Dave Milner
Labor governments are embracing fascistic policing to protect the baby-killing machine
Last week, the Land Forces Expo, a biennial conference for spruiking the hardware of military mass-death, was held in Perth. Western Australia’s Roger Cook Labor government implemented harsh legislation, rushed through parliament, granting extraordinary powers to police to search people and turn them away from designated city blocks, including the ability to issue harsh prison terms to a list of pre-banned individuals. On that list are a journalist and a state MP’s staffer. The rushed bill is emblematic of a flurry of nationwide crackdowns on public freedoms at a state and federal level that have changed the resting state of our secular democracy.
Alongside giant transnational weapons manufacturers like Boeing, BAE Systems and Thales, and burgeoning local suppliers selling their deadly wares, a record number of patrons attended the expo itself. Israeli arms producers like Rafael Advanced Defence Systems proudly displayed their weapons of death, tested in the killing fields of Gaza, even showing off the Spike missile likely to have killed Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom.
Peaceful protesters gathered at the borders of a newly legislated exclusion zone, hundreds of metres from the expo, compartmentalised from the besuited high-profile lanyard-wearing attendants browsing macabre wares on trestle tables.
The previous event, hosted in Melbourne in 2024, was challenged by anti-war protesters opposed to the inclusion of Israeli weapons producers during a UN-declared genocide. The protesters were met with a strong, violent police response.
The Cook government framed its stance around the Melbourne event, and implemented specific legislation, the Land Forces Event (Special Powers) Act 2026, which created a security/protected zone covering the convention centre and the Elizabeth Quay bus port. Within the zone, police had special new powers, including the ability to set checkpoints, stop and search people and vehicles, demand identity details, direct people to leave, and confiscate a long list of prohibited items.
The most controversial element of the legislation is an excluded-persons list that allows bans on individuals assessed as “posing a serious threat to safety or property”. Some of these “serious threats” are journalists, interns for MPs and high-profile activists, none of whom have a true record of “posing a serious threat to safety”, all of whom take issue with a private arms convention getting legislated protections while airing the modern wares of death.
A WA Police spokesman made the intent clear: “If someone is excluded, they have some sufficient behavioural problems and some of that includes criminal histories.” Police Minister Reece Whitby echoed these words: “Each excluded person has a demonstrated history of posing a serious threat to people and/or property.” Several people have been reported receiving bans, with anyone looking to defy the new legislation facing a maximum $36,000 fine and three years in prison.
One of those deemed a “serious threat to people and/or property”, and facing the same penalties if he attended, was journalist Jessie Noakes. In a post, Noakes says WA Police sent him a letter excluding him from the area for 10 days. He was visiting family in Europe at the time, and said in a bewildered manner that he would not personally be challenging the “totally discretionary decision” because of where he was, but urged others to do so.
That urgency was picked up by the Human Rights Law Centre, who filed Supreme Court proceedings for climate activist and law student Matilda Lane-Rose, a 22-year-old social media manager for WA Greens MP Sophie McNeill, who was also banned from the Land Forces site. Police about-faced after the case was filed, reactively allowing Lane-Rose access, but it was restricted, pre-emptively, to a single day.
We contacted the Human Rights Law Centre, who refrained from giving a statement due to the ongoing legal action, but directed The Shot to their media statement, which was pre-empting a challenge to the harsh pre-emptive legislation: “We are bringing this challenge to ensure that when these types of extraordinary powers are made available to Police, they are exercised in accordance with law.”
Even rough sleepers have been barred from a large exclusion zone surrounding the blood-soaked event, which has been allocated $11.5 million in the state’s budget for security alone. Scrutiny from within the parliament was fronted by Sophie McNeill, who led criticism of the rushed legislation and repudiated the extraordinary powers it granted: “WA Labor chose to restrict the rights of Western Australians and ensure that the murderous weapons companies attending this arms fair didn’t have to hear or see anyone opposed to their presence.”
The eastern states have reactively changed laws and public freedoms to respond to rising discontent in their populations over climate, Zionism, genocide and militarism, but WA has a history of pre-emptively and prophylactically meeting public discontent with ironclad laws and draconian police powers. When a WA government gets a whiff of discontent it legislates a CHOGM-modelled security protocol that is usually reserved for high-level international diplomatic summits. This was not a high level summit — it’s tables of drones, guns, and smart explosive ordnance, some of it made in Israel — and it sits at odds with the national values of a country that is sick of being at the apex of aspirational warmongering and militarism.
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The state and federal Labor governments did not inherit this restrictive social setting. They built it. And we must call these powers what they are: authoritarian crackdowns on democratic Australians. While beating the drum of “social cohesion,” they made standing on the footpath a serious offence, imposing precrime on the citizens of Perth for the comfort of private weapons giants who promote conflict for profit. This is only the latest measure in a run of changes that impinge on public freedoms, made to shield the companies they have chosen to host.
While the climate deteriorates and weapons companies promote brutal wars for profit, and foreign powers chisel at the country’s sovereign foundations, the people will protest those who enable it. The only choice remaining for elected leaders who refuse to govern in the interest of the collective is to punish Australians for reminding them that they should.
All around the country, in our democracy, premiers and politicians are competing to restrict our rights. They are doing this in the country we grant them the privilege of governing. Increasingly, they are protecting the interests of the powerful and unconscionable over the needs of the public. WA has now taken a narrow lead in this contested field. The 2026 expo law made certain peoples’ mere presence in a public space an offence, on an appallingly discretionary manner, in anticipation of future crimes. Supporters of democracy in Australia have every right to be concerned.
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