Future Fund doubles down on investments in companies linked to genocide
Sovereign wealth fund pours $260 million into Palantir, arms firms and Israeli banks
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Australia’s sovereign wealth fund drastically increased its investments in arms, tech and banking companies contributing to the Gaza genocide in 2025, risking “serious breaches of international law” according to pro-Palestine advocacy groups.
Publicly available figures from the Future Fund website indicate the fund’s holdings in tech giant Palantir Technologies, arms manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Elbit Systems, and several Israeli banks soared in 2025. In July, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese named Palantir, Lockheed and Elbit as major corporate entities contributing to the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Fund doubles down on arms, tech holdings
The fund’s holdings in Palantir comprise the vast majority of the increased investment, rising from $6,750,136 in 2023 to $165,307,100 in 2025 — a jump of more than 2,400 per cent. In 2020, former Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Mike Kelly was announced as Palantir’s Australian head ten days after retiring from Parliament for health reasons.
International human rights bodies have detailed how Palantir sells an “enormous amount of advanced targeting AI hardware and software to the Israeli miliary and spy agencies”, as well as supplying the United States government with technology used to surveil migrants and pro-Palestine activists.
The fund’s holdings in Elbit now total $8,658,722 — up from just $547,290 in December 2023. This is despite Elbit being placed on the fund’s blacklist in 2021.
In December 2020, the Israeli arms company engaged former defence minister Christopher Pyne to lobby in Canberra on its behalf. The Albanese government signed a $900 million contract with Elbit in February 2024 – a month after the International Court of Justice found Israel’s acts in Gaza could amount to genocide.
The Future Fund’s increased investment in Elbit comes as growing pressure from the Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement saw the company lose major contracts in the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and Brazil. In March, an Elbit factory in the Czech Republic was set alight by activist group Earthquake Faction, who vowed in a statement that “wherever Elbit Systems and their accomplices obscure and hide their business of bloodshed across the world, we will come for them”.
In September, Deepcut reported that the fund increased its holdings in Elbit by 469 per cent in 2024, prompting calls from the Greens for the fund to divest from companies that “profit off the genocide in Palestine”.
The fund also increased its holdings in Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi le-Israel BM, as well as other Israeli banks listed by the UN Human Rights Council as supporting settlement expansion in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The fund’s investments in Leumi, Israel Discount Bank and Bank Hapoalim now total more than $72 million.
Investments expose Australia to ‘fiduciary risk’
In letters to treasurer Jim Chalmers, finance minister Katy Gallagher and Future Fund chair Greg Combet, Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) CEO Katie Shammas warned that the fund’s investments in firms supplying materiel to the IDF and Israeli settlers risk Australia “undermining… its obligations under international law”.
In April, New Zealand’s High Court ruled that the country’s $86 billion Super Fund failed to properly consider human rights issues when it invested in companies dealing with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. In 2021, the fund divested itself of NZ$6.5 million of holdings in Israeli banks that finance the construction of Israeli settlements.
Shammas raised the New Zealand example with Chalmers and Gallagher as evidence the Future Fund’s investments could expose Australia to “fiduciary risk as global expectations on human rights due diligence continue to tighten”. She also flagged that civil society organisations are working with crossbench parliamentarians on a bill that would prevent the Future Fund and Australian superannuation funds from investing in companies that breach Australia’s international human rights obligations.
Marking the 78th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, APAN began a public campaign on Friday urging the Albanese government to “stop the flow of Australian public money to Israeli weapons”.
“While politicians talk about ‘peace’ and ‘recognition’, Australian public money continues flowing into corporations profiting from bombs, surveillance, destruction, and illegal settlement expansion,” APAN president Nasser Mashni said in a press release.
“Recognition means nothing while genocide is still being funded.”
The Department of the Treasurer, the Department of Finance and the Future Fund did not respond to questions. In a brief statement, a Future Fund spokesperson said “the Future Fund has a broadly diversified investment portfolio in accordance with its investment mandate and strategy. Exclusions to the investment portfolio are reviewed on a regular basis and updated in line with recommendations from independent research providers.”
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