Commonwealth tells high court White Australia party should be banned

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.