The premier and top cop say they didn’t know about Sydney’s Nazi rally. That just doesn’t cut it

3 months ago 6

Only two months ago, two of NSW Police’s most senior officers revealed to parliament that specialist units of the force have long been monitoring the activities of the National Socialist Network.

The neo-Nazi organisation, rebranded as White Australia, was on the police’s radar well before the group was intercepted by officers at North Sydney train station on Australia Day last year.

NSW Premier Chris Minns and Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon speak about the rally on Saturday.

Deputy Commissioner Peter Thurtell told budget estimates in September these groups “are of such concern to us” that “we have our engagement and hate crime unit and our counterterrorism command and our state intelligence group constantly monitoring the activities of these groups”.

His colleague, Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson, added: “In relation to neo-Nazis ... we’re very much monitoring them and their affiliations with a similar group in Victoria, where they seem to be more high profile than they are here. We’ve tracked them.”

Then, only last week, the nation’s spy boss Mike Burgess singled out White Australia as “antithetical to social cohesion” in a sobering speech to the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney.

While the group has not engaged in terrorism, Burgess said: “I remain deeply concerned by its hateful, divisive rhetoric and increasingly violent propaganda, and the growing likelihood these things will prompt spontaneous violence, particularly in response to perceived provocation.”

The National Socialist Network rally outside NSW Parliament House on Saturday.

Given this high level of concern from even the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation director-general, how was it a surprise to anyone when the group embarrassed the state’s lawmakers on Saturday by using the parliament as its backdrop for a short, sharp and highly effective rally?

The neo-Nazis sought attention and received it.

Here’s the real surprise. The fact that red flags were not raised when a well-known group, described by Burgess as “anti-immigrant, anti-Indigenous, anti-gay, anti-Jew, anti-Islam and anti-anything that does not fit its white Anglo-centric worldview”, lodged an application to protest in the CBD.

Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon and Premier Chris Minns were quick to insist they hadn’t heard of the rally until after the event. The top cop and the leader of the state had been kept in the dark, yet the Speaker of the parliament, Greg Piper, had been warned and tried unsuccessfully to have the rally stopped or at least moved. The Herald also had wind of the planned event.

Just hours after 60-odd black-clad white supremacists rallied outside the very building where laws were written to stop racial hatred being spouted, Lanyon blamed a “communications breakdown” for not being told that the rally was planned.

No one briefed him, was Lanyon’s initial response when pressed on how the group was allowed to turn up at 10am on a weekend and unfurl a banner calling for the Jewish lobby to be banned.

Minns also had no idea about the rally, he said at a hastily organised media conference after the all-male gathering had also chanted “blood and honour”, invoking the Hitler Youth.

The premier and Lanyon were both strong in their condemnation of White Australia, as they should be. But they were also cautious. Minns on Monday said a review into the rally would “look at what communication took place between police and the Premier’s department and the Premier’s office”.

“I don’t know whether an email, an errant email, in the scores of communications, referenced either of the rallies in the previous months. We’ll have a closer look at that,” Minns said.

Lanyon later blamed the existing legislation in NSW, suggesting current hate speech laws would have made it difficult for him to stop the event, even if he had known it was to take place.

There are failings everywhere you turn. It is one thing for Lanyon and Minns to say they did not know about plans for scores of angry white men to protest on the streets. But the bigger question is, why not? “Modern neo-Nazis crave attention and publicity. It gives them credibility and helps with recruitment,” Burgess told the Lowy Institute.

An errant email or a communications breakdown are not reasonable explanations as to why closely monitored neo-Nazis managed to pull off exactly what they intended.

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