Australia has cancelled the visa of a British national charged this month with displaying banned Nazi symbols, the country’s interior minister confirmed Wednesday.
Canberra has vowed a broad crackdown on hate speech in the wake of a December 14 mass shooting targeting a Jewish festival on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, in which 15 people were killed.
The government is pushing for new laws creating an aggravated offence for hate preaching, penalties for those deemed to have sought to radicalise minors and a new register of allegedly extremist groups that it will become illegal to join.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the 43-year-old UK citizen would lose his right to stay in the country after being charged with displaying the Nazi Hakenkreuz — also known as the swastika — and spouting antisemitic rhetoric on social media.
“I said, some time ago, that as far as freedom of speech was concerned, I had no time for hatred when it came to cancelling visas,” he told national broadcaster ABC.
“Almost everyone on a visa is a good guest and welcome guest in our country,” he added.
“But if someone comes here for the purposes of hate, they can leave.”
The Australian Federal Police this month said they had charged the man, who lived in the eastern state of Queensland, “with allegedly displaying prohibited Nazi symbols”.
They accused him of using two X accounts to “display the Nazi Hakenkreuz and espouse a pro-Nazi ideology with a specific hatred of the Jewish community, and to advocate for violence towards this community”.
Australia’s interior minister already has broad powers to cancel visas.
Last month, Burke cancelled the visa of South African national Matthew Gruter, who had been photographed at a neo-Nazi rally outside the New South Wales parliament.
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