IN BRIEF
- The Home Affairs Minister declared the neo-nazi organisation a prohibited hate group after advice from ASIO.
- The Judge noted that the conditions in which the neo-nazi group relied on the injunction "were of its own making".
Neo-Nazi organisation White Australia's bid for temporary immunity from being listed as an illegal hate group has been put on ice — but the High Court could decide the matter as soon as June.
The group, previously known as the National Socialist Network, is seeking to overturn the government's hate speech legislation and wants an injunction to effectively block the home affairs minister from outlawing it.
"The aim of the injunction is to prevent the government from using this legislation to arrest or imprison me while the High Court determines this legislation's constitutional validity," top neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell, who lodged the case, said in a post on Telegram ahead of the hearing.
But High Court Justice Jayne Jagot said the bid was not urgent and could be dealt with at a hearing in coming weeks.
"Mr Sewell had been on notice that the White Australia Party was likely to be specified a prohibited hate group," she said during a directions hearing on Thursday.
"The circumstances on which the party relied for interlocutory relief ... were of its own making."
The next hearing will be held between 2 June and 5 June, when the application to block the listing could be decided.
A two-day final hearing at which the constitutionality of the hate speech legislation will be discussed is scheduled for early September.
White Australia has been seeking to establish itself as a political force aiming to run in the next federal election.
Asked whether he wanted the matter to be dealt with before the deadline for candidates to run in the 2026 Victorian election, White Australia's barrister Peter King said that was not critical.
"I'm instructed that the Victorian election deadline, as it were, is not critical ... the validity and entitlement of their political party ... is critical," he told the court.
After receiving advice from spy agency ASIO, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke declared the neo-Nazi organisation a prohibited hate group under laws passed following the Bondi Beach terror attack.
White Australia's predecessor, the National Socialist Network, announced it was disbanding when the hate laws were introduced.
In reality, Mr Burke said, the group had "phoenixed" — changing its name to White Australia and continuing operations with largely the same members.
Under the government's declaration, it is now a crime to support, fund or join the group.
Islamist organisation Hizbut Tahrir has also been banned under the post-Bondi laws.
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