Former members of the now-defunct National Socialist Network have been slapped with police bans preventing them from going within 8km of Sydney’s CBD on Australia Day.
Jack Eltis, who was the leader of the NSW branch of the right-wing activist group and political organisation White Australia before they disbanded on Sunday in response to the government’s new Prohibited Hate Groups laws, was among several ex-members served with Public Safety Orders (PSOs) on Tuesday.
The orders, signed by NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Brett McFadden and served by Riot Squad and counter-terrorism officers, prohibit Mr Eltis and other former NSN activists from entering an “exclusion zone” centred around Town Hall Station at any time on January 26, with no reasons given.
Police are not required to provide reasons for making a PSO, and there is no right of review or appeal for PSOs that are shorter than 72 hours. They also allow police to carry out warrant-less searches and breaches are punishable by up to five years in jail,
But police are not supposed to approve PSOs that prevent a person from entering an area if their primary purpose is “non-violent advocacy, protest or dissent”.
Mr Eltis said in a post on his Telegram channel that it appeared police were trying to stop him and other ex-NSN members from attending a March for Australia rally planned for Prince Alfred Park on Monday.
“Individual persons who are no longer affiliated with a now disbanded and defunct organisation are being blocked by NSW Police at the behest of the NSW government from peacefully celebrating their national holiday,” he said.
“Egregious. Freedom of political expression and political communication should be assured for all Australians.
“Social cohesion is when NSW Police ban Australian members of the public from attending permitted and peaceful assemblies or from existing in the city – with threat of five years’ jail.”
Mr Eltis and dozens of other then-members of the NSN attended the first March for Australia rally in Sydney on August 31 last year, where there were no violent incidents and no arrests were made.
Lawyer and then-President of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties Stephen Blanks wrote in the Law Society of NSW Journal after the PSO regime was introduced in 2016 that the laws represented a “further shift away from the rule of law towards a police state”.
“They create a parallel system of justice for people targeted by the police, in which the rules of evidence and the presumption of innocence don’t apply,” he wrote.
“The prospect of de facto criminal punishment without the safeguards associated with criminal prosecution should be anathema to any society founded on the rule of law and fundamental freedoms.”
The PSOs were handed out on the same day as parliament passed new “hate speech” and “hate groups” laws specifically written to allow the government to proscribe the NSN as a Prohibited Hate Group based on past conduct that was not criminal at the time, without criminal convictions, and without procedural fairness.
Legal experts have warned the laws are open to abuse, are unconstitutional, and could be used by the government to ban rival parties and political opponents, censor speech and shut down a wide range of political discourse.
Header image: Left, the PSO exclusion zone. Right, Mr Eltis at the March for Australia rally on August 31 (Noticer News).
