Greens Senator Nick McKim accuses Canberra of enabling the slaughter through weapons components, diplomatic cover and refusal to name the crime.
Australian Greens Senator for Tasmania Nick McKim has repeatedly declared that Israel is carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and that the Australian Labor government has made the country complicit in that crime. His words, delivered in the Senate and amplified on social media, cut through the careful language preferred by mainstream politicians: “There’s a genocide underway in Gaza, and Labor has made Australia complicit.”
McKim’s charge rests on three pillars. First, the scale of death and destruction in Gaza. Second, Australia’s continued role in the supply chains that sustain Israel’s military campaign. Third, the government’s refusal to use the strongest available tools-full arms embargoes, comprehensive sanctions on Israeli leaders, expulsion of the ambassador, or formal recognition of genocide under the 1948 Convention-even as international legal and expert bodies pile up evidence of genocidal acts and intent.
McKim Accuses Australia of Complicity in Gaza Genocide:
According to figures released by Gaza’s Health Ministry and tracked by independent monitors, more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, with tens of thousands more wounded. Children make up a large share of the dead. UN commissions of inquiry have concluded that Israeli forces deliberately targeted children and that the pattern of attacks, starvation, forced displacement and destruction of civilian infrastructure meets the legal threshold for genocide. The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts and ensure humanitarian access, yet the killing and the blockade have continued, including after periods of ceasefire.
McKim has told the Senate that Australia’s complicity takes concrete form. Australian-made components for the F-35 fighter jet-including parts that critics say enable the delivery of bombs-continue to reach Israel through direct and indirect channels. While the government insists these are “non-lethal” items or that Australia does not export finished weapons or ammunition, investigative reporting and parliamentary questioning have shown shipments of military goods and dual-use components persisting long after the scale of civilian casualties became undeniable. McKim has called this facilitation of genocide: “If there is a genocide underway and you are facilitating that genocide by selling military hardware that is being used in that genocide, you are complicit.”
He has also pointed to diplomatic failure. Australia has recognised the State of Palestine, imposed limited sanctions on far-right Israeli ministers, and voiced criticism of specific incidents, including the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom. Yet it has stopped short of sanctioning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet, ending the two-way arms trade, or joining South Africa’s genocide case at the ICJ as an intervening party. In McKim’s view, hand-wringing without action is not neutrality. “This is not neutrality; it’s complicity.”
McKim Slams Australia Over Gaza Policy:
The senator has rejected attempts to reframe the violence as a conventional war or to equate criticism of Israeli policy with antisemitism. He has described the use of starvation as a weapon, the forced displacement of most of Gaza’s population, and the systematic destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and refugee camps as acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide. He has called on Australia to stop exporting military hardware, impose sanctions on Israeli leaders, end the displacement of Palestinians into what he has termed concentration camps, and choose ceasefire over the profits of weapons corporations.
McKim’s interventions form part of a broader Greens push that includes demands for an immediate and permanent end to the occupation, the dismantling of the blockade, and full compliance with international law. They also reflect a growing gap between official Australian policy and significant sections of public opinion that have filled streets in repeated national days of action for Palestine.
As the death toll continues to climb and the legal cases advance, McKim’s message remains blunt. The Australian government knows what is happening in Gaza. It continues to supply parts of the machinery that makes the killing possible. It refuses to call the crime by its name. In the language of the Genocide Convention and in the judgment of the senator from Tasmania, that makes Australia complicit.