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Fahy, Michelle: Brothers-in-Arms: the high-rotation revolving door between the Australian government and arms merchants

Michelle Fahy*

Brothers-in-Arms: the high-rotation revolving door between the Australian government and arms merchants‘, Michael West Media, 11 March 2020

A disturbing number of Australia’s military personnel, senior defence and intelligence officials and politicians leave their public service jobs and walk through the “revolving door” into roles with weapons-making and security-related corporations … It is a career pathway which has been normalised …

When respected senior leaders … leave public service for the weapons industry, they take with them extensive contacts, deep institutional knowledge, and rare and privileged access to the highest levels of government. Their presence in the private sector serves to affirm and entrench the influence of the weapons industry on government decision-making.

Also, could decision-making within government be influenced by individuals’ future job ambitions?

There is more to come from Michael West Media on these issues. Earlier work by Michelle Fahy on the Afghanistan war, Australian arms sales, and arms sales again. Fahy was a source for a Mike Seccombe piece on the same subject. Serendipitously, today there was this on Australian and other arms sales to Mali. Search the Honest History website also with terms like ‘arms’, ‘gunrunners’, ‘Pyne’, ‘Saudi’ and ‘Yemen’.