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.

The review of the state’s koala populations, led by state science agency the Arthur Rylah Institute in conjunction with scientists from major universities, was completed for the Victorian government in June 2025.

The report used systematic visual and acoustic surveys in 2023 and 2024 to monitor koalas at 182 sites, and its data was then used to estimate the overall abundance and distribution of Victoria’s koala population. As part of the research, scientists conducted health and disease assessments on 68 koalas, with 29 of the koalas (43%) found to be in such poor health they “were euthanised on welfare grounds”.

The government published the report on Wednesday morning as the new environment minister announced $2.6m for koala conservation, including for habitat restoration and research into koala health and genetics. The report warned the surveys found “a higher-than-expected proportion of koalas from seven geographically distinct regions in a state of chronically poor health and welfare”.

A wildlife veterinarian who was one of the authors on the report, said researchers had been shocked by the poor health of some of the koalas they found in the field, remarking that it’s been very difficult to get the support and resources needed because the report hadn’t been made public.