Your money, their rules. Super funds support Israel war machine
by Andrew Gardiner | Mar 24, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/your-money-their-rules-super-funds-support-israel-war-machine/
Australian industry super funds are investing in companies involved in the Gaza genocide, and unions are not demanding they stop. Andrew Gardiner reports.
Protected by rules putting a member’s “best financial interests” over ethical, environmental or social considerations, the vast majority of Australia’s industry superfunds are all-systems-go on pouring money into projects connected to the decimation of Gaza, dispossession in the West Bank, and bombing Israel’s neighbours.
An MWM investigation has confirmed that just two of Australia’s 20 industry super funds are making modest changes to their investment portfolios. The other 18 remain invested in Israel’s war machine, with Australian Super alone funding corporations like Elbit Systems (drones), ICL Group (white phosphorus) and Palantir (AI/software for weapons systems).
This, even as the IDF is again using the banned white phosphorus in Lebanon, in which Australian super is invested.
The two funds which did divest – Vision Super and HESTA – still have some money tied up in Israeli projects in Gaza and the West Bank. “HESTA and Vision divested from Israeli banks (but) they still have money in companies listed on a UN database as operating from Israel’s illegal settlements”, Molly Coburn from the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) told MWM.
Activist Jill Sparrow says even those modest changes could be quietly reversed “as soon as we look away”. “Divestment isn’t set and forget (and)
“there’s a lot of money to be made in dropping bombs,”
“so super funds could be sorely tempted”, she said.
If you’re in a union-partner industry super fund and have a problem with genocide, chances are you’re out of luck on the socially-conscious investments front. Unions routinely route members’ super into partner funds with little regard to the social or environmental impact when it’s invested.
Ethics ignored
Under 2005 rule changes, union members can transfer their super to retail super funds, Australian Ethical and Future Group, which shun companies whose work enables the carnage in Gaza. These funds show it can be done, so why have industry super funds not done it?
Instead, unions aligned with the Labor Party, under pressure from Zionist lobbyists, are content to send members’ money to super funds that aid the Israeli war effort, funding what the UN calls “a moral stain on us all”.
Like so many other ACTU affiliates, the United Workers Union (UWU), with 151,000 members, talks a good game on Israel’s actions in Gaza, but hasn’t put its members’ super where its mouth is. MWM’s efforts to ascertain how much the union had done to lobby its super funds – HostPlus, Australian Super and HESTA – yielded nothing.
What we learned from UWU members is that in early 2024, a rank-and-file motion including divestment was passed at the council level in various states before being “soft-blocked” by union officials, who reportedly sat on it. Later that year, a more formal “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) motion, requiring real action compelling divestment by the super funds, was defeated.
“Social issues are bread and butter issues, and funding war is a dead end. Our leadership – who are on the boards of HESTA and Australian Super – (need) to stop hiding behind ‘fiduciary duties’ to fund death and destruction”, UWU delegate (early childhood education) Nicki Toupin told MWM.
Fidiciary duties
Fiduciary duty doesn’t just provide cover for unions putting the bottom line first. “In the interests of members”, it’s cited time and again by super funds whenever there’s pressure to divest.
Buttressing their argument is case law precedent, which will raise the hackles of Australian republicans: Cowan v Scargill, a UK decision dating back to the Thatcher years (1985), helped redefine a member’s “best interests” as “best financial interests” (emphasis added). 2021 changes to fiduciary duty here in Australia reflect that new emphasis.
How do you define “best financial interests”? Wouldn’t a stable Middle East be good for the world’s economy, providing investment opportunities for our super funds that don’t involve genocide?
“Egregious war crimes, crimes against humanity and devastating environmental impacts mean you can argue that the financial interests of super fund members are undermined by investments that support the Israeli military”, Claire Parfitt, Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at Sydney University, told MWM.
It seems our super funds, and their investment managers, are ignoring these arguments in the quest for a quick return, their investment in the Israeli war machine rendering Middle East instability something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There are, of course, equal and opposite rules against super funds investing in projects “maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the occupied Palestinian territory”. But some rules, it seems, are more equal than others; successive Australian governments barely lift a finger to enforce international court rulings, human rights obligations and social considerations (ESG), which might trouble the bottom line.
To quote a famous movie line, “a foul is not a foul unless the ref blows his whistle”. The failure to enforce international and ethical obligations means super funds can go on hiding behind “fiduciary duty”; at least 18 of our 20 industry funds are doing just that.
The “fiduciary duty” chestnut, and “soft blocking” tactics by union officials aligned with an ALP which quietly supports the Gaza carnage, have rendered meaningful “change from within” on divestment all but impossible. So groups like ASU for Palestine and UWU 4 Palestine are taking matters into their own hands.
Following a 1000-strong “community picket” of the Israeli-owned ZIM Ganges cargo ship at Port Melbourne, ASU for Palestine started looking at divestment as a way to hit Israel where it hurts. After ASU secretary (now Senator) Lisa Darmanin, then a board member at Vision Super, inevitably advised ASU for Palestine of its “fiduciary and statutory obligations” (adding it wasn’t legal for her to “act as (a) representative” of ASU members on divestment) it became clear something more compelling was called for.
What did ASU for Palestine do? It began a campaign to raise awareness on divestment, suggesting ASU members “switch their super fund” elsewhere, while lobbying to change the default super fund in enterprise agreements to none other than Australian Ethical.
It’s amazing how the threat of losing thousands of ASU members (and untold millions) can motivate a super fund to abandon “fiduciary” rhetoric and do the right thing. A couple of months later, amid much fanfare at the ASU conference, Vision Super announced its limited divestment, full details of which are expected by the end of this month.
These kinds of ‘direct action’ appear to actually work, although (per APAN) the extent of Vision’s divestment was limited. “If it’s not good enough, we’ll just have to go again”, Sparrow told MWM.
For their part, UWU 4 Palestine sees divestment as a major social cause that it and Members First, a grassroots change ticket at upcoming union elections, can get their teeth into. “Building a rank and file, fighting union that isn’t remote from members gives us the power to push for the kind of world we want, not just on workplace issues but in investing our money in something other than genocide”, Toupin told MWM, adding
That’s right. Direct Action works.
The Inheritance of Fear: From the Cold War to Trump’s World
24 March 2026 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/the-inheritance-of-fear-from-the-cold-war-to-trumps-world/
Even as children, we knew something was wrong. The adults spoke in hushed tones. The news carried a sense of urgency. At school, the playground chatter wasn’t about games – it was about war. The kind that could end everything.
By my final year, the fear had become personal. Among the boys, we spoke about conscription – about being called up to fight in the Vietnam War. It wasn’t abstract anymore. It was waiting for us.
That was the world we inherited.
And now, it seems, the next generation is inheriting something disturbingly familiar.
Recent polling shows that fear of a major global conflict is no longer a fringe concern. In the United States, nearly half of respondents – 46% – believe a world war is likely within the next five years, with similar fear echoed across Britain, Canada and France. Across Europe, between 41% and 55% of people think another world war is likely within a decade.
Among younger people, the anxiety runs deeper still. A global Red Cross survey found that almost half of millennials believe a third world war is likely in their lifetime. And here in Australia, new research suggests that young adults are among the most anxious about national security threats, with many expecting conflict within years rather than decades.
This is not abstract fear.
It is generational.
But there is a difference between then and now.
The Cold War was terrifying, but it was also structured. Two superpowers, locked in a tense but calculated standoff. There were rules – dangerous ones, but rules nonetheless.
Today, the fear feels less ordered. Less predictable. More dependent on personalities than systems.
And that is where Donald Trump enters the picture.
To his supporters, he is decisive – a leader unafraid to act. But to many others, particularly younger people watching from a distance, he represents something far more unsettling: volatility. A willingness to escalate, to threaten, to test boundaries not as a last resort, but as a demonstration of strength.
In some international polling, even allied populations now cite the United States itself – under Trump’s leadership – as a potential source of global instability.
That perception matters.
Because fear is not driven solely by events, but by expectations – by what people believe might happen next.
And for a generation raised on a constant stream of crisis – pandemics, climate change, economic instability, and now rising global tensions – the idea that a single leader’s impulses could tip the balance is deeply unsettling.
Unlike our childhood, there is no buffer. No evening news that ends at six o’clock. No space between events and reaction. Every threat is immediate. Every escalation is live-streamed. Every rumour amplified.
There is no off switch.
And so the fear settles in – not always as panic, but as something quieter and more corrosive. A sense that the future is unstable. That the world is being shaped not by steady hands, but by unpredictable ones.
We have seen this kind of fear before.
We lived through it.
But today’s version carries an added uncertainty – not just about what might happen, but about who might make it happen.
For younger generations, that may be the most unsettling thought of all.
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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