Daily London
High-profile neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell says his white nationalist organisation and other linked groups will disband before the government brings in tough new hate speech laws.
It includes measures targeting “prohibited hate groups” and “hate preachers”.
Sewell said the National Socialist Network (NSN) would be “fully disbanded before 11.59pm Sunday the 18th of January 2026.”
“The disbandment includes not only the National Socialist Network, but its co-projects White Australia, the European Australian Movement and the White Australia Party,” he said, in a message co-signed by other group leaders such as Jacob Hersant on the White Australia Telegram channel today.
“If the laws pass, there will [be] no way to avoid the organisation being banned.”
Sewell claimed the laws were “some of the most draconian laws the West has ever seen”.
Promoting the laws yesterday, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke named the NSN and radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, in reference to an ASIO warning about groups who keep “themselves just below the legal threshold”.
“While they have created a pathway for others to engage in violence, have been careful to not explicitly call for it themselves. They’ve kept themselves just below that threshold,” he said.
“This bill will lower that threshold, and lower that threshold to the extent that we can within the Constitution.
“We have had enough of organisations that hate Australia, playing games with Australian law.”
It includes a package of reforms that target both hate speech and firearms through the establishment of a gun buyback scheme, stricter gun import rules, harsher penalties for hate speech and stricter migration rules.
A new offence would be established for a person or group who publicly promotes or incites racial hatred, with a penalty of five years’ imprisonment.
Albanese today defended a narrow exception that would ensure the rules did not apply to actions that consist “only of directly quoting from, or otherwise referencing, a religious text for the purpose of religious teaching or discussion”.
“I encourage you to read the Old Testament and see what’s there and see if you outlaw that, what would occur,” he told reporters this morning.
“So we need to be careful. We consulted with faith groups, not just with the Jewish community.
“We want to make sure there’s the broadest possible support for this legislation, but we also want to make sure that there isn’t unintended consequences of the legislation as well.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Peter Wertheim claimed the defence is a “relic of outdated thinking” and was effectively unnecessary.
