A Sydney teenager has been arrested after allegedly drawing a swastika on the wall of a public toilet block.
A motorist called police after seeing two teens allegedly writing graffiti in Dee Why on Wednesday night, and filmed them allegedly drawing the Nazi symbol in black marker.
His dashcam then shows one of the boys running off after police arrived, while the other was surrounded after getting on his bike, Nine News reported.
The 16-year-old was arrested at the scene but was released and has not been charged.
He then returned on Thursday and confronted TV reporters who were filming a report, one of whom asked him: “Was it a racially motivated attack?”
“Satan is king of world” is also graffitied on the wall of the building, along with a picture of a pentagram and drawings of a shirtless bodybuilder and a man in a dollar sign T-shirt smoking what appears to be a marijuana cigarette.
If charged and convicted, the boy faces a year in jail under Australia’s new Nazi symbols ban, which came into effect at the beginning of the year.
Under the new federal legislation drawn up by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who is Jewish, it is a criminal offence to perform the Hitler salute or display the swastika or SS symbol in public. The ban also covers the sale and trade of those symbols.
The Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Prohibited Hate Symbols and Other Measures) Bill 2023 also criminalised the display of the prohibited symbols in documents, films, videos or television programs that are available to the public on the internet, and included new offences relating to “violent extremist material”.
Those offences, which include accessing, publishing, and possessing “violent extremist material” on a carriage service, are punishable by five years in jail.
Earlier this year Victoria banned the Nazi salute after a series of rallies by the National Socialist Network in Melbourne and Ballarat where members held signs saying “destroy paedo freaks”, “expose Jewish power”, “Voice = anti-White”, and “Australia for the White man”.
