Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Wednesday that the country revoked the visa of a British national after he was charged with displaying a banned Nazi symbol.
“If you come to Australia on a visa, you are here as a guest,” Burke was cited as telling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation by Reuters, in the wake of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack against the Jewish community, which left 15 people dead.
“If someone comes here for the purposes of hate, they can leave,” the minister added.
The person in question is a 43-year-old man who was charged on Dec. 8, about a week before the Bondi massacre.
He was arrested for allegedly displaying the Nazi swastika and advocating for violence against the Jewish community under two different handles on X, according to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).
He now faces deportation, with an option to appeal the decision.
The AFP noted that the man’s detention “came ahead of a week-long national blitz on the distribution and display of prohibited symbols. This resulted in charges against a 21-year-old Queensland man, with a 25-year-old man from Sydney’s northwest also served a court attendance notice.”
The British citizen was living in Queensland, the Australian state covering the continent’s northeast.
The AFP with assistance from the Queensland Police Service entered the man’s residence in Caboolture with a search warrant on Nov. 21. One mobile phone and several weapons, including swords bearing swastika symbology, axes and knives, were seized.
The suspect is charged with three counts of public display of prohibited Nazi symbols and one count of using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence, according to the AFP.
Each charge carries a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment.
According to the BBC, the British national can leave Australia voluntarily or wait to be deported to his home country, with a court hearing scheduled for next month.
In November, a South African who had been living in Australia since 2022 had his visa revoked by the immigration minister after attending a neo-Nazi rally in front of the New South Wales parliament, the report continued.
Identified as Matthew Gruter, he also has the option to appeal his deportation.
