Hate threat prompts calls for leadership, action

While he said the extreme far-right had been on ASIO's radar "for some time", Mr Burgess added that the threat it posed came into "sharp, terrible focus" after the mass shootings at Christchurch mosques last year, which killed 51 people and injured many others.

"In suburbs around Australia, small cells regularly meet to salute Nazi flags, inspect weapons, train in combat and share their hateful ideology," Mr Burgess said in a public address at ASIO's Canberra headquarters on February 24.

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No jurisdiction in the country is immune to this threat, including Tasmania.

In the past two years, a number of incidents in the North of the state have prompted concerns about a seeming trend of anti-Semitism in the community.

All but one of these incidents have been directly linked to extreme far-right groups. Examined as a whole, though, they tend to paint a disturbing picture.

Recently, images emerged of spray-painted swastikas being openly displayed at a Housing Tasmania property on Scone Street at Perth. The symbols appeared on the resident's windows, curtains and their wheelie bins.

The woman's actions have outraged her neighbours but the only legal recourse they have is to lodge a complaint with the state's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner.

Hobart Hebrew Congregation president Jeff Schneider has done just that, filing an official complaint on behalf of Tasmania's Jewish community.

"To me, [the swastika is] an unambiguous symbol of hatred towards Jewish people and other groups, as well," he said. "It represents the murder of 11 million people, including 6 million Jews in the Holocaust."

"The ASIO director-general last week ... really alerted us to the threat of right-wing extremists who regularly gather to salute [Nazi] flags.

"I appreciate the fact that we were given this warning and hopefully there's more attention being paid to something like what is going on in Perth [because] it's not a trivial matter - it's something very serious."

Mr Schneider wants legislation enacted to give authorities the power to remove symbols of hate, such as the swastika, from public view, saying they are designed to intimidate and offend Jewish people, as well as other ethnic minority groups.

A Tasmania Police spokesperson said police assessed and acted on all information provided to them relating to potential extremist activity and that such matters were "assessed and investigated accordingly".

There are mounting calls in Tasmania to outlaw the swastika, coming on the back of a similar debate in Victoria, where a spate of anti-Semitic conduct - including the spray-painting of offensive graffiti and the flying of a Nazi flag - has ignited a fierce campaign to ban the infamous symbol.

Meanwhile, the Launceston Synagogue was vandalised in January, with a black marker being used to deface the Star of David on the fence outside.

It came after local auction house Armitage Auctions sold collections of Nazi memorabilia on two separate occasions in 2019.

Launceston rabbi Yochanan Gordon said that while the intent of the people who committed anti-Semitic acts could not always be truly known, it was important that young people learnt about the "historical context" of the Holocaust at school.

"Sadly, today, [in] our education system ... people don't end up learning a lot of basic history," he said. "They've come to repeat the prejudice [from] the past."

"And this is becoming more and more prevalent around the world. And, sadly, it's hitting our little corner of the world, as well.

"We need to continue to promote the multicultural society that accepts all no matter what their looks or beliefs are and not allow one minority group to dictate what should be done to other minority groups."

In 2018, the exterior of Tasmanian Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson's electorate office, on the corner of George and Cameron streets, was plastered with stickers and posters promoting the neo-Nazi group Antipodean Resistance.

It's understood Antipodean Resistance is no longer active but that new groups have sprouted up in its wake across the country.

Senator Whish-Wilson said he'd learnt that the Australian Federal Police had considered Antipodean Resistance dangerous at one point.

"[Police] did say they felt that it was likely [the vandals had] come in from interstate," he said.

"Right-wing extremism is dangerous, and potentially very dangerous - no less so than Islamic extremism or other forms of extremism."

The senator said he would be seeking a briefing from Tasmania Police on the potential implications of public displays of "racist and xenophobic propaganda".

"I'd be very keen to explore that with my state [Greens] counterparts, about what the authorities can do about that sort of thing, what kind of laws are in place to try and rein that in ... and what [police are] doing about that and how they think that kind of thing can be controlled [and] combated," he said.

The state government has strongly condemned the display of Nazi iconography, and pointed out that such conduct could amount to a breach of Tasmania's Anti-Discrimination Act.

Premier Peter Gutwein encouraged Tasmanians to make a complaint to the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner if they felt targeted.

"As I've previously said, we are seeking advice to look at possible other ways to best deal with this in Tasmania," he said.

Of course, the local Jewish population is not the only ethnic minority that bears the brunt of nationalistic sentiments in the community; new arrivals to the community can suffer, too.

Northern Tasmania Development Corporation population attraction coordinator Edward Obi, who is charged with promoting migration to the region, said someone had once told him that Northern Tasmania was "one of the last bastions of white Australia and they're not going to give it up easily".

"They were just saying it in a way for me to realise the type of cultural backlash I'm up against," he said. "New arrivals [to the region] report that type of resistance."

"The locals need to know what the issue is and why they need new people and why they need to support newly arrived migrants.

"And the migrants need to know that the locals don't [always] have the skills or the awareness to welcome them or even [know] what to do with them."

Mr Obi concluded by saying that politicians had to take a public stand when it came to matters of discrimination.

"[That way] everybody will see that it's just the outliers and the marginal people who carry out this [behaviour] and it's not a concerted, agreed behaviour among people," he said.

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