TRANSCRIPT - PRESS CONFERENCE - SECOND LISTED PROHIBITED HATE GROUP - FRIDAY, 15 MAY 2026

PRESS CONFERENCE

FRIDAY, 15 MAY 2026

MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS, TONY BURKE: Today, the Government has taken the decision to list a second organisation as a prohibited hate group. The first organisation that was listed was Hizb ut-Tahrir. Today, the organisation that would be colloquially known as the neo-Nazis but has gone through different names – the European Australian Movement, the National Socialist Network and White Australia – has been listed as the second prohibited hate group under the changes that were made to the Criminal Code. There is a very strict process for this to happen. The process can only occur when it's initiated by ASIO and then a Ministerial decision has to follow that. The Ministerial decision has to be made with the approval of the Attorney-General and then there also has to be consultation with the Opposition and all of these steps have been met.

The threshold for ASIO and the threshold for the Minister is slightly different. The threshold for ASIO is that the organisation is engaged in behaviour which would increase the risk of violence, among other things. The Ministerial threshold includes the concept as to whether or not the organisation has advocated or engaged in hate crimes. All of the required thresholds have been met and the Government has now completed the work for White Australia to be listed as a prohibited hate group.

For background here, some people will remember in November last year, the Director-General of ASIO, Mike Burgess, made clear that there were two organisations which were stretching the boundary of legality. He said that two organisations, which he described at the time as ‘awful but lawful’, were going right to the edge of what they thought they could legally get away with, in ways that were making Australians less safe, effectively opening the door for the violence to be committed by others. The two organisations that he named were the neo-Nazis and Hizb ut-Tahrir.

On the 12th of January of this year, in the wake of the Bondi attack, I stood in the courtyard with the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General and announced that we would lower the threshold in the Criminal Code to be able to deal with prohibited hate groups. And that legislation went through the Parliament in January. At the time the neo-Nazis announced that they would be disbanding. Effectively what they did, for want of a better term, was they ‘phoenixed’. Changed their name, but didn't change the fact that they were still an organisation and were still engaging in the exact sort of behaviour that met the thresholds for this legislation.

On the 22nd of April, I was advised by ASIO that there was a likelihood that the threshold had been met. On the 25th of April, ASIO presented the first piece of advice, and it was a couple of weeks later that there was a further update which formally authorised the next steps to determine if the Ministerial threshold had been met.

The Opposition was briefed as required and I thank them for their participation in that. Today, the process has been completed and takes effect at midnight tonight. This means that supporting, funding, training, recruiting, joining or directing this group, constitutes a criminal offence with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. None of this will stop bigoted people from having horrific ideologies, but it does prevent this group from organising, from meeting, and prevents some of the sorts of horrific, bigoted rallies that we've seen around our country.

It sends a clear message to people who believe in racial supremacy that their views have no place in modern Australia. We're a country that judges you on who you are, not on where you're from. The neo-Nazis have gone after almost every different group you can imagine. Whether people are Jewish, whether they are Muslim, whether people are of Asian heritage, whether they're First Nations. They've engaged in a series of examples of bigotry, all of which fit with their white supremacist ideology. It's been made clear today that under Australian law, they are now a banned organisation.

JOURNALIST: Minister, is there any potential future issues if this group, as you say, phoenixes again, meets under another name, would they have to go through the process of being listed? And if some of the individuals that are connected to this group organised a rally, would people who attended that rally potentially be caught up in the fact that they've associated with this group, even if they may not be aware themselves that that was who organised it?

BURKE: The criminal threshold will be determined on the facts. But the simple thing would be, if anyone associated with any organisation of this nature, they're taking a risk. They're taking a risk and they need to be aware of the potential criminal offences that they'd be dealing with. The way the legislation works in the ‘phoenixing’ part of the question is, once an organisation has been listed, then if they try to reform under a new name, effectively, it's a simple regulation change. We don't need to start the process from the start again.

JOURNALIST: Minister, obviously this group has been notorious, as you said, phoenixing, quite prominent in a lot of rallies. What would your message be to them directly [indistinct] nothing they’re going to be able to get around this?

Burke: I wish we could simply stop hatred, I wish we could just stop that. The fact that they might play games at claiming, ‘oh they don't specifically call for violence’, that sort of hateful ideology in the way they have behaved and the hate crimes they've participated in, and given rise to, means that they do make Australians less safe. We're a nation that has the capacity for people to get along with each other, and we're a nation which has a capacity to deal with a whole lot of different views and be okay with that. But when people want to organise in a way that is dehumanising to other Australians, we have new laws now and we will use them.

JOURNALIST: Minister, are you expecting any sort of legal challenges under this phoenixing, where if they do disband under one name that's been listed and reform a new group and maybe argue that it's different – are you foreseeing any legal challenges there? Does that concern you at all?

BURKE: From the moment I was sworn in, I knew that part of being Minister for Home Affairs is you become the most litigated person in the nation. Most things that I do in this portfolio are subjected to legal challenge. I wouldn't be surprised if this is similar, but I'd also say Hizb ut-Tahrir said that at the time we put the laws in place with respect to them, that they would be taking me to court. It hasn't happened yet. It still might, but you have to in this particular portfolio, work on the basis that it's always likely there'll be a legal challenge. We're confident of our legal position, otherwise we wouldn't have done it.

JOURNALIST: Minister, you said when they go, when they change name, they phoenix, it's no longer going through the full process, it's just a regulation change now. What is the threshold that has to be met there? Does it have to be the same people that are organising it? Is it just the vibe of the organisation needs to be the same? What constitutes a legitimate phoenix that can then be relisted?

BURKE: The principle is whether or not they're judged to be a continuation of the organisation. I'm not going to give them a legal framework as to what they might try next. The simple thing is they thought by announcing that they had disbanded that they had evaded these laws. They haven't.

JOURNALIST: Hizb ut-Tahrir and the NSN were the two groups that you singled out when you introduced this legislation. Are there other groups that ASIO is looking out that you're considering that will potentially also come under this legislation?

BURKE: There's nothing else I've been advised of or had even intimated that is likely to come down the track. Legal thresholds are there as principles, but it's also the case that the banning of a group is a big step. It's a big step and we deliberately made sure that we had a whole lot of checks and balances, that this couldn't be abused by anyone who held my job in the years to come. The biggest threshold is the fact that no Minister can initiate this at all. First step has to come from ASIO. There's a specific threshold there, specific one for the Minister to follow on with. There are no other organisations that are currently in play in any way, to my knowledge.

JOURNALIST: Minister, on the, you mentioned these two thresholds. One of them, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was increases the risk of violence.

BURKE: There's a number, I've focused on the ones that have been used.

JOURNALIST: Sure. On that particular threshold, can you point to any kind of specific events, specific incidents with this group that, in your mind, increase the risk of violence in the community?

BURKE: We saw in Melbourne specific violent action. You all covered it, that was on the news. We've also seen a series of actions of threats, some of which are different arrests that you've reported of people who've been motivated by a white supremacist ideology. I think the examples are already out there. They've already been reported, and the action against the organisation is now being taken.

JOURNALIST: A couple of weeks ago in Sydney, you were talking about migration and you were saying you didn’t know what the Coalition's numbers were of course, but you were warning of the threat –

BURKE: They apparently don't know what their numbers are either.

JOURNALIST: You were warning of the threat of – we're a country that relies a lot on foreign labour, particularly in hospitals. You made some pretty passionate comments about that. What do you make of the suggestion that we should be linking migration numbers to dwelling completions? And do you think that that, what you were worrying about when you spoke about that a couple of weeks ago in Sydney, would happen under this sort of formula?

BURKE: Can I say a few things. First of all, there is an area where we very directly link migration numbers to housing, and that's with respect to overseas students and student housing for institutions. When we first put that to the Parliament, which was in the last term, the Liberals opposed it. They announced that their vote would be to have student numbers unlimited and to reject there being any link to housing. So, there's a fair deal of hypocrisy.

They also announced that they wouldn't tolerate any cuts to the working holidaymaker. You've got four main sections that make up the immigration numbers. Net Overseas Migration is slightly different because you've also got the movement of citizens, which I'd be surprised if he's claiming that he'll control that or if he's wanting to abandon the relationship with New Zealand.

But I might say, the difference between last budget's projection and this budget's projection was in the order around 30-35,000. The arrivals versus departures on New Zealand over the last 12 months, the difference is 37,000. These are levers which, there are long-term agreements with New Zealand and obviously long term rights for our own citizens to go and work there as expats and for expats to come home.

But in terms of the migration part, I'll try to go through it quickly. They ruled out overseas students in terms of what they said last election. The Nats ruled out that they would support anything that involved backpackers and we had put changes for working holiday matches in the budget. For family visas, just take the parent visa as an example. You can't apply for it until you're 67. Look at the department's webpage if you apply for it now. At 67, it's listed as a 33 year wait time. There are limits to how much more you can curtail. What that leave is skilled migration. That's what it leaves.

You need to be terribly careful here. We have a simple reality that if you're talking about building houses, 28% of people in building and plumbing work are born overseas, of our plasterers in Sydney, 65% are born overseas, 58% in Melbourne. You go to age and disability care, 40% of our carers are born overseas, 40% of our nurses are born overseas, more than half our GPs are born overseas.

If you go down a path where you attack skilled migration. You're not just attacking the economy, you're attacking fundamental services. There are things that need to be done. There are a whole lot of things that the government is doing in making sure that we pull back from numbers that peaked under their settings, but it just also needs to be remembered, that the measures that we've been using to bring that down are measures that they’ve opposed, and the ones that are left are skilled migration, and we really need to consider what that would involve. 


JOURNALIST: Yeah, just on the same issue. The latest home affair status suggests that 100,000 people sort of in that in-between zone. We've tried to report them, but they're disputing the case where it's being resolved, is the reform that Labor have put in place to try and speed up that. Are they working as effectively as you'd like them to, is there more that could be done there?

BURKE: I manage systems that you always have people trying to break, in the whole of the Home Affairs portfolio. So, the work on improving compliance on our visa system is not finished, but I would also add never will finish. Some of the things that we've done have made a significant difference.

One of the things that we've done in terms of our processing is instead of doing everything in a queue, which then meant the backlog slowed everything down and people were getting work rights for longer, even if it was an invalid claim. We've had a situation by processing the last application first, that we're turning them around more quickly and we're getting departures out of that.

Similarly, the Administrative Review Tribunal has been doing something similar, and there's been some movement, but the courts make these decisions independently, but there’s been some movement the courts have been making there as well. That of itself is making a significant difference. There's further work in dealing with student visa appeals on the papers that we're making decisions about right now as well. So, there's things that we're doing, they are making a significant difference, but I don't want to pretend that's the end of the road.

JOURNALIST: Given the current political debate on migration. Do you have a legitimate case to say that Net Overseas Migration does need to be lower to maintain social cohesion? And also, listening to Angus Taylor's speech last night, what do you think the impact on social cohesion will be from some of those things you said about migration?

BURKE: I start with this principle, when the numbers peaked, they were too high. We always need to make sure that immigration numbers are being tailored to the needs of the country. They peaked under the immigration settings of the previous government. Since then, we've been taking action to be able to bring those numbers down to sustainable levels. They have been coming down, they’re at 45% of that peak. There's more work that we've announced in the Budget. In particular, in terms of shifting the permanent program, now 70% onshore rather than bringing people from overseas. It only comes down to 30% from overseas for that skilled migration program, so that’s significant.

I think it should be possible to have a sensible conversation about total numbers without attacking social cohesion. That said if you look at comments that Angus Taylor has made, things like wanting to claim that someone is less worthy, if they don't come from a liberal democracy. You think of people who came from post-war Europe, who came from occupation under the USSR, who come from Vietnam, more recent immigrants who come from China, there's a whole lot of proud Australians there, and to somehow tell them that they're less worthy, is a pretty horrific claim to make.

I think it would be fair to say, that the one permanent resident that Angus Taylor seems happy with is Pauline Hanson, who's a permanent resident in his head. If you want to - with Net Overseas Migration - look at the levers that are available, he has left himself with the levers that hurt the health system and hurt the economy and rejected the levers that we've been using to get the peak down. There's a way of having this debate sensibly without Australians turning against each other. I'm not sure that he's chosen that path.

ENDS