Man charged over swastika swords to be deported as Labor drafts tougher laws

A British national who has been charged with displaying Nazi symbols has had his Australian visa cancelled and faces deportation to the United Kingdom as the Albanese government starts drafting tougher laws on hate speech after the Bondi terror attack.

The man, 43, was charged with four breaches of the criminal code this month after federal police seized swastika-bearing swords from his Queensland home and determined he had used social media to promote pro-Nazi ideology and violence against the Jewish community.

He is due to face court over the charges in January, but government sources said his visa had been cancelled and he had been moved to immigration detention in Brisbane. He can leave Australia voluntarily – as South African national Matthew Gruter did last month, when his visa was cancelled after appearing at a neo-Nazi rally outside NSW Parliament – or be deported to the UK.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said: “He came here to hate – he doesn’t get to stay.”

It is the latest example of Burke’s increasingly tough approach to visa cancellations as the government clamps down on hate speech in the name of social cohesion. The minister has made a point of cancelling visas when there’s evidence the person is inciting discord in the community.

But in the aftermath of this month’s Bondi terror attack, Burke said he will make it easier for the department to cancel visas of people who have a history of engaging in hate speech, vilification or displaying hate symbols.

That’s on top of stronger laws on hate speech – new federal offences that criminalise hate preaching and vilification based on race or racial supremacy – and hate symbols.

Burke said the hate symbols offences the government enacted in the previous parliament “have not resulted in the number of charges that we had hoped”.

“The Australian Federal Police came back to me with recommendations that I then forwarded some weeks ago, only a couple of weeks ago, to the attorney-general,” he said.

“Effectively, we will be making it easier for the Australian Federal Police to successfully bring charges against those who use and display hate symbols. We’ll also be making changes to the Customs Act so that, as well as it being unlawful for them to be held in Australia, it is easier for them to be intercepted at the border if they’re seen there.”

The British national whose visa was cancelled this month was charged under existing laws. The AFP announced it had charged him on December 8 after a week-long enforcement blitz targeting far-right paraphernalia and other illegal symbols, which also led to charges against a 25-year-old Sydney man and 21-year-old Brisbane man.

The British man is alleged to have used two X accounts to display the Nazi swastika and “espouse a pro-Nazi ideology with a specific hatred of the Jewish community, and to advocate for violence towards this community,” police said earlier this month.

The AFP also executed a search warrant at his house in Caboolture, north of Brisbane, and seized several weapons, including swords emblazoned with swastika symbology, axes and knives. He was charged with three counts of displaying prohibited Nazi symbols and one count of using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence.

Burke on Tuesday said the government was looking at “both the method and the motivation” behind the Bondi terror attack as it fast-tracked policies that will take a harder line on guns as well as hate speech.

On guns, Burke said a senior group of officials from the home affairs, attorney-general, police and justice portfolios had met on Monday with state and territory premiers’ departments, to start implementing gun control measures agreed to by national cabinet after the Bondi massacre.

“We’ll now be drafting instructions for the Commonwealth components of legislative changes. Some of those drafting instructions will be issued tomorrow. Others will be immediately after Christmas,” he said.

”The Hate Crimes Database and the National Firearms Register are both being accelerated to be able to provide the best possible information both to the public generally and to the authorities that issue gun licences.“

The first stage of a new hate crimes database – which was announced by national cabinet in January after antisemitic attacks last summer – will be launched on Wednesday, providing national information about people charged with offences under hate crimes legislation through the Australian Insitute of Criminology’s website.

On hate speech, Burke said leadership in the Jewish community was being consulted on new draft laws. “People should be in no doubt about where the target is as this drafting is done,” he said.

“We want to make sure that those hate preachers who have managed to keep themselves just on the legal side of Australian law … will become criminal.”

As part of this, radical organisations such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and neo-Nazi groups will be listed under a new regime that stops them from operating in Australia.

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