NSW Premier Chris Minns says the nazi salute will be explicitly outlawed in the state after groups of white supremacists descended on Sydney in series of demonstrations over the weekend.
His comments came after police broke up another a neo-nazi rally in Sydney yesterday morning, the third such rally in as many days.
The rallies included a group of more then 60 men wearing black balaclavas, who were stopped by police on a train on Friday afternoon.
The Nazi salute was explicitly banned in Victoria last year, but in NSW the law is more of a grey area with Minns saying it needed to be strengthened.
“Explicitly the swastika is illegal in NSW, there’s a question as to whether a Nazi salute is as well,” he told Sunrise this morning.
“I want to made it clear though that it is not acceptable in NSW and if the current laws don’t cover it, we’ll move legislation to make it illegal.”
About half of the men who gathered over the weekend reportedly came from Victoria, causing Minns reiterating that police in NSW had the ability to unmask people.
“Police are not going to be tolerant of this obnoxious and appalling behaviour by any stretch of the imagination, and the message to racists, particularly those from interstate, is that you’re not welcome here,” he said.
“Police have the right to take off your balaclava and to expose you and your identity so that everyone you know, your family and friends, your employer, your co-workers will know you’re a racist.”
There has been a growing trend of neo-nazi demonstrations across Australia in recent months, with Victoria seeing a particularly large number of rallies.
In December, a group of neo-nazis marched through Ballarat with a banner that read ‘Australia for the white man’, and in October a group of 25 people dressed in black gathered at Flinders Street Station and made public displays of Nazi symbols.
