The New South Wales Defence Summit scheduled to be held October 31 has been cancelled following increased pressure from anti-war and anti weapons manufacturing protests.
The summit, held annually, brings together the Defence industry to address updates to the AUKUS pact including investment in weapons manufacturing, nuclear submarine commissioning and the delivery of contracted weapon technology.
The summit was set to be held in Sydney’s CBD, Students For Palestine were organising a protest disrupting the proceedings.
Earlier this week students at the University of Sydney rallied for the National Week of Action which involved a strike for the NTEU’s national day of action. On Thursday students held a rally that marched to UTS to protest against ties to weapons manufacturers and the disciplinary action threatened against students for handing out ‘Students For Palestine’ leaflets.
Deaglan Godwin, Vice President of the SRC and member of Students For Palestine told Honi, “Clearly the organisers of the NSW Defence Summit have seen how people turned out in their thousands against the Land Forces conference in Melbourne in September and wished to avoid similar scenes for their own conference.”
Godwin cited this cancellation as “a huge success for the Palestine movement and a demonstration that war criminals and weapons manufacturers can’t meet during a genocide without people standing up against them.”
ADM was contacted for comment.
