Displaying the swastika and other symbols of Nazi ideology should be illegal and the threshold for hate-based vilification lowered, a Victorian parliamentary report has recommended.
A cross-party inquiry into the state’s anti-vilification laws found current rules were “failing to deliver”, made 36 recommendations to toughen them and said prejudice and hate were “rife” in the community.
Public displays of racist symbols like the swastika were a “recurrent theme” throughout the inquiry, which recommended the Andrews government “establish a criminal offence that prohibits the display of symbols of Nazi ideology, including the Nazi swastika”.
“This would allow Victoria Police to immediately remove Nazi symbols that are on deliberate display to vilify targeted communities,” the report found.
It also urged the government to “monitor the display of other hateful symbols to determine whether they should also be prohibited”.
In one case last year police had to negotiate with a regional council to have a Nazi swastika removed from a property because it “did not meet criteria of an offence under the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act”.
The legal and social issues committee also recommended preventing events from being held “where vilification is likely to occur”, like the 2019 neo-Nazi Hammered Music Festival.
At the time, the government said it could not intervene. It was reportedly later cancelled by the organisers.
Read the article by Angelica Snowden in The Australian.