‘We do not need to wait for a Christchurch’: Grampians cross burning spurs call for action

State and federal authorities are being urged to take further action against a right-wing extremist group that burnt a cross and chanted racist slogans at a popular Victorian tourist destination over the Australia Day weekend.

Thirty-eight members of the far-right National Socialist Network burnt a cross — a ritual usually associated with the Ku Klux Klan — next to Lake Bellfield at the foot of the Grampians in western Victoria on Sunday evening. Tourists and locals heard the group chanting “white power” and Nazi slogans.

On Thursday morning, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald revealed local police and intelligence officers from Victoria Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command were collecting information about the group, which hiked through the Grampians National Park at the weekend.

The group’s members also visited the tourist town of Halls Gap in the heart of the Grampians where they engaged in anti-Semitic and other racist behaviour. At least half-a-dozen tourists and residents said they had reported the men to police.

Six uniformed officers from the nearby town of Stawell spoke to the group, including its leader, ex-Australian army soldier turned neo-Nazi Tom Sewell. Mr Sewell later posted online pictures of the police officers’ name badges as well as images of the neo-Nazi group posing in front of a burning cross and displaying Nazi salutes at various locations in the Grampians.

Read the article by Nick McKenzie and Joel Tozer in The Sydney Morning Herald.