White Australia, the neo-Nazi group, has been listed as a banned hate group after some members of the disbanded Nationalist Socialist Network remained active under a new name.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the neo-Nazi Nationalist Socialist Network had re-formed and “phoenixed” into a group known as White Australia.
“Today, the organisation that would be colloquially known as the neo-Nazis, but has gone through different names, the European Australian Movement, the National Socialist Network and White Australia, has been listed as the second prohibited hate group under the changes that were made to the Criminal Code,” he told reporters this afternoon.
“What they did, for a better term, was they phoenixed, changed their name, but didn’t change the fact that they were still an organisation and were still engaging in the exact sort of behaviour that met the thresholds for this legislation.”
ASIO first advised the government that White Australia had likely met thresholds to be considered a hate group – advocating and engaging in hate crimes – on April 22.
Burke confirmed the group was found to have met all the thresholds of a hate group and said examples of their hateful actions had been widely covered in the media.
“We saw in Melbourne, specific violent action that you all covered…. we’ve also seen a series of actions of threats, some of which are different arrests that you’ve reported of people who’ve been motivated by a white supremacist ideology,” he said.
At a March for Australia protest in Melbourne late last year, some members of the Nationalist Socialist Network stormed the sacred Indigenous Camp Sovereignty site and injured several people.
The assessment process has been completed and, with the opposition’s support, White Australia will officially be listed as a hate group at midnight.
“This means that supporting, funding, training, recruiting, joining, or directing this group constitutes a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison,” Burke said.
The group has been swept under the government’s tough new hate laws that were introduced in January, in the wake of the Bondi attack, to allow Home Affairs to list and ban a hate group.
White Australia becomes the second group to be listed under the laws, following Hizb ut-Tahrir as the first.
The Nationalist Socialist Network, which was singled out as a concern by ASIO chief Mike Burgess last year, had disbanded before the laws came into effect.
Burke said if the group attempts to reform under a different name, the process to list them as a hate group would be much simpler.
“Effectively, it’s a simple regulation change. We don’t need to start the process from the start again,” he said.
Burke said while the measures would not stop hateful ideologies and groups from forming, they would prevent groups from organising.
“It sends a clear message to people who believe in racial supremacy that their views have no place in modern Australia,” he said.
“We’re a country who judges you on who you are, not where you’re from.
“The neo-Nazis have gone after almost every different group you can imagine, whether people are Jewish, whether they’re Muslim, whether people are of Asian heritage, whether they’re First Nations.”
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