Community members from the Palestinian, climate and environment movement will be staging a peaceful protest at ANZ Bank’s upcoming Annual General Meeting (AGM) this Thursday December 19 from 8.30am at Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) 1 Convention Centre Pl South Wharf, Victoria. Individuals and groups are staging the protest over the bank's financial ties to the world’s largest weapons company, Lockheed Martin. The arms dealer manufactures and supplies weapons to Israel, which are being used in the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
Palestinian community members and activists will also be inside the AGM as proxies to put questions directly to ANZ CEO Shayne Elliot on the bank’s likely complicity in war crimes, genocide, human rights abuses and environmental destruction perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.
Lockheed Martin currently supplies Israel with F-16 and F35 fighter jets, which Israel has been using extensively to bomb Gaza. Israel also uses the company’s C-130 Hercules transport planes to support the ground invasion of Gaza. UN experts have declared that the transfer of weapons and ammunition to Israel may constitute serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws and risk complicity in war crimes, specifically naming Lockheed Martin.
ANZ has participated in 27 known financial deals with Lockheed Martin, including loans and bonds*. The most recent of these loans was a US $3 billion loan in August 2024, over ten months after the invasion of Gaza had begun.
In the last ten years, ANZ has helped facilitate over US $23 billion worth of bond financing for Lockheed Martin and is specifically responsible for US $227 million of bonds*. ANZ is also Australia’s largest funder of climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects, and has poured over $19 billion into coal, oil, and gas companies in the eight years since the Paris Agreement was signed.
Quotes attributable to Amin Abbas, Palestinian activist and advocate
“ANZ must comply with international humanitarian law and end its funding of weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin profiting off the sale of arms and munitions to Israel, who are committing war crimes and genocide, as noted by Amnesty International and UN Special Committee.”
Quotes attributable to Friends of the Earth campaigner, Elyse Cunningham
“Israel is committing ecocide in Gaza. They are deliberately destroying the environment as a weapon of war, destroying precious agricultural land and polluting waterways with illegal chemicals like white phosphorus. The damage will take decades to repair. Through its investments in Lockheed Martin ANZ is complicit in these war crimes.”
“We are calling on ANZ to immediately cut ties with weapons giant Lockheed Martin. ANZ is profiting from, and funding the horrors being carried out by Israel in Occupied Palestine - including deliberate starvation and targeting of civilians, and systematic destruction of the environment as part of the ongoing genocide.”
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A selection of photos and video footage will be uploaded here as they become available.
Key Facts:
* Analysis of Bloomberg Terminal information
Contact details:
Chris Schuringa
Member of Climate Activists for Palestine
0418 912 625