The expo is anticipating 20,000 visitors across three days.
According to the event’s website, it is expected to break records with nearly 1,000 exhibitors occupying most of MCEC.
Apart from the expo, a three-day conference program includes “the Chief of Army Symposium, industry briefings, technical symposia and updates on future programs and key technologies”.
In addition to the steel ring around MCEC, Victoria Police has also deployed 1,200 officers from across the state to patrol surrounding streets as well as water police along the Yarra River beside MCEC.
Under Victorian legislation they have stop and search powers, including the right to demand people remove masks.
While the event does not commence until September 11, attempts over the weekend to disrupt the arrival of exhibitor equipment, including military vehicles, choked traffic around approaches to the centre. This led to the arrest of two protestors who allegedly chained themselves to a vehicle they had stopped in the middle of a nearby freeway.
The last major protest against an international meeting in Melbourne was, coincidentally, on September 11, 2000, when an estimated 20,000 protestors surrounded Crown Hotel, where the World Economic Forum was being held.
Protest organisers’ claims to amass 25,000 people outside MCEC on Wednesday are being repeated on Melbourne’s television news channels and through mainstream media online.
The Exposition is organised and conducted by AMDA Foundation Limited with support from the Australian Army, the Australian Department of Defence and the Defence Science and Technology Group. AMDA is an Australian not-for-profit corporation.
