{"id":633905,"date":"2026-04-27T10:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T10:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/633905\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T10:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T10:59:09","slug":"anti-immigration-group-claims-it-did-not-organise-anzac-day-booing-despite-post-asking-how-loud-will-you-be-anzac-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/633905\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-immigration group claims it did not organise Anzac Day booing despite post asking \u2018how loud will you be\u2019 | Anzac Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

An anti-immigration group has claimed it did not \u201corganise\u201d booing at welcome to country ceremonies at Anzac Day<\/a> dawn services despite a social media post asking followers \u201chow loud will you be this year\u201d.<\/p>\n

Booing by rightwing groups of Indigenous elders giving welcome to country speeches marred Anzac Day ceremonies<\/a> for a second year running, and sparked another public debate about their role at public events. Uncle Ray Minniecon, who served in the armed forces and was booed while giving an acknowledgment of country at Sydney\u2019s dawn service, said the mocking was \u201cunexpected and unnecessary, but it happens\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhy do people hate us so much? What crime did we commit that brings this out from people? What did we do wrong to them? It\u2019s mysterious to us,\u201d Minniecon said on Sky News.<\/p>\n

Opposition to welcome to country ceremonies was encouraged by Fight for Australia, described by its leader as the \u201csister group\u201d of March for Australia, which has staged major anti-immigration rallies across Australia<\/a>. Guardian Australia reported on Friday that Fight for Australia had encouraged supporters to contact local RSL branches<\/a> to ask welcomes to country not be included in Anzac Day ceremonies.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the group wrote \u201cWill you be be [sic] booing the welcome to country this year?\u201d alongside a video of Melbourne\u2019s Anzac Day 2025 ceremony, where Bunurong elder Uncle Mark Brown was booed by members of the National Socialist Network<\/a>. The video featured superimposed text reading: \u201chow loud will you be this year?\u201d<\/p>\n

March for Australia has 36,000 followers on its main Facebook page, and a community group with 21,000 members. The organiser of Fight for Australia and March for Australia who goes by the moniker \u201cBec Freedom\u201d, and has been named as Bec Walker in other media reporting, has 35,000 Facebook followers and nearly 8,000 on social media platform X.<\/p>\n

Fight for Australia, which only launched in recent weeks, has much smaller follower numbers including 350 on Facebook and 242 on X. Each of these pages publish similar content and share posts from one another.<\/p>\n

Bec Freedom claimed her group did not \u201corganise\u201d the booing but also did not apologise for the activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to refute that this was a campaign organised by either myself or FightForAustralia\/MarchForAustralia. We simply put a few posts up asking people if they would be booing this year due to the amount of grassroots public interest on this topic. But yes, I stand by the content I put out about it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She claimed people had booed \u201cto show we aren\u2019t happy with woke rituals taking place at one of our most solemn days in Australia\u201d.<\/p>\n

Asked whether it was disrespectful to boo at dawn services, or to boo ex-servicepeople like Minniecon, Bec Freedom responded: \u201cI\u2019d say it is disrespectful to perform woke WTC\/ATC on our soldiers\u2019 sacred day.\u201d WTC\/ATC is a reference to welcome to country and acknowledgment of country<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ceremony [itself] is what was being targeted with the booing, we appreciate everyone\u2019s efforts and service in the army.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AngusAngus Taylor condemns Anzac dawn service hecklers as ‘un-Australian’ \u2013 video<\/p>\n

People connected to March for Australia posted footage online on Sunday showing police in Perth approaching five people and blocking them from attending the dawn service<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cDue to your association with the March for Australia group and their actions in the eastern states, you are being removed from the ceremony due to the belief you will interrupt it,\u201d police told them.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Western Australian police said they removed 15 people who were identified as members of \u201cissue motivated groups\u201d. No arrests were made.<\/p>\n

On Sky News on Monday, Minniecon claimed there had been increased hostility to Indigenous Australians since the voice referendum was defeated, opposed by a national 59-41 margin in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll we\u2019re saying, is that you\u2019re on our country, in our land, just acknowledge it and respect whose land you\u2019re on. It\u2019s not that difficult to understand for me. It\u2019s difficult for me to understand why this particular reaction is there,\u201d he told Sky.<\/p>\n

The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, on Sunday called the booing at Anzac Day ceremonies \u201cinappropriate and un-Australian\u201d<\/a>, but claimed the Indigenous acknowledgments were often \u201coverused\u201d, saying: \u201cI would like to see them used less and therefore not devalued as I think they have been over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

His remarks were reminiscent of former Liberal leader, Peter Dutton, who condemned booing but claimed welcomes to country were \u201coverdone\u201d<\/a> during the 2025 election campaign when NSN members protested at the Melbourne Anzac Day ceremony.<\/p>\n

The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, on Monday called the booing \u201cutterly disgraceful\u201d, noting many Indigenous people had served in the defence force. The Liberal shadow treasurer, Tim Wilson, said it was \u201cunacceptable, disrespectful and unworthy of the Anzac legacy\u201d. The One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce on Sky News said he didn\u2019t condone booing, but opposed welcomes to country at dawn ceremonies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people who have served our nation, who signed on the dotted line, they don\u2019t need to be welcomed to their country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, speaking on ABC radio on Monday, described the booing as \u201cdisgraceful\u201d and noted the history of Indigenous Australians<\/a> serving and fighting in the nation\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome to country is just a respectful thing to do. It\u2019s respectful at public events and it\u2019s respectful on Anzac Day. And Anzac Day is a day on which we show respect, and to have booing in the face of that is profoundly disrespectful and, in my mind, goes against all that Anzac Day stands for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An anti-immigration group has claimed it did not \u201corganise\u201d booing at welcome to country ceremonies at Anzac Day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-633905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633905","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=633905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}