3 weeks ago
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February 3, 2026 — 3:23pm
One of Australia’s most recognisable street art series has been hijacked to include one of the Bondi gunmen and plastered around the CBD, forcing City of Melbourne staff to work “around the clock” to remove the posters.
About 40 knock-off versions of artist Peter Drew’s iconic “Aussie” posters appeared across the city last week and use the same bold typeface underneath an image of Naveed Akram, who is one of the alleged shooters behind the Bondi Beach massacre that killed 15 people and injured dozens more.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Daniel Aghion said the copycat posters were “devastating and disrespectful” to the victims of Bondi, and to Drew, whose well-respected work was being defaced by images of the shooters.
“The Bondi terrorists will fade into history and their names will be forgotten,” Aghion said. “The people who will be remembered are the victims, the survivors, and the heroes who rushed in to help. They represent the true Aussie spirit.”
Drew’s distinctive posters, which show Australians photographed in the early 1900s with the word “Aussie” in large type below their faces, have been plastered on walls around the country for the past decade.
He first created the series in 2016 in response to anti-immigration sentiment and xenophobia, and said they were designed to challenge ideas about what an Australian looks like. The best-known poster in the series features Monga Khan, an Afghan cameleer in a turban, while another features a young Jewish boy.
Drew said the imitation posters detract from the spirit of the series.
“It’s more the statement rather than the quantity. I have to go out there and put out hundreds, but they can just put out a few to make the point,” he said.
Lord Mayor Nick Reece said: “For Drew’s work to be hijacked and appropriated into images of hatred and division is absolutely abhorrent. To use the image of the Bondi shooter is just sick. Families are still grieving, the community is still grieving.”
On Tuesday, Victorian parliament sent its condolences to the victims of the December 14 terror attack on the Jewish community at Bondi Beach.
Moving a motion to condemn the atrocity, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan apologised to Jewish Australians.
“The truth is that governments let you down,” Allan told parliament. “Your fears were real. Your warnings were clear. And we failed. I want you to know how sorry I am.”
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson said the attack would forever be etched in the nation’s memory and named all 15 victims killed.
“Many in the community had been warning that escalating antisemitism would culminate in a targeted and deadly act of violence against Australian Jews,” Wilson said.
“The time for ‘never again’ is now.”
Deputy Premier Ben Carroll made clear the terrorist attack was not random, but a targeted attack on Jewish people.
He paid tribute to the first responders and civilians who risked their own lives to help.
“The world knows the story of Ahmed al Ahmed. He wrestled a gun away from one of the attackers. His courage symbolises the best of Australian multiculturalism: a Muslim man born in Syria, risking his life to save Jewish people,” Carroll said.
“He reminds us that this is not a fight between one religion and another, but between extremism and intolerance. Between hate and humanity.”
This is not the first time Drew’s posters have been copied. In 2016, posters featuring sex offender Rolf Harris and teen jihadist Jake Bilardi were posted around Melbourne. Other copycat posters have also featured US President Donald Trump and Bilal Skaf, a convicted criminal and serial gang rapist.
“It’s interesting that people on the far left and the far right have a similar dislike of the Aussie posters,” Drew said. “Neither of those extremes really believe in Australia.”
Reece said the copycat posters were in no way an artistic response to the original series.
“This was clearly a deliberate and organised exercise to shock and spread hate, and we are not going to tolerate that crap on the walls of our city,” he said.
Reece said the City of Melbourne’s new policy was to remove racist and hateful material within one hour of it being reported.
“Last weekend our team worked around the clock to get the Bondi shooter posters down,” he said.
Drew estimates that over the past 10 years he had put up about 4000 of his posters, each one individually printed and hand-coloured by brush, and said the imitation works were not comparable.
“Artists … arrest the viewer and force them to empathise and identify with these people. I don’t think any of the copycat posters do that, they don’t even really try,” he said.
With Rachel Eddie
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