Australian nationalist Thomas Sewell has been found not guilty after being charged over a political demonstration in the Victorian city of Ballarat almost two years ago.
Mr Sewell, 32, the leader of political organisation White Australia, represented himself in Ballarat Magistrates Court this week to fight a single charge of “offensive behaviour” and successfully argued his conduct was political and not offensive.
He led a group of about 30 masked and black-clad members of the National Socialist Network (NSN) through the city on December 3, 2023, the anniversary of the Eureka Stockade, who held a banner saying “Australia for the White man” and chanted that slogan along with “White man, fight back” and “hail victory”.
The court heard the demonstrators sang Rule, Britannia! with the added phrase “No more Chinamen in Ballarat”, and Mr Sewell said the same version was sung at the Eureka Stockade in 1854, but with “New South Wales” instead of “Ballarat”.
At a previous hearing Mr Sewell asked for the case to be thrown out, calling it “malicious prosecution by activists within Victoria Police”, stating “there is no legislation that states a National Socialist slogan is offensive”, and arguing “there is no case to answer”.
On Tuesday he called a local resident named Mark Doery as a witness, who testified “nothing stood out as offensive”, ABC News reported, and on Monday a police witness said under cross-examination that the NSN group was “very disciplined” and “a model protest”.
“The behaviour of the members of the public was more problematic than the members of the march,” the retired officer said.
Prosecutor Shaun Ginsbourg argued Mr Sewell was guilty of the offence due to his anti-immigration rhetoric, the appearance of his group and the march’s location and date, saying his conduct went “well beyond” political expression, The Courier reported.
But Mr Sewell told the court the prosecution had not shown his behaviour was offensive, and Magistrate Mike Wardell agreed that it had not been proven that Mr Sewell’s conduct was “deeply or seriously insulting”.
“Behaviour deemed unacceptably offensive by some, may not trouble others at all. The test … is whether the impugned behaviour is so deeply and seriously insulting … as to warrant the interference in the criminal law,” he said.
“The principles of democratic governance have had difficulty in accommodating laws designed to deal with offensive behaviour.
“The danger, therefore, is that legislation which turns offensive conduct into a crime, and punishable accordingly, will be employed as a heavy-handed instrument for the imposition by one segment of society on another. Society is evolving, and attitudes change over time, fringe groups are appearing more often and agitating about a variety of issues.
“In this case, taking into account the context and circumstances of the events of December 3, 2023, I am not satisfied that the tests have been met by your conduct and accordingly find you not guilty.”
Mr Sewell remains behind bars on remand on 25 unrelated charges laid over a clash with far-left extremists at Camp Sovereignty after Melbourne’s March for Australia rally on August 31, and is also fighting separate offensive behaviour charges laid over other political demonstrations.
Prominent nationalist activist Joel Davis called on Victoria Police to drop the additional offensive behaviour charges “to avoid further embarrassment and waste of taxpayer resources”.
The ‘offensive behaviour’ law was not legislated with the intent of policing controversial political speech, but public indecency and vulgarity,” he wrote on Telegram.
“Victoria Police need to start serving the law again rather than trying to make it. Police aren’t elected to make laws, they’re appointed to serve the community by enforcing them.
“VicPol appear to be more concerned with unlawfully policing our political speech than with policing actual violent crime. Negroes are running through houses with machetes and rapes are surging, go arrest and charge them.”
Header image: Left, right, Mr Sewell and the NSN in Ballarat on December 3, 2023 (supplied).
