:

The head of the F-35 joint program office, Lieutenant General Michael Schmidt, a US Air Force officer, said a year ago that the F-35 program was established with a ‘just in time’ supply chain, where parts arrive just before they’re needed and very little inventory is stockpiled. [Emphasis added.] Lt-Gen Schmidt described that situation as ‘too risky’.

In mid-December [2023], a US Congressional hearing on the F-35 program revealed that the F-35 joint program office had been moving ‘at a breakneck speed to support…Israel…by increasing spare part supply rates’. [Emphasis added.]

In his testimony to the December 12 Congressional hearing, Lieutenant General Schmidt also made clear the role of the F-35 joint program office in closely supporting Israel:

“I had the opportunity to talk with [Israel’s] Chief of Staff just yesterday… [Israel is] very satisfied with [the] performance [the] sustainment enterprise is giving them. We could learn a lot from them in terms of the quickness with which they’re turning airplanes, [plus] all of the things we’re learning ourselves with moving parts around the world in support of a conflict.” [Emphasis added.]

The evidence above and its timing make it possible that Defence’s two export permit approvals for Israel in late October may have been related to the US-led rush to organise increased supply of F-35 spare parts for Israel.

Read that full story here:

Many thanks for your continuing support: your contribution makes a big difference to my shoestring budget!

This email is to explain why the published output of Undue Influence has reduced in recent months.

In July 2024 I had a significant health issue. It was dealt with quickly, however a subsequent course of treatment – to help prevent the issue recurring – ended up causing a serious and rare complication that emerged early this year and has required treatment all year. Unfortunately, recovery from this aspect has taken a long time. While I have continued working this year, I was unable to maintain my usual output. In particular, it has slowed progress on the Revolving Door database project.

Before the initial health issue surfaced, I had temporarily put aside work on the database project due to two significant events last year that demanded attention given the absence of any serious reporting by mainstream media:

1. Australia’s decision to continue exporting F-35 parts and components to Israel despite clear evidence that Israel was committing serious violations of international law using its F-35 aircraft, and also given the highly misleading (at best) mantra from senior ministers, including the prime minister, that Australia was not exporting weapons to Israel. This was always a dubious claim, which I investigated and exposed as false, early and repeatedly – here and here, for example – and have continued to do so – here and here. Despite this being an issue of national integrity, in the grave context of a possible genocide, in early 2024, it was only picked up by mainstream media many months later.
   

2. National Anti-Corruption Commission’s abject failure to do its job and investigate the six people referred to it by the Robodebt Royal Commission. The NACC was forced to rectify this failure following a massive public outcry that was investigated by the NACC Inspector who showed that the NACC Commissioner had not appropriately managed a serious conflict of interest. We had reported on this failure long before the Inspector’s report was published.
   
   Why has Undue Influence pursued the NACC over this, along with news of other ongoing conflicts in the NACC leadership? (Here, for example.) Because Australia needs a squeaky clean, fearless and transparent national integrity body to properly investigate Defence and arms industry corruption allegations. The signs so far are that the NACC is not such a body under its current leadership.
   
   By the way, the devastating and extensive human cost of the illegal Robodebt ‘welfare’ scheme is brilliantly portrayed in this recent SBS series: The People vs Robodebt. I highly recommend it.

In addition to the above lines of reporting, late last year I was asked to be a researcher on an ABC Four Corners program that investigated the arms industry and its links with the Australian War Memorial. (Watch it here.) This was welcome recognition of the singular journalism of Undue Influence.

You can scroll through all our other reporting in our archive.

Current work

My top priority in recent months has been to return to working on the unique and time-critical Revolving Door database. I am confident it will gain national coverage. Nothing like this has been published in Australia (or internationally, to my knowledge). It has demanded concentrated work over a long period, and I will now progress with that work exclusively for the rest of the year.

For that reason, there will continue to be few posts for the next 2-3 months. Dear subscriber, I request your patience. I would also appreciate your ongoing financial support of Undue Influence during this time. I am sure you are going to be satisfied with the results: it is a major investigative piece of work.

If you are a free subscriber and would like to make a one-off contribution to this work (any amount), rather than subscribe, reply to this email and I’ll provide PayPal and/or bank account details.

If you have other questions or comments, please be in touch. It is always good to hear from you.

With my appreciation and good wishes
Michelle

An expert on US arms exports has given short shrift to the Albanese government’s misleading mantras, telling ABC radio last weekend that Australia was facilitating war crimes by exporting F-35 parts and components to Israel.

When asked how he would describe the Australian military’s recent direct supply of F-35 parts to Israel, former US State Department official Joshua Paul said: “It’s directly a facilitation of war crimes. There’s no question about it, to my mind.”

Mr Paul made international headlines in 2023 as the first US official to resign publicly in protest over the Biden administration’s policy of expediting weaponry to Israel for its current war on Gaza, stating that America knew the weapons were to be used to commit human rights violations. Mr Paul was director of congressional and public affairs at the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, a US State Department agency that works closely with the Pentagon on weapons transfers.

Defence Minister Marles squirms under scrutiny

Also last weekend, on ABC TV’s Insiders, Defence Minister Richard Marles criticised what he labelled “misinformation” about Australia’s arms exports to Israel. Yet he refused to answer basic questions on the topic, resorting repeatedly to the government’s discredited mantra that Australia is not supplying weapons to Israel.

Mr Marles also passed the buck for his role in personally approving Australia’s continued export of F-35 parts and components, deflecting responsibility for the F-35 global supply chain onto prime manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.

Without providing any justification, Mr Marles claimed that Australia’s F-35 exports presented a “very different question” and were a “separate issue” from other arms exports.

Australia’s F-35 exports cannot be separated out from the overarching question of Australia’s arms exports to Israel during its genocidal war on Gaza.

The Defence Department has stated that more than 75 Australian companies have contributed to the F-35 global supply chain, which has been working overtime – at “breakneck speed” – for almost two years to increase spare part supply rates to ensure Israel’s F-35s remain operational.

In her June report, From economy of occupation to economy of genocide, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, named Lockheed Martin and the members of its F-35 supply chain as enhancing Israel’s ability to sustain its genocide of Palestinian people.

Mr Marles’ claims are also at odds with a significant UN statement last year: ‘States and companies must end arms transfers to Israel immediately or risk responsibility for human rights violations’, which named 11 multinationals, including Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems. 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, the statement said.

UK-based BAE Systems is one of Lockheed Martin’s three major partners in the F-35 supply chain. Its Australian subsidiary is also involved in supplying parts and components.

Australia’s export of F-35 parts and components into the supply chain is essential to the assembly of new aircraft and the maintenance and operation of the global fleet, including Israel’s F-35s.

Australia is the sole global source of some F-35 parts and components including, for example, the high-tech mechanism that opens and closes the weapons bay doors, enabling Israel to drop bombs on Gaza.

Despite this, foreign minister Penny Wong repeated in the Senate last month the ludicrous assertion she and Richard Marles first aired last year that the Australian-made parts and components in the world’s most lethal fighter jet are “non-lethal”. (Watch SBS News clip.)

Josh Paul responded by noting how “absolutely central” the global supply chain was to the operation of the F-35, which Israel had used to drop 2,000 pound bombs in densely populated open areas in Gaza:

The F-35, more than any other modern fighter jet, relies on a continuous flow of ‘just-in-time’ spare parts to operate.

For every hour that it flies, five hours of maintenance is required. It burns through a lot of parts very quickly.

If those parts were to be cut off, Israel would very quickly have to start making some very difficult decisions about where its priorities actually lie. Are they in its national defence more regionally? Or are they in the bombing of Gaza?

So…it may be “just spare parts” but [they are] actually in some ways a more vital part of the picture than the bombs themselves.

Mr Paul added that while the consortium nature of the F-35 program may present difficulties for participating nations, it also provides an opportunity:

[B]ecause it is a pooled system, yes, it is more difficult in some ways for a country to say well we don’t want our spare parts to go to this particular end user. But there’s also a lot more leverage within the system if you choose to exert it.

If a country was to turn to the consortium and say we are going to withhold spare parts until or unless you provide an assurance that these will not go to [Israel] I think the nature of the consortium is that all the countries would feel the crunch and therefore feel compelled to accept that agreement.

Australian steel in the Israeli military’s armoured vehicles?

On Insiders, Mr Marles also refused, repeatedly, to answer the question of whether military-grade armoured steel manufactured by Bisalloy in Wollongong, and then exported to Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, was being used to manufacture armoured vehicles for the Israeli Defence Force.

Host David Speers asked Mr Marles about both export examples. Watch clip (2:43). Extract:

Marles: Let’s be clear. We don’t supply weapons to Israel…

Speers: …but the armoured steel and the F-35 components?

Marles: We’re an F-35 country and we have been for a couple of decades. That is a multilateral arrangement with supply chains that are organised by Lockheed Martin in the United States [which has] multiple suppliers... so, that is a very different question.

Speers: What about the armoured steel?

Marles: We are not supplying weapons to Israel. We are an F-35 country…and that really is a separate issue. This is about having an impact on Israel. We have made it really clear that we need to see a cessation in hostilities and that is the fundamental point that needs to be made here.

Speers: But what about supplying armoured steel for armoured vehicles?

Marles: Well…well…we are not supplying weapons to Israel.

Speers: Armoured vehicles are OK?

Marles: We are not contributing to that, David. So let’s be clear about that. We are seeing a lot of misinformation in relation to what Australia is doing here. The fundamental point is that we are not supplying weapons to Israel…

Speers: Are you saying that armoured steel that goes from Bisalloy to [Israel’s] Rafael Defense Systems is not being used in armoured vehicles?

Marles: What I’m saying is that there is no step that we can take here which has any impact in relation to the activities of Israel.

Following a protest outside Bisalloy’s Wollongong factory last month, the company told the ABC that it, “does not manufacture steel products for use in bullets, missiles or similar weapons”. It did not mention armoured vehicles.

Could Australia make a difference?

Undue Influence last year reported comments by the head of the US-based F-35 joint program office, Lieutenant General Michael Schmidt, that the just-in-time F-35 global supply situation was “too risky”.

Despite claims from Mr Marles and Ms Wong that Australia has no power to make any impact on Israel’s military activities in Gaza, Josh Paul’s insights reinforce the fact that Australia could make a difference, should it have the courage to do so.

Australia could announce it will cease its export of F-35 parts and components unless or until the other member nations of the F-35 consortium agree to cease exporting to Israel.

These exports present clear evidence of the Australian government’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes.

Declassified Australia reported that it had sighted shipping records detailing goods sent on two recent flights from Sydney to Tel Aviv. It is unclear whether the documents simply show two individual shipments or are a glimpse of a bigger Australian direct export trade of F-35 parts to Israel.

This is the first concrete information of parts for Israel’s F-35 fighter jets being sent directly from Australia to Israel, some 21 months after 7 October 2023. It is evidence the Australian government can no longer deny or disguise.

Israel’s F-35s have been used to commit war crimes in Gaza, including airstrikes on designated safe zones that have killed hundreds of people. The fighter jets were also deployed during Israel’s recent illegal airstrikes on Iran.

Read the full story at Declassified Australia

Refresher: our 2024 reporting on Australia’s F-35 exports

Last year Undue Influence reported extensively on Australia’s export of parts and components into Lockheed Martin’s F-35 global supply chain and the Australian government’s misleading public commentary around this.

Most of our reports were also published by Declassified Australia, which was established in 2021 by investigative journalists Peter Cronau and Antony Loewenstein to publish in-depth and largely hidden stories that reveal the reality of Australia’s relationships with both democracies and dictatorships.

Our reporting below is referred to in the latest Declassified Australia article.

Yet the NACC did not issue a media release announcing this nationally significant news. Instead, it avoided mainstream media coverage by including it amongst other items in its standard monthly update*.

Despite the NACC’s promise to “ensure” an “impartial and fair investigation” of the referrals, it has kept the investigation in-house, appointing one of its deputy commissioners, Kylie Kilgour, to lead it.

The issue is not Ms Kilgour’s professionalism: it is the all-important perception of potential bias.

Eminent retired judges and integrity experts expressed alarm when Undue Influence broke the news in late May that the NACC appeared intent on appointing Ms Kilgour to the investigation, given her months-long participation in the NACC’s earlier flawed decision-making process not to investigate the six public officials.

The experts said that all three of the NACC’s deputy commissioners were “arguably tainted” by that decision and that none should be involved in the investigation.

The Centre for Public Integrity has repeatedly called for a “truly independent person” to conduct the Robodebt investigation to avoid any possible hint of bias, particularly given the “substantial damage” the decision not to investigate the referrals from the Robodebt Royal Commission has already done to the NACC.

The relevant segment in the NACC’s July update states the following:

The only new information in this minimalist ‘update’ is the 17-word sentence we’ve highlighted in bold. The first paragraph of information and the remainder of the second paragraph were both published by the NACC in a media release in February.

While the NACC’s wording (“now underway”) suggests the investigation has only recently begun, its chief adviser Mr Nettle is already three months into his nine-month contract.

Mr Nettle’s contract commenced on 7 April 2025 and ends on 31 December. There is provision for it to be extended twice if needed, to a maximum end date of 31 December 2026.

This indicates that the NACC’s Robodebt investigation started in early April.

The NACC has not disclosed that around the same time it hired Mr Nettle, it also hired two additional barristers: Gary Hevey and Jennifer Croxford. Their contracts both began on 4 April 2025 and also end on 31 December. These two contracts have also been published on Austender, the Australian Government's procurement information system. It is likely the two barristers are also part of the NACC’s Robodebt investigation team.

The cost to taxpayers of these three contracts, to 31 December this year, is more than $1.1 million.

The NACC has released no information about how it is running the investigation. Nor has it provided any detail as to what Mr Nettle’s role as ‘chief adviser’ entails and how it dovetails with Ms Kilgour’s role as investigation leader.

On 26 May we contacted the NACC with questions for an earlier article, including asking whether the Robodebt investigation had begun, whether Ms Kilgour would be involved, and requesting a summary of the overall process and key arrangements the Commission had put in place to ensure the impartial and fair investigation of the Robodebt referrals.

We now know that we sent our questions to the NACC seven weeks after Mr Nettle’s contract as chief adviser had already begun, yet the NACC refused to respond to us in May, despite its investigation already being underway.

The NACC is also mute on whether any other senior personnel or more junior staff are, or will be, involved in the Robodebt investigation. For example, in addition to the commissioner and three deputy commissioners, six senior executives are also members of the NACC’s Senior Assessment Panel, some of whom were involved in that capacity in the NACC’s decision not to investigate the Robodebt referrals.

* On 30 June, the NACC issued the Kingscliff report into corruption in the department of Home Affairs, widely picked up by mainstream media, and a second media release about a former immigration officer at Home Affairs who had been sentenced for abuse of public office. The following day, 1 July, on its 2-year anniversary, the NACC first published a statement about its first two years. It next released its July update, which opened with another two-year anniversary message, after which came the segment reproduced above about the Robodebt investigation. In media parlance, this is called ‘burying’ the Robodebt news.

The above footnote was added a few hours after publication of this article.

In a stunning revelation, Media Watch alleged that the ABC’s long-term defence correspondent, Andrew Greene, secretly travelled to Germany on business class flights and was put up in two separate hotels with all expenses paid by German naval shipbuilder ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS).

TKMS is on a shortlist of two battling to win Australia’s $10 billion general purpose frigate program. Its sole remaining rival is Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (more on Mitsubishi below).

This is a globally significant contract and both companies have been working overtime to gain an edge, including by exerting influence through media.

Soon after Media Watch submitted its questions to the ABC about Greene’s trip, the ABC deleted Greene’s 11 June story for The World Today from its website. The ABC had been under the impression from Greene that he obtained the audio recording of the ThyssenKrupp CEO Oliver Burkhard’s press conference via email. Greene did not disclose his all-expenses-paid trip to ABC listeners because he had not disclosed it to his bosses, having told them he was taking personal leave.

Such junkets are against ABC rules. Greene did not comment to Media Watch. An ABC spokesperson said: “These are serious allegations and the ABC is investigating them. The ABC has rigorous editorial policies and any such behaviour, if proven, would be unacceptable and could constitute misconduct.”

Greene’s trip to Japan last year

In mid-December and late January, the ABC published several exclusive reports by Greene about Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ bid for the $10 billion frigate contract. The reports contained this disclosure: “Andrew Greene travelled to Tokyo as a guest of the Foreign Press Centre Japan.”

Undue Influence’s investigation of the Foreign Press Centre Japan (FPCJ) website has found that Greene was in Tokyo from 8-14 December (a second page says 7-13 December) courtesy of a fellowship provided by the FPCJ.

The week-long fellowship occurred one month after the Albanese Government halved the short list for the frigate contract from four countries to two: Korea and Spain were dropped; Germany and Japan remain.

On its webpage about Greene’s fellowship, the FPCJ says the fellowship supported a series of reports, to which it provides links. Each of the three linked reports was about Mitsubishi’s bid for the frigate contract.

Two were published in late January:

29.01.25 online “Last month the ABC was invited to inspect a current version of the Mogami FFM frigate being operated by the JMSDF [Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force], the first time a foreign media representative was allowed on board the advanced Japanese warship.”

29.01.25 radio “The Japanese Maritime Defence Force is, for the first time, showing off its Mogami warship to a foreign reporter.”

The FPCJ webpage says Greene commented after his fellowship program that it was “very opportune timing” to be able to “cover the Mogami when the Australian navy was considering the Mogami-class for their next frigate, and he was very satisfied with the program”.

Undue Influence asked the FPCJ who had funded Greene’s fellowship and how much funding was provided. It responded: “We, the Foreign Press Center Japan, are the host of the fellowship and all costs of the program were covered by our budget.”

The FPCJ declined to provide the value of the fellowship but listed what it included: economy-class flights, accommodation (incl breakfast), airport-hotel transfers, per diem, interpreters and escorts to assist with reporting, transportation cost to cities >100km from Tokyo, and insurance. Other expenses to be met using the per diem and the reporter’s own resources.

Our further searches of the FPCJ’s website revealed that its supporting members provide funding for fellowships for foreign journalists.

Two of the giant Mitsubishi Group’s companies – Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation – are shown on the FPCJ website as being supporting members of the FPCJ.

For more information about the FPCJ’s fellowship program see this brochure. This is a legitimate program which Undue Influence is neither criticising or questioning. Our questions were about the funding of Andrew Greene’s fellowship given its “opportune timing”, the exclusive access he was granted by direct invitation, and the information in these two screenshots above.

Our second set of questions to the FPCJ asked whether Mitsubishi had been involved in the awarding or funding of Greene’s fellowship.

The Centre responded (“no”) that Mitsubishi had not provided any funding at all towards Greene’s fellowship. It also said (“no”) the Centre had not had any discussions about the awarding of Greene’s fellowship with representatives from Mitsubishi or officials from the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force prior to the Centre awarding Greene his fellowship.

Heavy hitters lobbying for ThyssenKrupp in Australia

Amongst the team lobbying for ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems in Australia is former Labor opposition leader Kim Beazley, who is on the advisory board of lobbyist TG Public Affairs. The firm has a solid defence focus and has disclosed TKMS as a client in Australia on lobbying registers.

TG Public Affairs also acts on behalf of Saab Australia, a long term defence contractor supplying the combat management systems for the navy’s fleet of surface warships.

Earlier this month, TKMS signed a memorandum of understanding with Saab Australia aimed at enhancing TKMS’ bid for the frigate contract.

Other members of the TG Public Affairs advisory board include: former Labor senator Stephen Conroy; Jane Halton, a former secretary of the Finance Department; former Coalition defence minister David Johnston (who was formerly on Saab’s board of directors and also formerly Australia’s defence export advocate) and Steve Grzeskowiak, a former deputy secretary with the Defence Department. John Brenton is the firm’s managing director. He’s a former Australian diplomat who served in the US during Kim Beazley’s time as US Ambassador.

Mr Beazley is also a director of Luerssen Australia. Luerssen’s German head office, Naval Vessels Lürssen (NVL), last year formed a joint venture with TKMS to build the Meko A-400 for the German navy.

View the Media Watch segment on Andrew Greene (7:24)

Arms advocate

It was encouraging to hear Media Watch host Linton Besser call out the perpetual failure of Australian mainstream media to advise audiences of the vested interests of their interviewees.

Former major general Mick Ryan has written numerous columns and been interviewed by multiple media outlets, including the ABC’s Insiders and 7:30, about the urgent need for Australia to follow Ukraine’s example and buy more drones. While he was the example Media Watch chose to highlight on Monday, he is by no means the only example. It has been standard practice for years in Australian media – TV, radio, and in print – to ignore the vested interests of interviewees.

Ryan is entitled to make a buck any way he sees fit, as Besser put it, including by advising and investing in drone companies. However, the public also has a right to know that Ryan has a vested financial interest in telling this particular story.

Ryan is a military expert and has been open about his drone interests: they are shown on his LinkedIn profile. It should be standard practice for producers/journalists to research and discuss with their interviewees all relevant financial interests. That information must be disclosed to the public.

In the absence of a program host or journalist doing their job properly, Ryan – and all other experts interviewed by media – should disclose their related interests themselves. Every time.

Besser is right: the Australian mainstream media is “pretty rubbish” at advising the public of the vested interests of the people they interview.

Watch this segment (4:13)

“This is such a bad look for an anti-corruption body,” said Chris Douglas, a long-term investigator with decades of experience investigating money laundering and other organised crime.

Mr Douglas said that the NACC’s actions were “clear evidence that it is intending to avoid accountability”.

For our most recent article, Undue Influence emailed a series of questions to the NACC’s media team; copied below.

The NACC’s media policy says it aims to respond within 24 hours. Undue Influence gave the NACC 42 hours to respond.

The NACC’s media policy also says it will accept phone calls from media. However, when we rang the media team to follow up, after its failure to respond to our email, it refused to accept our call.

Transparency International – a global anti-corruption organisation working in more than 100 countries – has emphasised the importance of anti-corruption agencies remaining transparent, accessible and accountable to citizens.

It says in its Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) Strengthening Initiative:

As public institutions funded by taxpayers’ money to combat corruption, ACAs must be transparent, accessible and accountable to citizens.

It’s vital that they operate with the utmost integrity, maintain a reputation of objectivity and professionalism and demonstrate effectiveness in their duties.

“One of the NACC’s roles is to build and enforce public sector accountability; therefore it should lead by example,” Mr Douglas said. “The media plays a major role in combatting corruption. It should not be alienated by integrity agencies.”

Mr Douglas worked for the Australian Federal Police for 31 years in intelligence and operational units before going on to advise domestic and foreign governments on their money laundering, fraud prevention, and anti-bribery and corruption programs.

He said his experience with foreign anti-corruption bodies showed that “those that ignore or try to muzzle the media are either controlled by the state, have something to hide, or don’t like being held to a similar or higher standard than the bodies they are investigating”.

The United Nations, in its Global Programme against Corruption: UN anti-corruption policies, has emphasised the importance of ensuring that anti-corruption agencies are open to media scrutiny:

A free media is a powerful instrument, not only for exposing corruption and holding those responsible legally and politically accountable but also for educating the public and instilling high expectations of integrity. (p37)

The highest possible degree of transparency in all aspects of government is essential to promote integrity and to fight corruption. The media, civil society and the private sector are indispensable partners for government in this endeavour. Governments should adopt, widely publicize and enforce legislation and procedures that provide the public and the media in the best possible way an optimum degree of access to information relevant to fighting corruption. (p112)

Australia signed the United Nations Convention Against Corruption as soon as it was available for signature, on 9 December 2003, and ratified it two years later.

Undue Influence will continue to scrutinise the NACC because Australia must have a strong and fearless anti-corruption agency given decades of corruption concerns in the area of defence procurement.

Questions submitted to the NACC

By email, Monday 26 May, 2:08pm

Dear NACC Media

Below are questions regarding the Robodebt investigation. I request your response by 9am Wednesday (28th) for deadline.

QUESTIONS

1. The NACC’s 13 December media release said it had appointed Mr Nettle to consider whether – and, if so, how – the Commission should deal with any corruption issues arising from the Robodebt referrals. Please provide a summary of Mr Nettle’s advice as to ‘how’ the investigation should be undertaken by the NACC.

2. Please outline the overall process and key arrangements the Commission has put in place to date to ensure the impartial and fair investigation of the Robodebt referrals.

3. Has the Robodebt investigation commenced?

If so:

• on what date did it commence?

• who is leading the investigation?

• is deputy commissioner Kylie Kilgour participating – or will she participate – in the investigation? If so, in what capacity?

If the investigation has not commenced:

• please outline the reasons why not.

Thank you and regards

Michelle Fahy

Anthony Whealy KC, chair of The Centre for Public Integrity, said that all of the NACC’s deputy commissioners were “arguably tainted” and should not be involved in any way.

He added that a “truly independent person” must also conduct the investigation, particularly given the “substantial damage” the decision not to investigate the referrals from the Robodebt Royal Commission had done to the NACC.

The deputy commissioner being lined up for the investigation, Kylie Kilgour, joined the NACC in February 2024. She worked alongside Commissioner Brereton, deputy commissioners Nicole Rose and Ben Gauntlett, and other senior NACC staff in the final months spent crafting the public statement that explained why the NACC would not investigate the six officials. She was also involved in the editing of, and discussions regarding, the letters that were sent to the Robodebt 6 advising them they were not going to be investigated.

Ms Kilgour was included in emails dating back to at least March 2024 from Commissioner Brereton outlining changes he wanted made to the public statement and the letters.

NACC Inspector Gail Furness, who conducted an inquiry into the NACC’s refusal to investigate the six officials for corruption, also referred to all three deputy commissioners being involved in editing the public statement.

We put a series of questions to the NACC. It refused to answer any of them, even those of basic accountability, including whether the investigation into the six public officials has started.

The Robodebt referrals from the Royal Commission

It has been nearly two years since the NACC received the Robodebt referrals on 6 July 2023. Eleven months after that, on 6 June 2024, the NACC released a two-page statement announcing it would not investigate the referrals.

The public outcry was immediate; more than a thousand complaints were lodged with the NACC Inspector’s office. NACC Inspector Gail Furness, who is independent of the NACC and the Federal Government, quickly opened an investigation into the NACC’s handling of the matter.

She found that NACC Commissioner Brereton had not appropriately handled his conflict of interest with Referred Person 1, now generally accepted to be Kathryn Campbell, with whom he said he had a “close association” and who was “well known to me”. Mr Brereton delegated to deputy commissioner Nicole Rose the decision making on whether the NACC should investigate the referrals.

Inspector Furness said that in addition to appointing a delegate, the commissioner should have removed himself from related decision-making processes and limited his exposure to the relevant factual information. “This was not done.” She found that the commissioner’s involvement was “comprehensive, before, during and after the 19 October 2023 meeting at which the substantive decision was made not to investigate the Robodebt referrals”.

Ms Furness recommended that the NACC’s decision be reconsidered by an independent person. That person, former high court judge Mr Geoffrey Nettle KC, overturned the NACC’s decision, finding that each of the six referrals raised a corruption issue and that all should progress to corruption investigations.

Mr Whealy said:

As we look back on this unfortunate affair, it must be conceded that the damage to the NACC has been substantial. The Nettle reassessment has determined that the agency must investigate the six referrals… But who at the NACC could preside over the investigation?

Should Kylie Kilgour be involved?

In a media release in February, the NACC obliquely raised the prospect of deputy commissioner Kylie Kilgour being involved in the investigation, but documents recently released under Freedom of Information (FOI) laws make it explicit.

The NACC’s media release, headlined: National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate Robodebt referrals, stated:

As a result of the decision made by its independent reconsideration delegate, Mr Geoffrey Nettle AC KC, on 10 February 2025, the Commission will investigate the 6 referrals it received from the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme. The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether or not any of the 6 referred persons engaged in corrupt conduct.

The release ended with this ambiguous sentence (emphasis added):

The Commissioner and those Deputy Commissioners who were involved in the original decision not to investigate the referrals, will not participate in the investigation.

Compare that sentence with the clarity of Philip Reed, the NACC CEO, in his all-staff email the same day (emphasis added):

The Commissioner and Deputy Commissioners Rose and Gauntlett will not participate in the investigation.

Mr Reed’s email was included in the documents released by the NACC under FOI laws in April.

Mr Whealy believes Mr Reed’s email, in conjunction with the media release, raises “a worrying ambiguity”.

The Robodebt investigation must be undertaken by an independent person with no connection to the NACC. There is a truly serious conflict of interest between the commissioner and referred person 1 in the proposed investigation. Given the history of the matter, that conflict can be avoided only by a truly independent person conducting the investigation.

Kylie Kilgour joined the NACC from Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission on 12 February 2024. This was almost four months before the NACC released its controversial public statement and two months before DC Nicole Rose recorded the final decision on Robodebt.

As a deputy commissioner, Kilgour joined the NACC’s top decision-making body – the NACC Senior Assessment Panel – which includes the commissioner, deputy commissioners and some senior staff.

She was involved at the highest levels in discussions about the public statement and the letters to the six officials, according to Alan Robertson KC, who wrote a report for NACC Inspector Furness’ investigation (emphasis added):

On 29 March 2024, the Commissioner emailed to Deputy Commissioners Gauntlett, Rose and Kilgour a revised draft public statement. He said, relevantly: …

Attached is a slightly revised draft letter and public statement. The main change is that rather than just listing relevant considerations… I’ve structured them in a way that shows which were more important and prevailed. I’m very happy to receive any further suggestions or comments.

Inspector Furness’ October 2024 report also referred to all three deputy commissioners being involved in the editing of the public statement.

“Even though the wording of the reasons had occupied the time of the Commissioner, the Deputy Commissioners and a number of senior staff since 19 October 2023, that is for over six months, the [public statement] still contained this misleading reason*.”

Mr Whealy said that all those discussions among senior NACC officials, a number of which involved input by Brereton, “arguably tainted the prospect that any of the deputy commissioners could be involved in the post-Nettle investigations”.

Will Partlett, Associate Professor of Public Law at the University of Melbourne, agreed that no member of the NACC senior leadership should be involved in the investigation.

“A possible way for this investigation to be rendered impartial is for the Commissioner to ask the Minister to appoint an Acting Commissioner to oversee the Robodebt referrals under Section 186 of the NACC Act.”

The illegal Robodebt scheme saw $1.7 billion in debts raised by the federal government against 500,000 Australians receiving social security payments. The scheme caused widespread distress, with some people taking their lives as a result. Robodebt has been judged a “massive failure of public administration” and an “extraordinary saga [of] venality, incompetence and cowardice”.

The names of six officials involved in the scheme who were referred to the NACC by the Robodebt Royal Commission are contained in a sealed section of the royal commission report and have not been made public.

* The NACC’s public statement incorrectly implied that the Australian Public Service Commission could impose sanctions on the five public servants whose names are contained in the sealed section.

The Australian counter-drone weapons system seen at a weapons demonstration in Israel recently is actually just one of a few that were sold by Canberra-based company Electro Optic Systems (EOS) and sent through its wholly-owned US subsidiary to Israel, Declassified Australia can reveal.

It was the ABC who broke the news of the EOS weapons system being provided for the demonstration trial. In response, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese continued to insist, as he has since the war in Gaza began, that Australia does not sell weapons to Israel.

However the weapon displayed wasn’t just provided on loan for the demonstration – the weapon has been sold to the Israelis. Declassified Australia can reveal that EOS, by its own admission, sold more than one of its R400 weapons systems to the Israelis prior to the demonstration.

An EOS company presentation, titled ‘2024 Full Year Results’, describes a “potential new customer” for the R400 weapon in the “Middle East”. The presentation, prepared for EOS shareholders and lodged with the Australian Stock Exchange, is dated 25 February 2025.

EOS describes this potential new customer for its R400 being a “preliminary” stage opportunity, meaning a bid is being prepared or has been submitted (page 16).

The overall opportunity is valued at <$100 million with the company stating (page 36) that more than one weapons system has been sold:

“Sample products sold, demo held, discussions underway.” (Emphasis added.)

EOS also points out a sense of urgency with the potential sale:

“Potential to accelerate due to operational requirements.”

At a unit price per system of A$1.55m the potential contract is enough to purchase 60 of the R400 counter-drone system.

Under the heading “Notable Demonstrations” (page 15), EOS refers to a “Counter Drone evaluation testing with New Customer”, held in January 2025, with an accompanying photograph of its R400 counter-drone system with five senior Israeli defence leaders posing beside it at the testing site.

By including this photo, EOS has itself revealed that its new customer is clearly Israel.

EOS states it had “supported a local prime [a major local weapons company] to demonstrate counter-drone capabilities in a high profile local demonstration”. EOS also said its R400 weapon system “performed extremely well, earning high praise from the organisers.”

The location of the demonstration of the Australian weapon was verified as being in Israel’s southern Negev Desert by a 5 February press release about the weapon testing, released by Israel’s Ministry of Defence.

An Israel Defense Force photograph included with the press release is the same photo of the R400 with Israeli officials that was published in the EOS document. Israel’s Ministry of Defense also posted this video of the demonstration event, with a firing of the EOS R400 weapons system appearing at 01:06.

In the photograph standing behind the Australian company’s weapon are four senior Israeli defence officials together with an Israeli defence industry CEO.

L to R: Acting director-general of the Israel Ministry of Defence, Itamar Graf; Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Katz; CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Boaz Levy; Head of Israel Defence Force’s Planning and Force Build-Up Directorate, Maj.Gen. Eyal Harel; Head of the Israel Directorate of Defence Research & Development, Brig.Gen. (retd) Dr Daniel Gold.

Countering drone attacks

EOS’ powerful R400 remote weapons system has a 2km range and is renowned for its lethality and precision in targeting. Using a sophisticated gimbal, its accuracy is maintained even when the system is mounted and used atop a moving vehicle. The weapon can be seen in use on a moving vehicle in this video clip.

The EOS R400 is not solely a counter-drone weapons system. It can be configured to fire weapons ranging from machine guns, to 30mm cannons, automatic grenade launchers, anti-tank guided missiles and 70mm rockets, meaning it can be used against multiple types of targets in addition to drones – including people, buildings, armoured vehicles, and tanks.

The R400 Slinger variation is marketed by EOS as a system designed solely to counter modern drone threats with a single, lethal shot.

The Australian company’s customer in Israel is noted in the EOS company document as being an Israeli ‘local prime’ arms manufacturer. Both Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Elbit Systems participated in the demonstration trials, each demonstrating a Counter Unmanned Aerial System (C-UAS) incorporating a 30mm cannon.

EOS sees a big future for the R400 and its suite of remote weapons systems. The EOS 2024 Financial Report was lodged with ASX on 25 February 2025. In the ‘Market Overview’ section, it discusses weapons contracts signed in 2024, and notes (page 8) that:

[EOS] Defence Systems is in active discussions and contract negotiations for the provision of RWS [remote weapons systems] and related components with other potential customers.

Assuming the evaluation of these systems progresses positively, EOS would hope to move to sell larger, commercial quantities to these customers.

Australia obliged to act on defence transfers

In October 2024, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory reported on the implementation of the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) findings that Israel may be committing “genocide”.

As reported by Kellie Tranter in Declassified Australia in November, the Australian government’s international legal responsibilities extend to investigating and regulating individuals and corporate entities who act in and from Australia to support the legally proscribed conduct of the Israeli State. The Commission stated:

Thus, the Commission recommends that any State engaged in such transfer or trade to Israel shall cease its transfer or trade until the State is satisfied that the goods and technology subject to the transfer or trade are not contributing to maintaining the unlawful occupation or to the commission of war crimes or genocide and thereafter throughout any period when the State is not so satisfied. [Emphasis added]

The UN Commission makes clear what trade it refers to:

On the issue of arms and military transfer and trade relating to Israel’s military capability, States have a duty to conduct a due diligence review of all transfer and trade agreements with Israel, including but not limited to equipment, weapons, munitions, parts, components, dual use items and technology, to determine whether the goods or technology subject to the transfer or trade contribute to maintaining the unlawful occupation or are used to commit violations of international law. [Emphasis added]

If the government becomes aware of an impending military transfer of weapons or technology defined above, to Israel – as the stated intentions of EOS reported here make clear – it is obliged to investigate and if necessary intervene to halt the transfer:

This includes both preexisting agreements and future transfers to Israel. States are obliged to demonstrate that any transfer or trade relating to military capability is not being used by Israel to maintain the unlawful occupation or commit violations of international law. [Emphasis added]

Words are not enough

The Australian government and the Defence Department have continued their obfuscation of Australia’s weapons trade with Israel, as Declassified Australia has been reporting repeatedly.

ABC television has reported how the government continues to insist no weapons or ammunition had been supplied “directly to Israel” since its latest genocidal war on Gaza began. The addition of the word “directly” is a notable change to the government’s wording since this EOS news emerged.

In response to the ABC report, Prime Minister Albanese said: “We do not sell arms to Israel… We looked into this matter and the company has confirmed with the Department of Defence that the particular system was not exported from Australia. Australia does not export arms to Israel.”

Declassified Australia has previously reported on the Albanese Government’s repeated and misleading use of the phrase ‘to Israel’.

Arms companies are known for exporting their weaponry, or parts and components thereof, via third party countries in an attempt to cover their tracks.

A defence industry source told the ABC the Australian-made components of the EOS R400 remote weapons system were assembled at the company’s wholly-owned US subsidiary in Alabama USA, before being shipped to Israel without an Australian export approval.

Military exports, including ammunition, munitions, parts and components, do not need to travel ‘directly’ to Israel to be prohibited under the Arms Trade Treaty.

Governments are required to find out where their weapons will, or may, end up and then make responsible decisions that comply with the treaty. A government must consider and assess the potential ‘end users’ of its military exports.

A UN expert panel has issued repeated demands that States and companies cease all arms transfers to Israel or risk complicity in international crimes, possibly including genocide. It stated:

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… [Emphasis added]

Greens’ defence spokesperson, Senator David Shoebridge, has said, “What we might be seeing here is the impact of what’s called AUKUS Pillar 2, the removal of any controls for the passage of weapons between Australia and the United States, and then Australia permitting the United States to send Australian weapons anywhere”.

Not the first time

EOS has a history of supplying its remote weapons systems to military regimes accused of extensive war crimes.

During the catastrophic Yemen war which started in 2014, despite significant evidence of war crimes, EOS sold its weapons systems to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. EOS enjoyed the full support of the Turnbull coalition government and its defence industry minister Christopher Pyne.

In early 2019, ABC TV reported, Saudi Arabia awarded EOS a contract to supply the Kingdom with 500 of its R400 Remote Weapons Systems.

EOS has also benefited from the government-to-industry revolving door. Former chief of army, Peter Leahy, was on the EOS board from 2009 until late 2022, encompassing the period of the Yemen war. He served as the company’s chair from mid-2021 until his departure.

The two longest-serving current members of the EOS board are former chief of air force, Geoff Brown (joined 2016) and former Labor senator for the ACT, Kate Lundy (joined 2018).

The release of a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report in 2023 raised serious concerns about EOS and its Saudi Arabian arms deals.

HRW’s report revealed that hundreds, possibly thousands, of unarmed migrants and asylum-seekers had been killed at the Yemen-Saudi border in the 15 months between March 2022 and June 2023, allegedly by Saudi officers.

Human Rights Watch says it identified on Google Earth what looks like “a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle” near a Saudi border guard posts north of the Yemeni refugee trail in January 2023.

The vehicle has what appears to be “a heavy machine gun mounted in a turret on its roof”. This description matches the military equipment that Australia sold to Saudi Arabia a few years earlier.

Declassified Australia put a number of questions to EOS, the Department of Defence, and the offices of the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister, and the Foreign Minister. None responded to our questions on this matter.

More on tonight’s ABC Four Corners program below. A must-watch!

Firstly, warm thanks for your ongoing interest in our work.

Thanks, in particular, to our paid subscribers. You make a critical difference to our ability to continue our unique work. We are always grateful for this.

If you are thinking about upgrading to a paid subscription, we would be most appreciative.

This is an update on what’s been happening at Undue Influence.

As this newsletter shows, our detailed work last year on Australia’s weapons exports to Israel and the National Anti-Corruption Commission’s refusal to investigate the Robodebt referrals proved critical, given the mainstream media’s lack of interest in properly pursuing either of these issues.

Revolving door database update

You may recall that in August 2023 we announced that we had been successful in securing a grant to research and develop a database to highlight the extent of the revolving door between the government/military/public service and the weapons industry in Australia. We had expected to complete the project in 2024.

However, then came the shocking and deadly terror attacks led by Hamas on southern Israel on 7 October 2023. These were followed by the vastly disproportionate response from Israel against Palestinians in Gaza in what had already been termed a “plausible” genocide by the world’s highest court in January 2024. (Amnesty International has since concluded Israel is conducting a genocide. See Amnesty’s December 2024 report.)

The Israeli military has been using its F-35 fighter jets during its indiscriminate carpet bombing of Gaza. Every F-35 fighter jet built, including Israeli ones, contains Australian parts and components.

To our dismay, the Australian government developed and repeated for many months a simplistic, misleading sentence claiming that Australia was not sending weapons to Israel and had not done so for five years. The Australian mainstream media failed in its duty to scrutinise and expose this propaganda.

As a result, we decided we had to set aside the database project temporarily and dig out what facts we could about Australia’s weapons exports to Israel.

Weapons exports

We lodged a freedom of information request for weapons export approvals data for several Middle East countries, including Israel.

The Defence Department ignored our request that the data be supplied in the same format the department had been willing to use in previous years (showing munitions list and dual use export approvals separately). Instead, the department amalgamated the data into a single set of figures, obscuring the picture of recent weapons exports to Israel. The department neither acknowledged nor explained its refusal to meet the terms of our FOI request using the same format it had been happy to use previously.

We next researched and produced a list of Australian companies involved in the F-35 supply chain as part of a collaborative global project being coordinated by researchers in the UK (see it here).

Then we investigated the government’s misinformation about Australia’s arms exports – into the F-35 global supply chain in particular – in a series of ground-breaking articles. See here, here and here.

Our detailed reporting forced additional disclosures from the Defence Department during parliamentary hearings. It also forced senior government ministers into admitting – after months of stonewalling – that Australia was still supplying parts and components into the F-35 global supply chain, something that international law prohibits when there is a risk those exports would or could be used in serious human rights violations.

Both Deputy Prime Minister (and Defence Minister) Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong attempted to gloss over this forced disclosure by describing Australia’s F-35 exports as “non-lethal”.

This was one of the lowest points in public commentary on weapons exports by senior members of the Australian government we have witnessed, particularly given the grave context.

National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) and Robodebt

The second half of last year was equally intense. It was kicked off by the National Anti-Corruption Commission’s statement in June 2024 that it would not investigate the Robodebt Royal Commission referrals, but would focus on “ensuring lessons learnt” instead - a decision that shocked the nation.

We have a professional association with Jommy Tee, an online researcher and investigator, who lodged requests under Freedom of Information seeking documents relating to Commissioner Paul Brereton’s conflict of interest in relation to the Robodebt decision. The documents Tee obtained, although highly redacted, revealed simply extraordinary goings-on inside the NACC.

We consulted top legal jurists Stephen Charles and Anthony Whealy and the result was a series of damning articles on the NACC’s serious mishandling of this matter.

Throughout it all, for months, the mainstream media ignored this nationally significant story that the head of the National Anti-Corruption Commission had failed to recuse himself from the Robodebt decision despite a self-admitted conflict of interest in relation to it.

The publication in October 2024 of the NACC Inspector’s report into this and other aspects of the NACC’s flawed decision-making process on the Robodebt referrals vindicated our reporting. The NACC has been forced to revisit its decision. In February, it announced it will, after all, conduct an investigation into the Robodebt referrals.

Our Robodebt reporting:

• Brereton’s NACC cloaked in military-grade secrecy (3 July 2024)

• When is a ‘recusal’ not a recusal? (21 August 2024)

• NACC boss breaks own integrity policy over Robodebt (24 August 2024)

• NACC’s year-long Robodebt decision: just two pages long (28 August 2024)

• ‘Recused’ NACC boss Brereton at Robodebt meeting (30 August 2024)

• NACC boss ‘misled Dreyfus’ over Robodebt (4 September 2024)

• Brereton’s Robodebt ‘recusal’ claims a sham: Top ex-judge (9 September 2024, The Klaxon)

• Robodebt ‘conflicts’ extend beyond Brereton (30 September 2024)

2024 ended with our reporting on the NACC’s mishandling of another investigation: the Defence Department’s 2020 Thales munition factory contract, despite numerous red flags contained in a scorching Australian National Audit Office report into this procurement.

We have so far published three articles on this subject. The investigation is continuing.

WATCH! Four Corners, 8:30pm tonight (Monday 10 March)

In the final months of what was an exceptionally full year, Michelle was invited to join the ABC’s Four Corners team as a researcher for a program reported by Mark Willacy and produced by Jonathan Miller.

The program, Sacrifice, investigates the Australian War Memorial’s ties to weapons makers and its controversial expansion and transformation.

** Watch the promo here. **

Revolving door database: where to next?

Our main priority for this first half of 2025 is to complete work on this, our largest investigative project to date. Although this means we are no less busy than last year, it is likely that from your viewpoint - as our valued subscribers - there will be fewer posts and newsletters from us during this period, given the longer-term nature of the database project. It will be worth the wait.

Once completed, the database project will be officially launched and there will be plenty of obvious activity at that time!

We are continuing with additional smaller investigative projects alongside the database project. We’ll keep in touch about developments with those.

All the best for 2025 and thank you for your ongoing support.

Michelle Fahy

What are the prospects and consequences of nuclear war? What more can Australia do to maintain our region as a nuclear-free zone? Does our current relationship with the United States enhance or endanger our security? How should Australia navigate the growing contest between the US and China? How feasible is Australia’s current defence strategy of ‘deterrence through denial’?

When: Tuesday, 11 February 2025, 6-7pm AEDT on Zoom (register here)

Moderator: Penny D Sackett is Distinguished Honorary Professor, ANU Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions. She was the former Chief Scientist of Australia, 2008-11.

Speakers:

Melissa Parke, Luck is not a strategy to avoid nuclear war

Melissa Parke is Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Melissa is a former Member of Parliament and UN human rights lawyer.

Allan Behm, AUKUS, the Alliance and Regional Security

Allan Behm is the Advisor, International & Security Affairs Program, at The Australia Institute, specialising in international and security policy development.

Major General Michael G Smith AO (Retd), AUKUS, China and Australia’s military strategy of deterrence through denial

Major General Mike Smith served for 34 years in the Australian Defence Force, including in Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and Timor-Leste.

Cost: Free

For more information and to register, click here.

If you miss the webinar, the Australian Peace and Security Forum will upload the video afterwards.

Read about the new Australian Peace and Security Forum here.

In August, after this year’s formal annual talks with the United States, Defence Minister Marles announced that the meeting had “built on the last two in seeing a deepening of American force posture in Australia”.

He added: “American force posture now in Australia involves every domain: land, sea, air, cyber and space.”

A decade of spin from both sides of politics has inured us to the stark reality of our loss of independence. Much is made of “defence industry cooperation” with the United States, for example, but this is simply code for the expansion of the US arms industry in Australia in support of its increasing military presence on our soil.

The day before AUKUS was launched in 2021, the US State Department made plain the importance of Australia in supporting America’s military-industrial base:

Australia is one of America’s largest defence customers, supporting thousands of jobs in the United States … The United States is Australia’s defence goods and services partner of choice … the partnership is expected to deepen further over the coming decade, including in the area of defence industry cooperation.

Soon after this statement was published, Marles flew to Washington to endorse its sentiment. He reassured the Americans that when it came to arms production, “our ultimate goal is to supplement and strengthen US industry and supply chains, not compete with them”.

Meanwhile, our much-trumpeted “sovereign defence industrial base” is simply a collection of the world’s top arms multinationals, dominated by the British-owned BAE Systems, the French-owned Thales, and the American-owned Boeing.

Then there is the egregious erosion of Australia’s sovereignty contained within the little-known Force Posture Agreement (FPA) with the United States, which the Abbott Coalition government signed in 2014.

In short, the FPA permits the US to prepare for, launch and control its own military operations from Australian territory.

Yet AUKUS dominates the headlines, even though other decisions by our political leaders that have sold out the public interest have received little coverage in the mainstream media.

A terse exchange between Greens Senator David Shoebridge and Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead during a Senate Estimates hearing earlier this year revealed that contracts signed by the Australian government that have handed billions of taxpayer dollars to American and British shipyards, supposedly to support the faster delivery of submarines, did not include standard protective clawback provisions. If we never see a submarine—as is possible—we don’t get any of our billions back.

The single most important downside of the US alliance, rarely mentioned, is arguably Australia’s military dependence on a foreign power. The Australian Defence Force is critically dependent on US supply and support for the conduct of all operations except those at the lowest level and of the shortest duration.

We were warned about this substantial sacrifice of national freedom of action. In 2001, a Parliamentary Library research paper stated that “it is almost literally true that Australia cannot go to war without the consent and support of the US”.

Foreign-dominated “sovereign” defence industry

Australia’s political and defence hierarchy regularly assert the need to build “a sovereign defence industrial base”. Most people would assume this to mean Australian-owned defence companies, with profits that stay local. This is not what the Defence Department means by it.

The world’s largest weapons companies, including BAE Systems (UK), Thales (France) and US companies Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, dominate the local defence industry. Almost all of the top 15 weapons contractors to the Defence Department are foreign-owned. In June 2024, Deputy Secretary Christopher Deeble, the head of the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group—the Department’s arms-buying group—explained in a Senate Estimates hearing the government’s definition of “sovereign” in this regard. Deeble agreed with independent senator David Pocock that the local subsidiaries of foreign weapons multinationals, such as Lockheed Martin Australia, were not “sovereign” Australian companies. Nevertheless, he said, the Department considers such foreign-owned subsidiaries to be “part of the sovereign defence industry base here in Australia”.

In influence and dollar terms, foreign-owned companies comprise the vastly dominant proportion of the industrial base, not “part of” it. Research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in 2017 showed that the top 15 weapons contractors received 91 per cent of the Department’s expenditure.

Force Posture Agreement

The erosion of Australian sovereignty accelerated in 2011, when Labor prime minister Julia Gillard agreed that up to 2,500 US Marines could be stationed in Darwin on a permanent rotation, and that an increased number of US military aircraft, including long range B-52 bombers, could fly in and out of the Top End and use Australia’s outback bombing ranges.

This agreement was expanded dramatically a few years later by the Force Posture Agreement, which provides the legal basis for an extensive militarisation of Australia by the US, particularly across the Top End.

The tri-nation military pact AUKUS, between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, was later negotiated and agreed to, in secret, by the Morrison Coalition government. AUKUS gained bipartisan support within one day of it being revealed to Anthony Albanese’s Labor opposition in September 2021. Among other things, AUKUS, in conjunction with the FPA, ensures that Australia’s navy will be tightly integrated with the US navy for the purpose of fighting China, and that the two navies can operate as one from Australian ports and waters.

Two months after Labor assumed office in May 2022, Marles was in Washington DC announcing that Labor would “continue the ambitious trajectory of its force posture cooperation” with the United States. Australia’s engagement with the US military would “move beyond interoperability to interchangeability” and Australia would “ensure we have all the enablers in place to operate seamlessly together, at speed”.

“Non-lethal” F-35 parts

Australia’s newest high-tech major weapons systems make us more reliant than ever on the United States. As veteran journalist Brian Toohey reported in 2020, “The US … denies Australia access to the computer source code essential to operate key electronic components in its ships, planes, missiles, sensors and so on”. This includes the F-35 fighter jets, which both Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Marles have noted form the largest proportion of the air force’s fast jet capacity.

When it agreed to buy Lockheed Martin’s expensive and controversial fifth generation fighter jets, Australia became one of the early members of the F-35 consortium. As part of the deal, Australia negotiated a role for local industry in the F-35 global supply chain. As of June 2024, more than 75 Australian companies had shared in $4.6 billion worth of work, according to the Defence Department.

But there’s been a significant ethical downside. Israel, also a member of the F-35 consortium, is using its F-35s in its war against Gaza. Israel stands accused in the world’s highest court of conducting a genocide in Gaza. Every F-35 built contains Australian parts and components, and for some of these Australia is the sole source.

A senior Defence Department official, Hugh Jeffrey, said in a Senate Estimates hearing in June 2024:

“We are a member of the F-35 consortium [which] exists under a memorandum of understanding … That gives the defence industry opportunity to contribute to that supply chain. It also requires Australia to provide those contributions in good faith…” [emphasis added]

Jeffrey also noted that when assessing any export permit, “we have to have high confidence that, in agreeing to the permit, it’s consistent with our national security requirements and with our international legal obligations”.

What happens if the Department perceives a conflict between Australia’s “national security requirements” and its “international legal obligations”? Is Australia “required” to continue supplying Australian-made arms “in good faith”?

In June, after nine months of spreading disinformation, the Australian government was forced to admit that Australia was still supplying parts and components to the F-35 global supply chain. At the time of writing, the government was allowing this supply to continue despite repeated calls from the UN asking nations—and multinational weapons makers—to cease supplying weapons to Israel, including parts and components, or risk being responsible under international law for serious human rights violations.

In July, the author asked the Defence Department several questions relating to our participation in the F-35 program, including:

1. Had the Department sought assurances from the US government and Lockheed Martin that they would cease the transfer of Australian-made F-35 parts and components to Israel?

2. Is it correct that Australia does not have access to the necessary source codes or other critical information needed to repair/maintain/upgrade/replace the sensitive components in our F-35s?

The Defence Department did not respond.

Assuming that Toohey is correct that Australia is reliant on the United States to operate its F-35 fighter jets, and that Australia has not sought the requisite US government assurances regarding non-transfer of Australian parts to Israel, Australia has few other options to try to comply with international law. This may explain why the Albanese government has focused on obscuring the extent of our involvement in the F-35 supply chain, and its unwillingness to act to ensure that no Australian parts and components end up in Israel.

In June, Wong linked the importance of Australia’s fleet of F-35s to our air force and our ongoing participation in the F-35 global supply chain when asked about our arms exports to Israel and our obligations under the UN Arms Trade Treaty.

She said on ABC television:

We have F-35s; they are the largest proportion of fast jets in the Royal Australian Air Force and we are part of 18 nations who are part of that consortia. We are involved in non-lethal parts, but … we will always continue to consider … obligations under those treaties.

A few days earlier, Marles had spoken similarly.

The proposition that the Australian parts in the world’s most lethal aircraft could be considered ‘non-lethal’ indicates a government in damage control mode. The government was forced to change tack after Jeffrey admitted, for the first time since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, that there were active export permits relating to Israel that covered the transfer of parts and components.

Marles also wants to use AUKUS to create a “seamless” trilateral defence industry base among the US, the UK and Australia. Our dependence on global arms corporations and our stated intention not to compete with the United States are an essential part of this.

“Unimpeded access”

The Force Posture Agreement is the overarching determinant of our military relationship with the US. It enables a significant increase in the militarisation of Australia in order to support America’s ability to wage war against China. Most of the detail has not been shared with the public, even as defence analysts discuss the “scale and speed of the US investment in Australia”.

The FPA is broad and does not fully define the nature of potential “force posture initiatives”. While it lists security cooperation exercises, combined training activities, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, the agreement also includes the amorphous phrase “such other activities as the Parties may mutually determine”.

It says: “United States Forces and United States Contractors shall have unimpeded access to and use of Agreed Facilities and Areas for activities undertaken in connection with this Agreement.”

It also allows:

• unimpeded access to our airfields and airport facilities for US combat aircraft and bombers

• unimpeded access to our seaports for US naval vessels, including US nuclear submarines at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia

• the construction of a US Air Force mission planning, intelligence and operations centre in Darwin as part of $630 million in American spending across the Top End over the next two years

• the establishment, under US military control, of several storage facilities for aircraft fuel, spare parts and munitions, including eleven giant jet fuel storage tanks near Darwin’s main port at a cost to the US of $270 million, which “will allow the US to run large-scale exercises and operations from Northern Australia, demonstrating how strategically important the top end has become for Washington”

• the embedding of US military intelligence analysts within Canberra’s Defence Intelligence Organisation, which will be renamed the Combined Intelligence Centre—Australia, a move Marles described as a “significant step” towards “seamless” intelligence ties

• the Albanese government has also agreed to Enhanced Space Cooperation to enable “closer cooperation through increased space integration”, even though Australia is a long-standing member of the 1967 outer space treaty, which reserves outer space for peaceful purposes.

The FPA runs until 2040 – 25 years from 2015 when it came into force. It then continues on a year-by-year basis and can be terminated by Australia or the United States with one year’s notice.

Public consultation on the FPA was minimal. While the Northern Territory government was consulted, other state and territory governments merely received advice about it.

Bevan Ramsden of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) has been researching the FPA for several years. He states: “I have found no evidence of any public consultation on this important subject. Nor has the force posture agreement ever been debated in parliament.”

In July 2024, IPAN wrote to the members of both houses of parliament asking them to comment on the agreement’s implications. This followed the tabling in parliament of an e-petition of 3,916 signatures in 2023 calling for the termination of the FPA.

This feature first appeared in Arena Quartlerly No 19 (Spring 2024 magazine). It was later also published at Arena Online.

Disclosure: Michelle Fahy is a member of IPAN. She is not involved in its FPA campaign.

The number of corruption investigations into the Thales Group continues to mount internationally with another announced two weeks ago.

The UK’s Serious Fraud Office and its French equivalent, Parquet National Financier, are jointly investigating suspected bribery and corruption by Thales on a contract in Asia. Thales has denied the allegations.

This followed news in June that police in France, the Netherlands and Spain had raided Thales’ offices in those countries as part of two separate additional corruption investigations into arms deals involving the Thales Group, as we reported in part 2.

In Australia, however, the Albanese government has swept aside a key integrity agency’s reports of “unethical conduct” between Thales and the Defence Department, appointing Thales as the fourth “strategic partner” in the new domestic missile-making enterprise.

Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy dismissed as an “unsubstantiated allegation” that was “flying around” the documented concerns of the Australian National Audit Office about a former defence official sharing confidential information with Thales and later soliciting a bottle of champagne from the company.

In a televised address at the National Press Club on October 30, where Conroy announced the government’s appointment of Thales as a Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) “Strategic Partner”, the minister was asked whether he remained confident in Thales and its integrity.

Said Conroy: “Let’s be very frank about this thing that’s flying around. There’s an allegation of an incident that occurred in 2017. 2017 – seven years ago – under the last government.

“Defence has thoroughly investigated it and I’m advised that’s there’s been no evidence to substantiate the allegation. It’s important to note that there is one allegation, unsubstantiated.”

But Conroy was wrong to claim the Thales deal has been “thoroughly investigated”, said Chris Douglas, a Perth-based international financial crime consultant.

“It has not been. The Defence Department does not have the capability to investigate allegations that could involve corruption.”

Douglas said that a thorough investigation could only be undertaken by a law enforcement agency, particularly the National Anti-Corruption Commission, “using a full suite of investigation powers including electronic evidence gathering”.

“There might be evidence at the person’s home, Defence isn’t going to find that, or in premises occupied by Thales, Defence won’t find that either. That is why we have a NACC.”

Following the audit office’s scathing June report on the 2020 Thales munitions deal, the Defence Department referred the matter to the NACC.

According to the ABC, after receiving the referral the NACC instructed the Defence Department to conduct the preliminary investigation. The department later said it was unable to substantiate the allegation. (See part 1.)

Douglas said the NACC did not appear to have placed sufficient weight on the seriousness of the matter, particularly as Thales is linked to several international corruption matters, operates in one of the most corrupt industries in the world, and currently manages Australian Government contracts worth billions of dollars.

He added that if Thales was an individual, “based on its past behaviour it would not be given a security clearance, and therefore no employment”.

Following the ABC’s report, Minister Conroy was asked whether he was concerned that the investigation into the unethical conduct appeared “to have hit a dead‑end, with the Anti‑Corruption Commission referring it back to the department, which then found no evidence”.

Conroy responded: “I think the important thing there is all due process was followed… All the organisations involved have investigated this matter.”

GWEO Chief, Air Marshal Leon Phillips, added: “The department has investigated that matter and cannot substantiate what was alleged. So we’ve concluded those matters.”

It is a long way from Defence Minister Richard Marles’ promise on 30 June that the matter would be “fully investigated” in a way which is “completely robust, which people have total confidence in”.

Champagne bottle “least of the concerns” about Defence probity

At a hearing of the parliament’s powerful Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit in November, Senator Linda Reynolds, deputy chair of the committee and a former defence minister, raised strong concerns about the 2020 Thales munitions deal.

Reynolds alluded to discrepancies between what she had been told as minister in briefings by the Defence Department and the facts contained in the report.

“When I read this audit report and remembered what had actually come up to me in the [ministerial] brief, it almost made me feel ill … and that is very consistent with the advice that is in this report that went to a different minister in 2017.”

Reynolds’ remarks corroborated the auditor-general’s report: “Defence’s advice to ministers on the tender and contract negotiations did not inform them of the extent of tender non-compliance [by Thales], [the] basis of the decision to proceed to negotiations, or [the] ‘very high risk’ nature of the negotiation schedule.” (p9)

The report also said the department’s advice in mid-2017 to then minister for defence industry Christopher Pyne was incomplete regarding the Department’s decision to proceed with Thales as sole tenderer: “The advice did not address the legal basis for the procurement method, the risks associated with a sole source procurement approach, or value for money issues — including how Defence expected to achieve value for money and maintain commercial leverage in the context of a sole source procurement.” (p10)

Reynolds told defence officials at the hearing: “These are not the first appalling findings by the ANAO… We’ve had a history of ANAO reports and [Defence Department] mea culpas… It’s like groundhog day… I think the bottle of champagne was the least of the concerns in relation to probity.”

She said the fact that the government was continuing to award new contracts to Thales was a concern: “You’ve inherited a smell, a big smell.”

Defence appointed a lead negotiator that was providing training to Thales at the same time

In a repeat of the future frigate contract negotiation with BAE Systems (see our Sinking Billions series), the audit report revealed (p87) that the Defence Department hired an external negotiator with a conflict of interest to lead its billion-dollar negotiations with Thales.

In October 2019 Defence hired Scotwork Australia as its lead negotiator on the munitions factory contract.

In mid-September 2019, following a request from Defence, “Scotwork Australia provided a quotation recommending that training be delivered to both Defence and Thales by the contracted lead negotiators for Defence”.

The quote noted that the two lead negotiators being hired by Defence had delivered dozens of negotiation skills courses to Defence and Thales over the years.

The joint negotiation training was provided by Scotwork to both the Thales and the Commonwealth negotiation teams at the same time and location, with no segregation. It was fully paid for by Defence.

Furthermore, in November 2019, Defence was advised by one of its lead negotiators that Thales had engaged Scotwork to deliver a negotiation course (separate to the above training). Defence’s two lead negotiators together owned 55% of Scotwork, and would benefit financially. They said they were not involved with that Thales training, that Scotwork had strict ethical walls in place, and that the revenue was “not material”. Defence accepted this and did not enquire into the dollar value of the revenue.

Defence conducted its contract negotiations with Thales from 5 December 2019 to 19 February 2020.

These are just a few of the many serious issues documented in the audit report.

“Strategic partners” or state capture?

Thales Australia’s CEO, Jeff Connolly, said the announcement of its appointment as Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance “Strategic Partner” was “proof of the enduring trust between Thales Australia and the Commonwealth”.

In her evidence to the audit committee, deputy auditor-general Rona Mellor was forthright about the use of such language by government and industry: “One of the big issues is this…nomenclature of ‘strategic partnership’. You’re actually not in partnership. You have a contract… you need to hold them to account.”

On the Thales deal, Mellor told the committee that while big international weapons contractors did “important heavy lifting in defence specialist military equipment and munitions”, keeping an “appropriate distance in our relationships” was important.

She said the audit office had “ongoing concern” about the implementation of the recommendations it issued to Defence, particularly for long-term contracts involving “strategic partners”.

The current report focused on the munitions group, “but next week we’ll go into the shipbuilding group and we’ll see the same thing, or the week after we’ll go into the Air Force and see the same thing”, Mellor said.

“There’s a really big challenge ahead for Defence. The biggest challenge, [as] this one shows, is that there is a culture in these very long-term contracts… There’s a real risk that you get captured by the provider, whether it’s in incumbency in turning contracts over, or in the nature of relationships that you form.”

Thales Australia has managed the Mulwala and Benalla munitions factories for the Commonwealth since the late 1990s. The company has consistently ranked in the Defence Department’s top three contractors, earning more than $1 billion a year from taxpayers. It has $7 billion in current contracts with the department, Austender shows.

Senator Reynolds was defence minister for the final year of the more than decade-long procurement process for the management of the munitions factories. She was the last of seven ministers to oversee the process, which began in 2009. Reynolds became defence minister in May 2019. She approved the deal, along with then finance minister Mathias Cormann, in May 2020. The now $1.4 billion contract expires in 2030.

French multinational Thales offered a Defence Department official a bottle of champagne as a gift if the Mulwala Redevelopment project (munitions factory) was removed from Defence’s Projects of Concern list.

This offer by Thales was not recorded in the department’s gifts and benefits register.

Defence Department records show that later, in May 2017, when the same Defence official asked Thales for the bottle of champagne, Thales reminded him the offer had been conditional on its removal from the notorious list.

This email exchange was revealed in the national audit office’s scathing 96-page report into the Defence Department’s 10-year, $1.2 billion munitions deal with Thales, released in June.

The auditor-general said the behaviour of the defence official and the Thales executive was evidence of “unethical conduct”.

As reported in Part 1, the Defence Department referred the deal to the National Anti-Corruption Commission which quickly flipped it back, telling the department to conduct its own preliminary investigation. The NACC showed “incompetence” and “poor judgment” because it missed corruption red flags, said former Australian Federal Police investigator and 35-year anti-corruption expert, Chris Douglas.

The Defence Department said its internal investigation was “unable to substantiate the allegation”.

The audit office found that the Defence Department official had also given Thales confidential information during the protracted negotiation process and had then taken up a position with the company shortly before it was awarded the decade-long contract to run two Commonwealth-owned munitions facilities.

Thales remains the sole contractor since 1999 to have run the two facilities, through several contractual arrangements. The Rudd Labor government had tried to introduce a competitive process but that was shut down by the Abbott Coalition government. Thales’ current contract extends to 2030.

The Projects of Concern list was founded in 2008 by the Labor government with the aim of focusing the highest levels of government, Defence and industry on remediating problem projects. The public perception was that defence acquisition projects routinely ran late and over budget.

Defence’s management of probity “not effective”

The auditor-general’s report noted that the Defence Department did not put in place a probity framework until July 2018, nearly two years after discussions began between Defence and Thales on this billion-dollar contract.

“By that stage, some of these probity risks had already crystallised during 2016 and 2017.” These included the sharing of the confidential information and the solicitation of the champagne.

The auditor also raised concerns that some discussions between Defence officials and Thales took place well before final government decision-making and “could have been perceived as committing Defence and government to a course of action that had not been officially endorsed or approved”.

“While planning activities for the procurement had commenced by March 2016, Defence did not implement project or procurement specific probity arrangements until July 2018, more than two years later. … Defence did not clearly differentiate between [business as usual] engagement with Thales and its [separate] procurement planning activities.”

The auditor-general said Defence’s Complex Procurement Guide identified the “inherent” probity risks in a procurement that involves high levels of business-as-usual interaction with a tenderer. “Despite this, the Defence Department did not appoint a probity adviser that was external to Defence for this procurement.”

The report uses the word “unethical” eight times to describe issues with the contract negotiation process.

Thales’ history of corruption and dubious dealings

Thomson-CSF changed its name to Thales in late 2000 to escape the stench of the vast international web of corruption that authorities were uncovering in a major French arms deal with Taiwan in the 1990s. The deal included warships, fighter jets and missiles.

At least US$520 million in kickbacks and bribes, allegedly authorised by president François Mitterand, were paid to members of Taiwan’s political elite to secure the deal. Eight suspicious deaths, including the murder of the whistleblower, were linked to the exposure of the corruption. The investigation continues today. The scandal remains one of the most extensive naval contracting corruption schemes in modern history.

Thales was also part of a complex web of corruption in a 1999 major arms deal with South Africa. Prior to this, the company had for decades supplied military equipment to the apartheid regime in South Africa - supply that continued after the UN imposed a mandatory arms embargo on apartheid South Africa in 1977.

In 2022, Thales confirmed it was being formally investigated by French authorities as part of a long-running corruption probe tied to the 2002 sale of submarines to Malaysia.

In June this year (coincidentally the same month the audit office released its abovementioned report) police in France, the Netherlands and Spain raided Thales’ offices as part of another corruption investigation into two additional Thales arms deals, including for suspected corruption of a foreign public official, criminal conspiracy and money laundering related to a sale of submarines and the construction of a naval base in Brazil.

In Australia, the auditor general’s June 2024 report echoed an equally excoriating report it published in 2018 into the Defence Department’s contract with Thales to manufacture the Hawkei armoured vehicle. The audit office documented many ethical and procedural irregularities in that deal, including that the Hawkei contract failed to provide taxpayers with value for money, a criticism it also levelled at the Thales munitions factory deal.

The Defence Department also conducted its own internal investigation into Thales in 2019 over tens of millions of dollars of alleged fraud in naval sustainment contracts, with BAE Systems also investigated. A Defence Department whistleblower triggered the investigation, which found the allegations serious enough to escalate to the department’s Assistant Secretary Fraud Control and then also to the Independent Assurance Business Analysis and Reform Branch of Defence.

In May 2019, the Weekend Australian published three separate articles detailing numerous specific allegations, including figures. Following the media exposure, the Defence Department said it would conduct a second internal investigation into the matter. The department eventually said its “independent internal review” had found “no evidence of inappropriate excess charges” and blamed “minor administrative issues” for the problems.

The case is the first Australian example of potential arms industry corruption included on the Corruption Tracker website which documents arms industry corruption globally.

Despite the NACC’s still-open investigation, and the ongoing international corruption investigations into Thales, the Albanese government has just appointed Thales a “strategic partner” in the $22 billion Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance GWEO enterprise. (More in part 3.)

6.12.24: This article was updated to include the paragraph on Thales’ corrupt history in South Africa.

The National Anti-Corruption Commission either missed or ignored obvious red flags for corruption in its initial handling of the $1.2 billion Thales munitions deal that made headlines in June. The NACC’s decision to send the case back to the department that signed the deal in the first place for a preliminary investigation showed incompetence and poor judgement, according to a 35-year anti-corruption expert.

Chris Douglas, who worked for the Australian Federal Police for 31 years in intelligence and operational units before going on to advise domestic and foreign governments on the design and implementation of anti-corruption programs, said Commissioner Paul Brereton “needs to resign immediately”.

The NACC’s approach to the Thales referral is the third publicly known case of questionable NACC decision-making following the ongoing Robodebt debacle and the NACC’s report on Operation Bannister, in which it exonerated a former Home Affairs employee of corrupt conduct in relation to the Paladin matter.

The Defence Department referred the Thales deal to the NACC in June, two days after the national audit office released a scathing report into the department’s handling of the $1.2 billion munitions deal with the French multinational.

The audit office found that a Defence Department official had given Thales confidential information and solicited a bottle of champagne from the company during the long-running and complex negotiation process; and had subsequently taken up a position with Thales just before the company was awarded the 10-year contract to run two Commonwealth munitions factories.

The audit report revealed that the official’s emails to Thales, containing the confidential information and soliciting the champagne, had been copied to his departmental supervisor – a one-star military officer – and a second Thales executive.

The audit office found no evidence that the official’s supervisor had taken any action over what the auditor general described as “unethical conduct”.

The NACC, instead of immediately beginning its own investigation, returned the case to the Defence Department to undertake the preliminary investigation.

“The NACC instructed Defence to use records already held by the department to conduct its preliminary investigation and to then pass on any findings of improper behaviour,” said an exclusive ABC report.

Undue Influence asked the NACC to explain why it had referred the matter back to Defence. The NACC did not deny that it had done so. Nor did it provide an answer. It noted, “the making of a referral to the Commission does not prevent an agency from continuing its own investigation of a matter”.

The NACC also said that while it does not normally comment on referrals under consideration, as the Defence Department’s referral was on the public record it could confirm that the referral “remains under assessment in accordance with the Commission’s usual processes”.

Defence Department refuses to answer questions

“Defence completed its own internal investigation into this allegation in August 2024 and was unable to substantiate the allegation,” a defence spokesperson told the ABC.

Undue Influence asked the Defence Department to list specific aspects of the allegations that it was unable to substantiate, in light of the email trail reported by the audit office. The department did not respond.

NACC fails to properly investigate matter

Anti-corruption expert Chris Douglas said the red flags in this case included the fact that the former Defence Department official was employed in the explosive munitions area in the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) – Defence’s weapons buying group – and that he actively solicited the champagne from Thales while having supplied confidential information. That the NACC missed or ignored such obvious red flags and sent the matter back to Defence for investigation showed “incompetence” and “poor judgement”.

Douglas said the behaviour of the official was a “clear signal” that he was “easily enticed and therefore more easily corrupted”. Douglas added that when a person has acted so blatantly, investigators should also examine what other deals the person was working on and with whom.

Douglas said it is reasonable for the NACC to refer matters back to the original department or agency concerned for preliminary investigation when they are minor, but given the red flags in this case it had been a “stupid” approach.

Furthermore, given the NACC has the power to compel witnesses to appear at a hearing, it should have used this power to interview the former official as well as other Thales executives, Douglas said.

The ABC stated that the former official was still working for Thales as an “industrial strategy advisor” on 19 October in its exclusive article.

Twelve days later the ABC reported that the former official had left the company: “Thales assured Defence and the Albanese government that the former departmental official was no longer conducting any paid work with the company”.

Despite the NACC’s still-open investigation into this matter, the Albanese Government last week announced that it had appointed Thales as the fourth “strategic partner” in its $22 billion Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance enterprise (GWEO).

After the announcement, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy referred to the disclosures of “unethical conduct” in the national audit report as an “unsubstantiated allegation” that was “flying around”. He said the Defence Department had “thoroughly investigated” the matter and found “no evidence to substantiate the allegation”.

The Defence Department is the largest procurement agency in the country, responsible for spending more than $50 billion of taxpayers’ money every year.

NACC Commissioner Paul Brereton has been a member of the Australian army reserve since 1975 and reached its highest ranks.

Marles: “It will be fully investigated.”

Speaking on ABC TV’s Insiders program on 30 June, soon after Thales had been referred to the NACC, deputy prime minister and defence minister Richard Marles said he was “very concerned about the facts of this particular case”. He said it was “really important” that the investigation “happens in a way which is completely robust, which people have total confidence in”.

Marles said he didn’t think there was a systemic problem within the Defence Department in relation to defence contracting, but he had wanted the department to refer Thales to the NACC as quickly as possible: “That is what has happened and it will be fully investigated,” he said.

Undue Influence asked Marles to comment on the NACC’s decision to send the case back to Defence. We also asked for an explanation why his department was unable to substantiate the allegations, in light of the email trail reported by the audit office. We received no response.