The exhibitors inside the Land Forces expo must have wondered if they had missed a trick.
It was the opening morning of the three-day event, but instead of being stuck inside the sterile confines of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, they could have been on the battlefield outside, giving a live demonstration of their wares.
None of these exhibitors – from Australian states and universities to the world’s largest weapons manufacturers – seemed too bothered.
About the same time as a voice from the speakers above advised anyone leaving the expo to “please remove any identification and your badge” for security reasons, drink trolleys were being wheeled out inside.
A man chugged down a premix can of Bloody Shiraz gin. The General’s Hot Sauce stand was slinging out samples.
The crowd was more RM Williams boots than combat boots, more navy blazer than fatigues.
“Is this your first one of these?” one woman asked another, who nodded in response, “They’re pretty cool.”
As the Victoria police chief commissioner, Shane Patton, started speaking to the media about the protest from headquarters down the road, it was standing room only in the convention centre for the “Analysis of AUKUS Pillar II with a Land Focus” discussion.
It was presented by Nova Systems, who reportedly tested drones manufactured by the Israeli company Elbit recently for the Australian army.
Perhaps the cancellation of an earlier talk – “The extensive use of chemical weapons in Syria and Ukraine by the Russians is a threat to Western military defence forces which requires urgent mitigation” – had built anticipation.
The expo, which was not open to the public, had an Abrams tank and infantry fighting vehicles, missiles and rifles. There was a popcorn stand. You could buy a bag of coffee and go in the draw to win a framed green and gold top signed by Keith Payne VC.
Autonomous robots for live fire training, one wearing a black hoodie (hood on, of course), jerked at random, a grenade’s throw away from the NIOA Group’s stand, the munitions company chaired by former defence minister Christopher Pyne, which also features former parliamentary secretary for defence David Feeney and Mark Donaldson VC on its board.
There was no hiding what exactly all these weapons were for, though nobody said the quiet bit out loud. The closest they came was in the use of oblique slogans such as “accelerating capability to the warfighter”.
On a sign outside, a protester had slapped a “How many kids have you killed?” sticker. There would be little chance of finding an answer inside.
