{"id":275050,"date":"2025-11-10T08:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T08:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/275050\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T08:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T08:46:08","slug":"nsw-mp-rebuffed-by-security-after-asking-to-relocate-planned-neo-nazi-protest-away-from-parliament-new-south-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/275050\/","title":{"rendered":"NSW MP rebuffed by security after asking to relocate planned neo-Nazi protest away from parliament | New South Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New South Wales<\/a> speaker says he asked parliamentary security to relocate Saturday\u2019s neo-Nazi rally but was told his request to move it from the front of the building was not possible.<\/p>\n

Greg Piper, the house speaker in NSW\u2019s Legislative Assembly, told Guardian Australia a member of his staff advised him about the planned rally late on Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n

But the independent MP for Lake Macquarie said he was told his request to move the planned protest away from the front of parliament \u2013 made to the parliament\u2019s internal security rather than police \u2013 could not be facilitated.<\/p>\n

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Piper\u2019s revelation, first reported by the Sydney Morning Herald<\/a>, comes after the NSW premier, Chris Minns, and the police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, again fronted media on Monday, but were unable to answer questions about where responsibility lay for the decision to allow the rally to go ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed quite evident to me that this should not go on outside the parliament, but we were told there was nothing that could be done,\u201d Piper told the Herald.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people would assume this would have gone up the chain to the premier. If I knew, so should he. [So] to say this is a failure of communication is an understatement. This is a failure to be politically attuned to the implications of something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lanyon has blamed an \u201cinternal communication error\u201d for allowing a form 1 application<\/a> for the protest to be approved by local police area command.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the Herald reproduced what it said was a copy of a form 1 application for the protest approved by police, naming the applicant as Jack Eltis, \u201con behalf of White Australia, formerly the National Socialist Network\u201d.<\/p>\n

The application, dated 27 October, said a proposed banner would read \u201cAbolish the Jewish Lobby\u201d, and the group was protesting new hate speech laws, claiming they \u201chad been driven by misleading claims and undue pressure from various Jewish advocacy groups\u201d.<\/p>\n

NSW police would not comment on the document\u2019s authenticity.<\/p>\n

Lanyon told the ABC the NSW police had received an application for the rally on 28 October, but it wasn\u2019t raised directly with him.<\/p>\n

Lanyon said police had sought legal advice regarding the banner.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were told that there was no reasonable prospect of prosecuting on that, and the actual form 1 doesn\u2019t disclose anything that would be a criminal offence or something that would cause us an issue with public safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

The application was approved after police chose not to oppose it within seven days.<\/p>\n

Piper said his staff member was originally informed about the protest by the parliamentary security service itself. Asked if the premier\u2019s staff received a similar warning, Minns\u2019 office deferred to the premier\u2019s previous comments.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the NSW parliament said they could not comment on security matters.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the premier told the reporters the decision to allow Saturday\u2019s rally \u201cobviously didn\u2019t go to my office\u201d.<\/p>\n

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He said a review into Saturday\u2019s rally, as well as another by the same group outside parliament in June, \u201cwould look at what communication took place between police and the premier\u2019s department and the premier\u2019s office\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know whether an errant email in the scores of communications referenced either of the rallies in the previous month. We\u2019ll have a closer look at that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The premier, police commissioner, and the police minister, Yasmin Catley, have all said they did not know about the rally before it took place.<\/p>\n

Piper said after he was told his request to move the protest was not achievable, he asked additional security personnel, including special constables, to be on-site during the rally. \u201cI just asked if they could make sure if there were people around,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

More than 60 members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network stood in formation on Macquarie Street outside on Saturday morning, bearing a large banner that read \u201cAbolish the Jewish Lobby\u201d.<\/p>\n

Piper said he saw the rally being allowed to go ahead as a \u201cfailure\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are a democratic society. This group can parade within reason, they can protest, as others do \u2026 but I don\u2019t think the parliament should be acquiescent to such a hate group.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve completely been successful in what they set out to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve created these images of themselves in front of the most important building representing democracy in NSW, and the oldest public building in Australia, with a very ugly message.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to discussing it further to make sure it doesn\u2019t happen again,\u201d he said.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New South Wales speaker says he asked parliamentary security to relocate Saturday\u2019s neo-Nazi rally but was told…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-275050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}