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A trio of Palestinian human rights groups have launched a legal bid to force Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles, to shed light on whether the government has approved Israel-bound export permits, which could violate international law.
The groups – the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Al-Haq and Al Mezan Center for Human Rights – will make a discovery application for arms export documents after filing an affidavit in the federal court last week.
The groups, supported by the Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ), hope the documents would show whether permits were erroneously granted due to a failure to properly assess the possibility they could be used to facilitate serious human rights abuses.
Guardian Australia has contacted Marles’ office for a response.
The Albanese government has repeatedly denied that Australia has supplied weapons to Israel since 7 October 2023, and downplayed existing permits as “dual-use” – permits for parts or technologies typically used for commercial or civilian use, but “with potential military and weapons of mass destruction application”.
Marles was again emphatic in August, saying: “Let’s be clear: we don’t supply weapons to Israel.”
In November 2024, the defence department confirmed it had amended or lapsed at least 16 defence-related export permits to Israel as part of a review of 66 “active” exports at the time.
Defence’s deputy secretary, Hugh Jeffrey, said the department had lapsed or amended the permits “because we can’t be confident” they would not be a “contradiction to Australia’s national security or other international obligations”.
By October 2025, the department said there were a total of 54 active permits. Twenty-two permits had been issued to Israeli end users since 7 October 2023, five of which had since expired. A further 31 permits issued before the war were deemed as not requiring action while six were subject to “ongoing scrutiny”.
The United Nations independent international commission of inquiry, which does not speak on behalf of the UN as a whole, found in September that “genocide is occurring in Gaza and is continuing to occur”, according to its chair, Navi Pillay.
Former human rights commissioner Chris Sidoti, a member of the international commission, said Australia must ensure it is not involved in the trading of arms used by Israel that could be in breach of international law.
Al-Haq’s general director, Shawan Jabarin, said Palestinians had “the right to know who is arming” Israel and “what is being exported”.
“Our efforts to shed some light on Australian exports have been unsuccessful to date, and we should not have to go to court to understand who is arming the Israeli regime,” Jabarin said.
The groups previously attempted to compel the release of documents from Marles relating to Israel-bound exports in November 2023, but discontinued the action citing undisclosed transparency issues.
Rawan Arraf, ACIJ’s principal lawyer, said the Australian arms export regime operates with “minimal public scrutiny, and no meaningful visibility as to what exports have been approved by the Australian government, and on what basis”.
“Our clients believe they may have a right to obtain relief in the nature of judicial review. But because of secrecy around the process, they cannot know for sure until the cloak of secrecy is unveiled.
“Assurances by the minister and the government over the last two years have led to public mistrust, frustration and anger. We cannot accept the government’s ‘trust-us’ attitude to something as grave as potential Australian complicity in genocide and other grave international crimes.”
Prof Donald Rothwell, an international law expert at the Australian National University, said the federal government had consistently refused to release the documents through other means – such as freedom of information laws.
“Linking how Australian-exported defence materiel makes its way into the hands of the IDF has become very difficult because of the web of supply chains, and how some of that defence materiel may pass through the hands of other legitimate actors,” he said.
“So, the preliminary discovery request – which is not uncommon in civil litigation involving potentially very extensive documentation – is really part of how the three applicants can seek to build their legal case against the commonwealth.”
Assoc Prof Joanna Kyriakakis, an international criminal justice expert at Monash University, said Australia had obligations under international law “not to knowingly contribute to real risks of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by other states through the use of technologies Australia supplies”.
“This is a critical case as it seeks to enable an assessment of whether the minister gave due consideration to such risks when deciding whether to permit the export of certain items of Australian developed technology capable of use by Israel in its conduct within Occupied Palestinian Territory since October 2023, in light of the myriad of warnings that Israel’s conduct is in breach of international law,” she said.
The Greens have campaigned against the use of Australian-made parts within F-35 fighter jets used to strike areas of Gaza.
Australia is party to the Joint Strike Fighter Program, meaning companies within the country supply F-35 parts and components as part of a global supply chain agreement.
More than 75 Australian companies have contributed to the global supply chain for the F-35 program, according to the defence department.
One of those companies, RUAG Australia, is the only global supplier of the F-35’s “uplock actuator system”, which allows the jet to quickly open its bay doors and fire missiles while maintaining stealth.
Germany has stopped exporting material that could be used by Israel during its military operations in Gaza. Germany is the second-largest arms supplier to Israel after the US.
Marles has said Australia could not announce similar action to Germany as it does not directly supply arms to Israel.
