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Cheesman estimated there were about 1000 protesters on both sides but only about 50 “hardcore protesters”.
A 30-year-old woman was arrested at the rally.
Riot police used flash bangs and rubber bullets. They were largely successful in keeping the two groups separate, and a barricade was erected on Bourke Street, but there were still several moments of violence.
Medics were seen treating and bandaging the legs and chests of those who sustained suspected injuries from what eyewitnesses said were police-deployed flash bangs.
Officers attempted to make further arrests, but fights broke out as eggs and glass containers filled with water were thrown at the police line.
Capsicum spray was used, and a police officer was knocked over in the fracas.
Police said other officers were struck by projectiles with such force that their protective shields were cracked.
At midday, as crowds gathered carrying Australian flags for the March for Australia rally at the steps of Parliament House, an organiser shouted into a megaphone “we will not be replaced” in an apparent reference to a racist conspiracy theory.
After this masthead revealed last month that Australia’s most prominent neo-Nazi group, the National Socialist Network (NSN), had been secretly running the March for Australia rallies around the country, the group backed out of the second rally on Sunday.
But key organisers running Sunday’s marches, which were again held around Australia, are associates of the neo-Nazi group. That includes Melbourne organiser white supremacist Matt Trihey, who has hosted events attended by the NSN, and headlined speeches at Sunday’s march.
The Age identified in the crowd a number of NSN members in plain clothes, who at times led chants of “white man fight back” or rushed to confront counter-protesters.
As Trihey spoke to the crowd, blaming immigration for soaring crime rates, chants in the distance from the anti-racism counter-protest grew louder.
Police scrambled to form a line between the opposing groups, with reinforcements, including officers in riot gear and on horseback, arriving quickly.
Protesters at Sunday’s March for Australia rally in Melbourne’s CBD.Credit: Paul Jeffers
When counter-protesters took up a chant of “no Nazis ever again” on the other side of the police line, the anti-immigration crowd all but abandoned speeches on Parliament House’s steps to shout back at the approaching demonstration.
The sound of flash bangs rang out as riot police worked to push back the pro-immigration protest and disperse the crowd.
The counter-protest was led by a procession of First Nations people who marched from Camp Sovereignty on Sunday morning.
Hundreds of people chanted, “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here” and “Nazi scum off our streets” as they walked along Swanston Street.
Police spoke to people wearing masks about the designated area rules and used metal detectors to check bags as people headed towards the steps of the State Library.
Palestinian man Basil earlier told the crowd at the State Library that the nationalistic talking points touted by those protesting against immigration were created to divide people, but the counter-protest movement needed to stick together.
“Those sick ideologies that see another human as less equal and with less rights simply because of their colour, their ethnicity – that ideology is the most destructive that you can face,” he said.
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“They want to start nationalism so that they separate us into little groups in what they call a divide and conquer. And that’s exactly what they’re doing.
“We need to have that firm principle that if a human right is lost for any group of people, we have to stand up and fight.”
Riot police continued trying to disperse about 50 protesters standing in Swanston Street outside Melbourne Central until about 2pm, before the demonstrators made their way to Camp Sovereignty in Kings Domain.
A breakaway group of counter-protesters exchanged jeers with four people holding Australian flags near the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth streets at 2.15pm.
Counter-protesters advanced on the four men and stole one of their large Australian flags, sparking a fistfight on the steps of an office building. Three police cars arrived at the scene to disperse the men. No one was arrested.
With one final warning from Trihey to politicians, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, that “we’re coming for you”, the March for Australia rally dispersed into music and chatter.
Rallies under the banner of “Unite Against Racism: Migrants and Refugees Are Welcome” were held in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide on Sunday.
In August, Melbourne’s CBD roiled with protests as anti-immigration and counter-demonstrators clashed repeatedly and a large number of police were stretched to cope with a shifting struggle that raged through the city’s streets for more than four hours.
The anti-immigration rally skewed older, male and white people, and comprised a disparate collection of “sovereign citizens”, mainstream right anti-immigration protesters, and anti-government agitators and neo-Nazis.
About 150 far-right National Socialist Network members led the August 31 March for Australia rally.
Organisers of Sunday’s pro-migration rallies say the March for Australia protests, which are being held in most capital cities, are racist and some events have neo-Nazis involved.
In the Melbourne crowd on Sunday, One Nation’s Victorian director Warren Pickering told this masthead that “politicians hadn’t been allowed to speak” at the marches. Pickering said he hadn’t attended the first March on August 31 because he realised neo-Nazis were involved, but this time he had been hopeful the rally was about the key conservative issue of immigration.
“We do need to be careful, the stigma associated with One Nation has been a problem for a lot of years,” Pickering said.
Asked about known neo-Nazis in plainclothes calling out racist chants on Sunday, Pickering said: “I don’t actually know any of these guys.”
