The promoters behind the Land Forces weapons expo are registered as a charity. This charity, AMDA, pays no tax but does pay high salaries and just tripled its income to $35m. Michael West reports.
It was rubber bullets and tear gas for peace protestors but special police mollycoddling and a Victorian Government sponsorship for the merchants of death.
What do we know about the promoters of the Land Forces weapons fair, which the Victorian government so avidly protected from anti-war protestors this week with a $15m police presence, stun grenades, pepper spray and batons?
We know from regulatory filings the promoter behind Land Forces is a charity called AMDA Foundation. We know from AMDA’s financial disclosures that this charity is highly profitable. Its income shot up from $13m in 2022 to $34.6m last year.
Vic Police inciting violence, msm misreporting it – they planned a public subsidised weapons fair in middle of Melbourne in middle of a genocide … what the hell were they thinking?#DisruptLandForces #auspol https://t.co/dJYRDta0Fp
— 💧Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) September 12, 2024
That was for the year to June, at which point it was sitting on a financial investment portfolio of $43m in cash, stocks and bonds. AMDA even gets government grants – grant revenue is booked at $6.6m over the past 2 years. The principal sponsor for Land Forces expo this year was none other than the Victorian Government, which went to extraordinary lengths to protect and promote its investment.
The mainstream media was bizarrely strident in its anti-protest coverage, running the story (not disavowed by the government and Victoria Police) that protestors sprayed police with acid. That was later downgraded to ‘irritants’ and ‘low-level acid’ bringing speculation it might have been orange juice (citric acid) or maybe the chemicals in the bubble liquid from the bubble machine with which the outnumbered protestors entertained the police blockade at one point.
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It’s all a rort on the public, on the very taxpayers and citizens the Victorian government had its police assaulting this week because weapons companies – the likes of AMDA’s exhibitors BAE, Lockheed Martin, Thales and Boeing – are funded by governments globally.
In Australia, the Defence budget is soaring amid rising weapons sales; so it is a fair bet that the income of AMDA will be higher in 2024.
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And these ‘charitable’ weapons promoters certainly look after themselves personally with their ‘charitable donations’ income and their government grants.
AMDA’s $30m in expenses last year included $8m in pay for its 31 employees (FTE equivalent), which averages out at almost $260k per employee. The five ‘Key Management Personnel’ – the crew at the top of the charity – shared $1.5m or almost $300k apiece in ‘charity pay’.
Landforces’ brothers in arms: how a weapons peddler qualified for charitable status
Editor’s Note: Tomorrow on The West Report’s Scam of the Week, we check out the Victorian government’s $20m Land Forces PR stunt.
Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.