The White Australia party is a “modern manifestation” of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement and would motivate hate crimes against sections of the country, the high court has heard.

The White Australia party, formerly known as the National Socialist Network (NSN), was designated as an illegal hate group in May after the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (Asio) passed on its recommendation to home affairs minister Tony Burke. It is challenging the ban at the high court over two days this week, with its lawyers arguing the law breaches the implied freedom of political communication and that handing the decision to Burke breaches the separation of powers, arguing the commonwealth does not have the power to ban political parties, and citing a major cold war-era high court ruling in 1951, which overturned a ban on the Communist party of Australia.

The commonwealth’s lawyer, Brendan Lim, told the court on Wednesday that the group sought to create a political party after anti-hate laws passed in the wake of the Bondi terror attack threatened to disband it. The hate group listing means that supporting, funding, training, recruiting and joining the group constitutes a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

But Barrister Shahed Sharify argued the law’s breach of implied freedom of political communication was “authoritarian in nature” and suggested it could be used to outlaw any political party where its members had threatened or engaged in a hate crime with the assistance of the organisation.

A Sydney man charged over a massive data breach involving a NSW courts website allegedly used generative AI to create “scraper” computer code for bulk downloading before asking ChatGPT for legal advice, a court has heard.

Prosecutors will seek to rely on ChatGPT conversations and forensic expert testimony in the case against Christopher John Duff, 40, which is believed to be one of the first of its kind in Australia.

Police previously said cybercrime detectives investigated the alleged unauthorised access of 8,769 restricted documents held by the department’s online registry website between January and March 2025.

The court heard Duff was assisting a friend involved in complicated bankruptcy proceedings. According to police prosecutor Sergeant Andrew Maldigri, the crux of the allegation is that Duff used ChatGPT to code and employ scraper python scripts designed to bulk download data. Defence counsel Daniel McMahon gave a rough estimate that there were some 10,000 or more pages of proposed exhibit material; On Wednesday, he also told the judge that there may not be a dispute, in general terms, that his client was responsible for some of the alleged conduct.

Duff has pleaded not guilty to four counts of accessing restricted data held in a computer which were laid after the Department of Communities and Justice discovered a data breach in March last year.

An “invite-only” grants program was overwhelmingly directed into safe Labor seats and marginal seats the party wanted to win at the 2025 federal election, a Centre for Public Integrity investigation of the $560 million program has concluded.

While projects in safe and marginal Labor seats sometimes received grants worth tens of millions of dollars, 45 electorates were not invited to the Major and Local Community Infrastructure (MLCI) Program and received no funding. Labor promised more than half a billion dollars in upgrades to sports facilities, parks and other community infrastructure at the election, and Infrastructure Minister Catherine King has said the MLCI was set up to pay for those promises.

The Centre for Public Integrity’s chair, former justice Anthony Whealy, said it appeared the program had been used to pork-barrel seats Labor wanted to win. He also remarked that If they cannot justify that process, then this is the misuse of public money at a serious level.