Some don't want defence manufacturers to pay for Australia’s first world war festival, even if there is a funding shortfall

Two things about war are certain. People die. And those who manufacture weapons make a financial killing.

But should those who profit from war also be involved in telling the official stories of its human, cultural and historical impacts? In Australia, it seems the federal government’s answer is yes.

As the government prepares to spend at least $300m – by some accounts half of it to be raised from the private sector – on the centenary of the first world war, some of the country’s big defence manufacturers appear likely to help underwrite events marking the 100th anniversary of Anzac beginning next year.

Funding is being sought from Australian corporations, including defence industry manufacturers, for a landmark international conference, Gallipoli 1915 – a century on, jointly hosted by the Australian War Memorial and the Australian National University, in Canberra next March.

Leading historians from countries whose troops fought at Gallipoli will attend the conference – some courtesy of corporate sponsorship raised by the memorial. Due to a funding shortfall for the Gallipoli conference which the federal government will not fill, the war memorial is now seeking the money from corporate Australia, including defence contractors, to ensure it goes ahead.

While the event has already been shifted from Canberra’s vast National Convention Centre to the university campus, to save on costs, some Australian academics are still privately expressing reservations about attending the conference if it attracts defence industry funding.

Critics insist the defence industry cannot objectively examine the impact of war because its imperative is to profit from manufacturing weapons. They extend their criticism generally to the war memorial for accepting defence industry sponsorship and donations, and to the federal government, which is hoping to raise millions of dollars more in centenary funding from Australia’s top corporations – including from arms manufacturers.

Asked if the war memorial would accept defence industry funding for the Gallipoli conference, a spokesman said: “As there is a funding shortfall for the conference, the Australian government declined to fund the conference and urged us to find partners. That is what we are doing. All avenues of support will be explored.”

The war memorial, which hosted almost a million visitors last year, has been one of Australia’s most popular cultural institutions since it opened in 1941 with a mandate to remember, interpret and understand Australia’s war experience. So culturally revered is the memorial for its dual function as a museum and a memorial to our 102,000 war dead, and because of its genesis in the mythical Anzac legend, it has become Australia’s foremost secular shrine.

The memorial has a long and deepening association with Australian defence industries, which continue to sponsor exhibitions, fund specific parts of the memorial and give generous donations to top up its already generous annual government funding ($39m last financial year).

The Medical Association for the Prevention of War (Australia) insists that this is inappropriate.

Association vice president Sue Wareham said: “There aren’t many people for whom warfare is a good thing, but the weapons industries are the quiet beneficiaries when a country goes to war. For most of the population, war memorials provide a place to reflect on the tragedy of wars, but for the weapons industries they are a commercial opportunity, a chance to cash in on notions of honour and nobility.

“For those who profit from war’s carnage to help commemorate that carnage is highly offensive. It would be just as inappropriate for the liquor industry to erect memorials to those killed by drunk drivers or the tobacco industry to commemorate victims of lung cancer.”

But asked if it was appropriate to accept arms industry money, the war memorial spokesman said: “The memorial has a number of corporate partners which come from a variety of different industry and service sectors. External funding will always be required to maintain the significant memorial collection and its increasingly diverse activities in supporting that mandate.”

As Australia counts down to its four-year festival of first world war commemoration, opponents of the defence industry’s involvement will become increasingly vocal. Industry representatives, meanwhile, can be expected to argue a devil’s advocate “big stick” case: that democracies have a responsibility to invest in military hardware for continental defence and conflict deterrence – as well as war.

Last June, BAE Systems Australia, a subsidiary of the UK-based parent company, signed a seven-year “partnership” with the memorial to continue to support high-tech equipment and resourcing of the institution’s theatre – the BAE Systems theatre.

BAE manufactures products that include various types of ammunition, fighter planes, aircraft armour, laser-aiming systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) and military communications equipment.

The memorial lists the Australian Submarine Corporation, BAE Systems Australia, Boeing Australia (military aircraft), General Dynamics Land Systems Australia (land and amphibious combat systems) Raytheon Australia (next generation battlefield technology) and Thales Australia (munitions and weapons, including the Australian Defence Force’s F88 assault rifle) among its major sponsors.

Other corporate and service industry sponsors include Coles Myer, several major Australian banks, Rio Tinto, SCR Limited, Shell Australia, Seven Network Limited and Casinos Australia.

In June 2013, Pacific Limited, a subsidiary of the Boeing Company, presented a ScanEagle drone to the war memorial for inclusion in the exhibition Afghanistan: the Australian story, as “an example of the Unmanned Aerial vehicles that have been deployed by Australian forces in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2006”. The popular and evocative Afghanistan exhibition, which candidly examines the Australian experience in Afghanistan – including combat injury and post-traumatic stress – also includes an engine cowling that was pulled from a crashed Blackhawk helicopter and used as a makeshift stretcher.

Boeing sponsored the exhibition.

Meanwhile, the Anzac Centenary Advisory Board has been raising corporate funds to help the federal government mark the 100th anniversary of the first world war.

Asked if the advisory board had sought or accepted defence industry funding and whether to do so was appropriate, a spokesman for the minister for the centenary of Anzac, Michael Ronaldson, did not directly respond.

Instead he referred to Ronaldson’s recent Senate statement in which he named and thanked “particular” corporations (none were from the defence industry) that have so far pledged support.